Took a lovely walk with the Mosley’s yesterday afternoon. Up into the hills and down Pucks Glen.
There had been a partial thaw, but the path was treacherous in parts.
Worth it though- for the company, the joy of seeing kids having fun in the wild, and for this-
Winter’s own towers and minarets.
A Cathedral for a while…
It has been very cold here recently- like most of the UK, it has been colder than most people can remember over the last weeks.
Dunoon is usually insulated from the deep cold that other parts of Scotland experience, because of our closeness to the sea. But last night, it was minus 7 degrees C outside our house, and the temperature has not been above freezing for weeks.
Along the shore, the rock pools have frozen over, and between the tides, the seaweed collects white frost.
We have not had the heavy snowfalls here that have been common elsewhere. Glasgow and Paisley (but a few miles away) are deep white, but we have the remains of snow, turned to ice for the most part.
Apart from in the hills that is.
So I decided to go look for some.
I wanted to find virgin snow- the high up powdery stuff that does not ball under your crampons. It has been a while since I kicked my way into this stuff.
I set off into the familiar hills above Bishops Glen- the forestry tracks giving way to fire breaks in the plantations, then out onto the open hillside.
And I found snow.
Before the rain washes away the snow, here are a few shots from a walk in the woods behind our house…
Lovely.
Some photographs taken on my way back from Bute yesterday, driving over the middle of the Cowal peninsular from Colintraive.
I had a lovely drive back from Helensburgh today- all the mist moving around the mountains in the late afternoon stillness.
I had to stop a few times- here is why
Winter can be cruel
The darkness cover us, and cold winds close us off from one another
December comes, and the trees are bare
The hillsides become an impassable sponge, soaking up the rain that never seems to be far away
Where once a thousand bluebells blazed, it is now almost impossible to believe that anything can ever live again.
And into this time, comes the season of Advent
A time of waiting
A time to dare once again to hope
A time to re imagine the coming
Of a King
Who might yet
Light up everything
In brand new spring
I woke early this morning- the old black dog is stalking me again, so sleep has become a little erratic. So I took the camera, and went for a walk.
Behind our house, there are woods. Squelch your way in there, and you are in a small pocket of wilderness- deer have squashed flat all the bracken, and the dappled forest floor is alive to all sorts of smaller creatures who live in the leaf mold. If you listen carefully you can almost hear the noise of their lives- chattering, fighting, consuming and copulating amongst the spoors of the autumn fungi.
And I am reminded of an old way of coping- from boyhood. The temporary exile into green spaces. To look for who I am, and to stand on the edges of the world looking in from the outside.
There are big landscapes hereabouts. Huge eyefuls of mountain and sea- vistas that swallow you whole and allow you to disappear.
But for now, I need the small ones. I need the nook and the hollow. I need the shadow cast by sun in trees. And the dance of the falling leaf. I need to tread carefully around mushrooms and step over the tracks left by something small and furry.
I am reminded of an old poem- written a few years ago, in a similar frame of mind, if in a very different season-
When I was a child
I saw as a child
Small
In the small things of landscape
Deep in the tickling grass
Held in the hollow of slow summer days
Now, like the grasshoppers
Ghosts of memory
Gone foreverBut now I am grown
And the woods are no longer wildMy dragons died through education (at least for a while)
And the noise of cars on the B6139 heading for Newstead
Drove away the bears.Instead I lift my eyes to the high places
Where horizons roll from ridge to ridge
Always higher, always further north
Crossing the high, hard won corrie
Blood pumping
Free for a while
From the baser motives-
Above it all.Slower now
At the end of heavy days
And in good company
I look again beneath my feet
And try not to trample flowers
A gorgeous autumn day today- and I took a drive round to Lochgilphead to meet with some colleagues. Lovely.
As ever, the camera traveled with me, and I took this shot along Loch Fyne, into the afternoon sun.
It is Michaela’s favourite view, and I always struggle to do it justice, as the vistas are so broad and wide, ringed in the far distance by the hills of Kintyre.
But I am enjoying the wide angle of the standard 18-55 mm lens on my camera- partnered with a polarising filter, that teases out some extra texture from clouds and colours, given the right angle to the light. But this one was into the sun, and I kind of like it…
Hope Michaela does too.
And with a rough nod to the ‘two thirds rule’, here is a shot with the horizon in the other place…
We had a trip over the water today- making use of some free tickets for entry to National Trust properties that Michaela won in a competition.
A storm had rattled the old house all night, and the Clyde was still alive with it- flurries of rain, the occasional burst of autumn sunshine, and a dramatic ever changing sky…
We went down the Ayrshire coast, to Culzean Castle…
I feel a few more photographs coming on…
I thought I would try to record the developing autumn hereabouts.
So here are a few photos taken over the last couple of days, as the sun lit up the hillsides.
this fragile tent 