Seasonal Reflections

Once we arrive in autumn in the journey towards winter in Scotland, we are surrounded by change in the landscapes around us. We are been mesmerised by a fiesta of colours as trees and foliage transformed from fifty shades of green to  every possible colour through the leaf rainbow towards soft brown. We have seen all shades of red, orange, yellow, russet in a constantly changing kaleidoscope of autumnal colour all around us. 

The trees rapidly shed their colours and glorious branch sculptures emerge, spectacular especially when silhouetted against a stark wintery sky. Since returning to Scotland six years ago where the seasons have different characteristics, I have found this process humbling and it continues to take me by surprise.

A number of weeks have already passed since we shed Summer Time in the UK, and returned to standard GMT (Greenwich Mean Time). This shunted sunset abruptly by an hour and in Scotland we suddenly lost daylight well before the end of the regular working day. The days continued to shorten rapidly, by around 2 minutes in the morning and another 2 -3 in the afternoon. Soon by mid afternoon the light and colour starts to bleed from the sky and the sun sinks earlier each day, eventually slowing to a sunset well before 4 pm, though the onset of evening is felt often by 2 pm, especially on a day when cloud cover is thick. There are days when the light is reluctantly switched on long before the low sun actually sets.

It is at this time of year that my thoughts focus on my three word mantra. It has accompanied me all year long, walking quietly by my side, encouraging me and reminding me of the tone  and focus I had wanted to set for this year. It is at this time of year that I reflect on how each of the three words has guided me as I prepare to move towards a new year, and a new set of three words.

My three word mantra for 2023 speaks to me of my first full year in this middle land of “soft retirement”. Not quite full retirement, but a pause from the merry go round of formal work and the increased space to spend time truly unfurling – prioritising time to write, explore creative outlets , writing, rebuilding my strength and health, and venture out on gentle explorations around me. 

My first word of 2023 has been “harvest”. This recognised that over my lifetime I have a gathered a hoard of treasures. In addition to the physical collection of tiny and not so tiny mementoes of a life in many different places, each with their own memories and significance, there is a wealth of less physical items. I have so many memories, stories and experiences to relate, thousands of photographs, and so many words! Words in half written and fully written stories, poems, and fragments of bigger works such as the memoir. A clear intent behind “harvest” has been to gather these together and shape them into something more manageable and meaningful. And this has galvanised me into refining, organising and shaping my writing in particular. The year has seen encouraging progress in putting together poetry into a broader collection and even resulted in a longlisting for a poetry pamphlet, an evening in the local library sharing my poetry with a warm audience and other steps forward in the writing journey. There is still a long way to go, but the processing of harvesting has undoubtedly guided and encouraged me on the path.

My second word has been “sculpt”. It holds precious association as my mother discovered her talent for sculpture late in life and in her final years was able to develop that creative outlet. It is an important reminder that finding and pursuing that passion requires a balance in shaping our days. “Sculpt” has both validated my recent decisions to prioritise my creative activities as well as pushing me to be intentional and deliberate in how I shape my time. I have been proactive in connecting with the many opportunities, activities and communities which exist. This has resulted in days and weeks which are pleasantly busy and a diary which requires a bit of juggling. But how wonderful to be juggling diary commitments such as writing groups, poetry sessions, Qi Gong classes and the like. If I sit back and don’t sculpt my days, they disappear with a sense of regret. Of course, I do enjoy being able to take my days gently but having some shape is not only motivating but has also produced results from my harvesting.

My third word has been “flutter” and it complements the other two. While sculpting has planning and shaping integral to its purpose, “flutter” gives the permission to wander off when a new idea or opportunity flitters across my vision. I love spontaneity, and I perhaps relish in distraction a bit too much. However, giving myself permission to allow some fluttering when my attention is caught by a surprise, means that I am more intentional overall and have space for flutterings. And in the more literal sense, I still have a fascination for butterflies and their incredible innate magical transformations and migratory patterns. I am constantly astounded that a butterfly will migrate across continents and generations to settle in a place where that little butterfly has never been. How amazing that fluttering can open up unexpected journeys and possibilities.

A waxing crescent moon reminds us of our place in the universe.

The days march rapidly forward, and as I emerge from an unwelcome visitation from Covid, I find that I have lost precious weeks at this time of year. We now have just three more sunsets until we reach the winter solstice, when the sun will reach its furthest point from the north and begin its journey back towards us. Knowing that the days will lengthen and that a new year will soon begin breathes renewed energy to the search for the perfect three words to guide me through 2024.

Expectations, great and ordinary.

Where have these past two years gone? We have completed two whole journeys around the sun. The same sun which has risen on 730 mornings and set again in the evening since 13 March 2020. The very day when I closed the door on the outside world.

The sun rises a little earlier each day as spring equinox approaches.

As the sun sinks this evening, I reflect on this day two years ago. I was on my way home from work, with my laptop and some hastily grabbed papers as I was expecting to be working from home for the following couple of weeks with Covid closing in on us. It was just over a week before the spring equinox, the sky was a translucent blue in the fading daylight as I made my way from the bus stop to my front door. 

Heading home on 13 March 2020

I was not long home before my phone rang. I remember that family conversation so clearly, the deep fear of the virus which was already tightening its grip around us meaning that I began my isolation a few days before the authorities formally closed our doors. That is not new, I have reflected on this before. 

As I wrote in April 2020 – “I arrived home from work … having agreed that afternoon that I would work from home from then on to reduce risk while travelling to work on busy buses. I picked up a couple of items from the shop on my way home. Excellent stocking up – a jar of red pesto, a small packet of macaroni and some miso soups. I had no idea when I shut the front door, that I would not be leaving again for the foreseeable future. Family conversations that evening were frank and sobering. We talked through the risks that I faced. Age and underlying health conditions meant that I would not fare well if I contracted COVID-19. Additionally, as the pandemic took hold, the health service would be placed under extreme pressure to accommodate very ill patients. We realised at that point that I should immediately self isolate. And so, on Friday 13 March, I closed my doors to the outside world... Life has been transferred predominantly online. I have FaceTime, Zoom and Skype chats in the evening with friends, sometimes in small groups. Our Book Club and Writing Group now meet online. But even though life is continuing, it has been changed irrevocably. We don’t know when it will settle and resume and in particular, we don’t know what the new world will look like when it does settle.“

There was such uncertainty ahead. But on reflection I realise that did have some expectations. We had expectations that if we did catch Covid, then we would have some immunity in those very early days. There was a great deal of talk about vaccines taking time, but we had unquestionable confidence that we would see a vaccine at some point and that it would be the solution. I held the expectation that catching Covid would be almost certainly dire with my underlying and chronic health conditions. Another expectation was that as case numbers rose, they would surely fall as the peak of infections passed. However, the current case numbers are very high considering over two years have passed of the pandemic.

So it is strange to look back over the past two years which have both flown and dragged by, and look at how those expectations have measured up. Some have been surpassed, and some have surprised us. The vaccine has been a massive game changer, for those have access to them. While the global situation is one which is urgent and overlooked by too many, I am in that fortunate position to have had both doses, plus the booster. But aside that is the question of immunity. Not being an expert in this area, I have been shaken by the evolving realisation that immunity fades after infection, and also after the vaccines. Now we understand that the benefit of the vaccine is far more on reducing the severity of disease rather than transmission. Also, in those very early days, the variants had not appeared on our radars. Our expectations of new variants and mutations of the virus, with the unknown of how severe and transmissible these would be had yet to form.

Many of these expectations, I had not really acknowledged but they nestled in my mind. It is only when I pause at a milestone such as today, that I realise that I held so many.

When I wake tomorrow morning, on the first day of a third year since I closed my door, I will focus my expectations on the sunrises and sunsets and the spring growth in front of my eyes.

From My Doorstep

The other evening I was readying to go to bed, when my eye caught sight of a deep orange colour low in the sky. Not long after the sun had set, the waxing moon was following in its own path towards moonset. The warm colours of the sun reflected ever more intensely as the moon sank in the sky. I was mesmerised and stood on my doorstep in the warm summer air. Of course my camera was not far away.

I am not sure how long I lingered there, taking time to breathe in the temperate air and watch the moon sink, trying to capture the magical colours. I have a bridge camera which provides a phenomenal zoom but without the confusion that my old SLR camera had and there are now many images on my own personal memory card as well as that of the camera.

In Scotland, summer days stretch and lengthen through to the summer solstice. When the days are at their longest, the light never truly fades and the sky is a translucent deep blue in the deep of the night. By 3 o’clock in the morning the sky is already preparing for the day and light long before the sun appears on the horizon. In the evening it sets around 10 o’clock but again the light lingers for a good while.

Already the days are shortening, and in a little over a month since the summer solstice, there is a full hour less of daylight. At this time of the year, the sun seems to speed up on its southerly journey and we reflect “ah, the nights are drawing in” as we acknowledge the distant but inevitable shorter days as the year moves towards the winter solstice.

Those days continue to pass, and although there is a lightness as the outside world changes, Covid is still very much in the air. And my calendar tells me that 500 days have now passed since that day in March 2020 when my own life changed. 500 days and when I wake tomorrow, 500 nights since I closed the door in the March chill of 2020. ~And while much has changed, much is still very much the same.

I am enormously thankful to have had both doses of the vaccine. I am basking in the long light and at the moment, warm, days of summer and I am luxuriating in fresh blueberries from the garden on my yoghurt in the morning. But I have still not been on a train or bus for any distance, and apart from an unexpected and stressful set of checks in the breast clinic in Edinburgh in January, I have not visited the city in those 500 days.

And nor do I foresee any great changes in my immediate plans. I am comfortable and settled in my space, but most of all, feel safe here. I would love to have people round and not be weather dependent, and I would love to plan a break. But the time is not right yet. I know that I am well protected, but I also know that I am not completely protected from Covid. And I do not want to be one of the statistics still featured on a daily basis if I can possibly avoid it. As I have done so for the past 500 days. But the more pressing reason for me is that I am acutely aware that every new infection is an opportunity for mutation of the virus as it strives to find ways to ensure its own survival. I do not want to give it any more chances, so I will continue to be very measured in how I live my life for the time being.

I find myself still in a strange place. Life goes on, the days pass, there are new developments in the behaviour and effects of the virus, scientific progress and society’s response. Yet, we are still adapting and reacting. Planning is fraught with risks and has to be packed with all manner of contingency.

Each of us is finding our feet in this shaky new ground, and this differs on our own situations, our thresholds of comfort and our own risk assessments. I know where my own boundaries lie and I know that they are cautious for the reasons I stated. Avoiding exposure to risk as far as possible for my own health as well as giving the virus as little opportunity as possible to mutate. I don’t impose my views and actions on others, and have truly valued the fact that my cautious take is respected where those differ.

As I stood on my doorstep the other night watching the moon set, I was reminded of my three words for 2021 – patience, calibration and stardust. How apt they have proven so far. In those moments, my mind was stilled by the sight of the moon. More agitated thoughts of the day faded into the background. I might not have ventured far from my doorstep in 500 days, but I am reminded that there is often a great deal to be experienced in and from that very place.

Another Sunrise

This morning saw a light frost, miniature ice shardlets glistening in the first rays of sunlight. I closed the door behind me, leaving a flower shadow painted on the wall by the morning light.

Under a keen, blue sky, I passed cropped fields of sandy coloured stubble with their scatterings of hay bales, punctuated by deepening reds and rusts of the changing leaves. A Scottish autumn at its very best.

It was not like this ten years ago today. I was half a world away, if not a whole world. It was the end of a long and especially heavy monsoon and the Yangon I left behind was lush as the late afternoon flight lifted into the sky. An hour later, the sun was glowing red as it rested on the Bangkok horizon, pausing before it slipped out of view. Silently marking the end of another day, and another era.

It was late that evening when I heard the words that were to take life in an unexpected and unwanted direction. “This is highly suspicious of cancer” Dr W gently told me.

Ten years ago, this very day. Those words have echoed in my ears ever since.

There have been numerous sunsets and sunrises since that day, each one different and each one heralding an unknown day or night ahead. Some cloudier days when the sun has been hidden, and some bright skies like this morning when the sunlight throws promise and optimism on the coming day. This chimes somewhat with the path that life has taken since, and of course, before then. Some sunnier, promising sunrises and gentle, rosy sunsets. Other days, a stormy sky, hiding the sun or gloomy, troubled clouds shaping the mood of the day ahead and the challenges and surprises that arrive in our path.

On this significant Landmark Day, I am thankful to be here, and thankful to see the sun rise and set on an ordinary, extraordinary day.

Touch down and out of touch

I love the light, late midsummer nights in Scotland.  As my flight took off from Amsterdam just over a week ago, the sun was nestling on the horizon and sinking slowly from view.  As we travelled northwards, the sun rose steadily and by the time we touched down in Edinburgh 90 minutes later, it was again touching the horizon.

I always find it ironic that although I am in a super speedy internet space, time online is very limited.  This visit is one where I am spending a good deal of time either on the road (or rails), with family, and keeping my father company as he continues his medical path.  I am pushed physically as well as emotionally as a seemingly innocent mosquito bite which I brought with me from Yangon, has caused trouble and pain but finally seems to be on the mend.

In the meantime half written blog posts are cluttering my drafts folder and my mind,  random thoughts captured and preserved until they can be developed and processed.  Geographically nearer but somewhat out of touch …………

A new day

It fascinates me that the sunrise is different every day.  The sun rises at a slightly different time, and on our cosy place on the planet (just south of the Tropic of Cancer), it creeps northwards along the horizon as the weeks move away from the shortest days in December towards the longer, lighter days.  Then, after the longest day, it creeps southwards again.  Every day, the sun’s appearance is different.  The cloud formations are different, the light varies and the place where the sun first starts its ascent over the skyline changes too.

I remember the first winter that I started my sunrise swim.  It was late November 2010 and I loved watching the sun peek over the horizon around 6.15 in the morning.  As we moved through December I would leave home in the dark, as the sky was just beginning to show the first tinges of light and on the shortest day it rose at 6.30.  After a few days away for Christmas that year, I resumed the early swims eagerly set for the sun to start rising earlier. To my bewilderment, it seemed to be getting darker in the mornings, rather thanlighter.  By the middle of January, I was no longer able to contain my puzzlement and resorted to good old Google.  I learned that in fact the sun does continue to rise later and later throughout January and even into February.  How bizarre, and how contradictory to the fundamental sciences I had learned.  How could it possibly be getting darker when we had passed the shortest day?

Thank heavens for the internet, because I am not sure how I would have solved this puzzle without it.  I discovered thanks to Time and Date which is a wonderful resource, that 21 December is the shortest day, according to the length of time between sunrise and sunset.  However, the fact that the sunset is progressively later (by a longer time than the later sunrise) the actual daylight time does gradually increase by a few seconds each day.  Phew – that’s complicated and difficult to explain.  However a glance at the sunrise/sunset times will enlighten (quite literally) those interested to understand this more clearly.

In addition to the gradual progression of sunrise times, the sun also moves in a northerly direction as the weeks progress.  We are now at the time of year where the sun’s northerly path along the horizon moves forward visibly.  I am at a different spot in the pool each day when I first see that characteristic deep red, glowing sun as it first reaches over the horizon.

And there is a magical point on that path when the sun rises at a point which is directly behind an ancient temple distant on the horizon.  As it rises, it creates a dramatic silhouette of the temple against the soft light, reminiscent of a child’s night light.

It is a moment which quite simply takes my breath away.