New Year's Day Walk & Thoughts

New Year’s Day came with fresh snow and layers of mist. 

The first walk of 2023, a stroll through the local woods and fields, gave rather more hard going than expected. The snow was soft and uneven, an insecure surface for walking, hiding ice and frozen clods of earth under its few inches of white.

The air was still, the land quiet. There was a feeling of expectancy, anticipation, a waiting for something to happen. Maybe that was just in my head, wondering about what the year will bring.

I thought about my own plans as I walked, much more aware than a few years ago how much circumstances could change them. The pandemic has had a long-term effect. Time seemed to stop in 2020 and has not yet resumed. Where have the last three years gone?

If all goes well I hope to finish my book on the Cairngorms, progress on which has been rather slow the last year – too much research, too much reading, too much thinking, too much revising, not enough actual writing. I also hope to undertake some walks longer than three or four days, ideally one of at least a month. Not since 2019 have I done that.

There are other writing and publishing possibilities, which I’ll say more about when they become more certain. And of course there will be features and reviews for The Great Outdoors magazine.

Outside my own little outdoor world I hope to see more progress on protecting and renewing our wildlife and wild places. Given the worldwide nature and climate crises this is important. As the old slogan goes “think globally, act locally”. I’ll be supporting various campaigns on these issues, sharing news and events on social media, and writing about them here at times – perhaps the last is something I should do more often.

Whatever the year brings may you all have wonderful inspiring adventures wherever life takes you.

 

New Years Eve, New Years Day

Across Strathspey to the Cromdale Hills on New Years Day

The old year faded away in soft mist and cloud. The new year began much the same way. Nature doesn't acknowledge or notice our arbitrary division of years. Winter just continues.

The temperatures hung around freezing. The air was still. A slight thaw for a few hours on New Years Eve softened and shrank the snow. Overnight cooling turned the snow crunchy and slippery. Bands of mist drifted along the strath, marking the line of the River Spey, and floated in layers across the hills. The High Cairngorms remained hidden. The land was quiet, waiting, maybe asleep.

Across Strathspey to the Cromdale Hills on New Years Eve

The constantly shifting mists gave an ethereal feel to the landscape. Hillsides appeared and faded away. The hazy Cromdale Hills, sometimes floating above the mist with the long summit ridge rising into clouds, could at times have been Himalayan giants. Strands of mist laced the tops of the forest.

New Years Eve rainbow

Rain and sleet accompanied the New Years Eve thaw, making the air feel colder than when it was dry and the temperature lower. As the dark storm clouds moved away late in the day the sun caught them and a rainbow appeared, a fitting finale to the year.

Dusk, New Years Eve

On both days the clouds began to break and dissolve as the light faded, the sun lighting them gentle shades of orange, red and pink. Subdued sunsets on subdued days. The snow made walking under the darkening sky easy with no need for torches. Then as the clouds thinned some more a hazy moon could be glimpsed, soon strengthening and brightening, a bright aura surrounding it.
 

New Year moon

This, the first full moon of the year, is known as the Wolf Moon (actually full on the 2nd but it looks much the same!). I gazed up, imagining the sound of wolves howling in the woods. If only. Instead there came the soft hooting of owls. Wild hunters of a different sort. Then at midnight a burst of colours and explosions lit the distant sky - the New Year celebrations in Grantown-on-Spey. Across the strath more fireworks in Cromdale. The quiet and the owls soon returned. The year had changed. The owls hooted on, oblivious.

Strathspey, New Years Day

The first day of the new year faded away just as the last day of the old year had, the clouds turning pink in the last rays of the sun. The woods dark, the fields white with snow. The air still. A quiet change.

Dusk, New Years Day

A Belated Happy New Year!

Happy New Year Everyone! Belatedly!

A bad cold has rather delayed the feeling of a new year beginning. I was visting friends and family in Edinburgh but spent New Year's Eve and New Year's Day coughing and spluttering in an armchair rather than being sociable. Only now, a week into 2017, is my head and chest clearing and thoughts of the outdoors seeming a little more real. I have a number of plans for this year, including long walks in the Highlands and Scandinavia, of which more soon.

In the meantime I'm hoping for snow - the hills are pretty bare at present - and trips like the one in the photo, which was on the Moine Mhor in the Cairngorms last February.

May everyone have an exciting, adventurous and safe 2017.