Life in the Shadows

We're experiencing an unseasonably cold spell here in the UK, with daytime temperatures barely reaching 3 degrees and overnight temperatures hitting minus 5.  We Brits are a little obsessed with weather.  It's a sport.  We love to watch the forecast and then complain when the Met Office get it wrong.  I realise that 3 degree daytime temperatures don't really amount to a whole lot of inconvenience to inhabitants of colder climes, no doubt stoically fitting their snow tyres at midday in minus 12 as I type, but after a particularly mild Autumn for this islander, the transition felt sudden and brutal.  

However, I am secretly enjoying it.  I do not welcome battling to unfreeze the car door, scrape the windscreen or navigate early morning ungritted minor roads...

...but there's something reassuring about the heralding in of a new season and in particular, a clear distinction in seasons....and don't you find waking to early morning moonlight...

...long shadows, filtered sunlight, fiery skies and crystalline landscapes just a tiny bit magical?  I do. 

I love that the Norsemen of Northern Europe saw the sun as a wheel that changed the seasons.  It was from the word for this wheel, houl, that the word yule is thought to have originated. 

Through forge-red light, my eyes pick out the lay of the land, 

Shadowy, obsidian contours etched into an ash dusted landscape.

Smoke and steam swirls abound.

Nature emulating industry, 

Churning out, strategising, preparing ground, 

For the next turn of the wheel and fleet footed seasonal shift into winter's hostile grip.

In the UK, we always associate Christmas with snow and ice, courtesy of influences from Christina Rossetti's In the Bleak Midwinter to Charles Dickens and the London Frost Fayres.  A good example of the power of literature.  I find this season truly special.  Still not convinced?  

Here are some photos from yesterday's ground frost in the garden.  It's still with us in fact.  

Spending time indoors also stimulates creativity.  On drawing the curtains the other evening, I caught a glimpse of my reflection in the window and quite liked the slight distortion the window panes created.  I had also been staring at the branches of our silver birch tree outside, illuminated by moonlight and decided to try and capture this natural "double exposure" effect.  The first effort created muted tones and a slightly ghostly self portrait.

The second, captured a hint of the moonlit branches, bringing the outside in and adding a scarring effect to the image.

Maybe I've been spending too long inside.  It's quite possibly I'm unravelling.  Who knows?

For the record, there have been plenty of outings, but I'll save those for next time as we gain ground on Christmas.