Walking for sanity


My walks have been close to home over the last few weeks, familiar paths, no great mountains scaled. Just moments of quiet amongst the sparkle and noise of a modern Christmas. I took photos with my phone, filling my camera reel with snaps of red hawthorn berries and the ever verdant ivy, twining and greening my local woods. But also hazel catkins, surely early this year? Slowly I'm learning to identify trees, painstakingly learning knowledge that my Wiltshire-born grandfather took for granted. He tried his best to pass things on, but I was busy not listening as a small child, too keen to climb a tree or investigate a puddle with my wellies. He was too impossibly old for me then, a thatch of white hair atop a long-legged body, using his walking stick to lean on but also to hook down a choice piece of holly.

I am grateful for the cold clear sunny days of this midwinter. I feel grumpy that our current calendar jumps us from Christmas, our most recent version of a midwinter celebration marking the darkest point of the year, almost straight into the monolith of New Year's Eve and all those unfeasible sets of resolutions for self-improvement. I much prefer the pagan wheel of the year, where Yule marks the winter solstice on 21 December, then new beginnings aren't expected until at least Imbolc on 2 February. This feels like a much more civilised pace. I can follow my own witchy path, walking the walks that feel right for the season. On the most recent winter solstice, I found myself desperate to leave the house around 3pm before the light faded and mark the shortest day with a quick stroll around Troopers Hill (a small local nature reserve) and back through the woods. I walked here again on Christmas Eve, this time with my 19 year old son by my side. I told him of the walk I took in this place exactly twenty years before, when he was a mere bundle of cells furiously dividing inside me. He listened politely, too sweet to tell me that he's heard this story before.

So I am not ready for resolutions yet, I feel too exhausted to attempt self-improvement, it cannot possibly go well at this point. Instead I might manage to set a few intentions, that feels gentler. I intend to keep moving, keep being outside as much as I can, keep noticing and observing quietly. Waiting for spring. For now I leave you with a few snapshots from my midwinter.







While I've been indoors over the Christmas holidays, I have enjoyed watching Wild London on iPlayer with my teenage children, we have plenty of urban foxes round here but have never seen a hedgehog. For midwinter reading I have been enjoying 'The Bear and The Nightingale' by Katherine Arden. Set in the depths of a medieval Russian winter, weaving history and folk tales. I've already picked up the second book in the series from the library today.


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