online: 13 february 2017
modified: 13 february 2017
13 february 2017 walking in
mist....
...light fades as we enter shadow of the earth... faint sounds of trains
and road traffic... icy wind... and all-pervading mist... as pause to
write this with freezing fingers,,,
...wishing i'd stopped earlier to note that the horizon is today quite
close... the furthest i can see is about a kilometre... (from my walking point 10 to the great
wall at the edge of the garden suburb)...
...i look up from touch screen to see almost immobile pond and frozen
vegetation.... under cloudless but misty sky...
...no one about this wintry afternoon.... world is full of troubles...
yet thoughts can still rise to its wonder...
...time to move while it's still light enough to walk one's way out of
the forest... avoiding half-freezing mud and half-visible tree roots...
...the pleasure of walking despite cold air and bumpy ground... and
helped by trekking poles (as if with four legs)...
glad i came out despite darkness and low temperature... (and glad of hot
soup on return)
i've been reading the journals of Dorothy Wordsworth* (sister of William
Wordsworth)... surprised to know how often they were 'ill' (sometimes
'very ill')... and spent much time in bed... yet wrote famous poems
despite that... and in the absence
of space heating... (in the damp climate of the English Lake District)
*Journals of Dorothy Wordsworth, 1798-1803, edited with an introduction
by Helen Darbishire, Oxford University Press, London 1958, reprinted
1963 with an appendix of Wordsworth's shorter poems referred to in the
journals (some of which were partly written by his sister)
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