When the mists roll in to take us on a journey through a land newly imagined, we’re like a child seeking to escape a dream, only to be pulled further into the mesmerising story. A wonderland of twisted trees and dancing branches, of shapes materialising only to be swallowed again in the mysterious white gauze.
The landscape we see every day has changed and we follow a path into the unknown where sounds are muted, distorted. The cawing of a pheasant is now a witches cackle, the sheep we’d not known stood next to us, have grown in the fog, look different, big bellied and long-eared.
The sun teases with a glimpse from drawn curtains, only to pull them the tighter as we err through the dreamscape’s ever-changing twists and turns, losing ourselves in a land we can claim for ourselves in the absence of other people. When we think we’ve found the way home through a gnarled Hawthornes framed doorway, the bark and stems turn into a sorcerer’s long-fingered hands tickling our skin.
There are fields in Lancashire where the swans meet of a December morning, snow-robed dancers in a Christmas play. With the frost clinking like small bells and the acres frozen with white-capped tips, the reeds hollow and dry, the airs sing of winter.
With the first light’s golden cue the birds rise like an audience, applauding the sunrise as it paints our world with wonder. Synchronised with each other, wingstroke by wingstroke, gliding with the snowdrops turned to drizzle, they blend into the milky sky, flying past quietly, infusing the subtle pastels above the floodplains with downy grace until a haunting caw wakes the hour, echoed by a hundred voices joining from different directions.
We on the ground wish we could join in and experience the magic of rushing through these dawn-tinted skies and feel the airstreams carry us through the clouds, towards the sun. The freedom would be exhilarating.
In a rainy autumn, there are still moments of opulent beauty, glimpses into the gilded palace the season creates. When the light breathes into the morning rain and the stag receives the blessings of dawn, October’s own magic unfolds.
After sunrise had briefly touched the Yorkshire moors with sparkle, it withdrew behind thick clouds. The forests were green still, only few leaves having fallen. The diminished light saturated the woodlands with darker hues as if moisture had stirred up the colour from the ground and it were subsequently blotted across the landscape. A stag emerged from the thicket. He must have gotten my scent on the breeze, and briefly eyed me before strutting into the valley below.
As the sun’s angle slowly decreased, currents of nightly cold and farewell sweet marbled the air, setting the mood for the youngsters to fight under the trees’ turning canopy, on silver grass in golden light, to prance to autumn’s drums and crown a new king.
