Today’s prompt: write a post celebrating Winter. I do moan about Winter if we’re cursed with relentless rain and hate it when the alarm goes off in the morning for work with the recurring thought it can’t possibly be time to get up, as it’s still the middle of the night, clearly… But this post has reminded me of the more lovely aspects too. (Photos above are mine from the trip I mention below) So here we go…

Dear Winter,

One of my most beautiful memories of you was during a visit to Arran in 2016, where days awoke with spectacular sunsets, and ended with marshmallow pink skies. You scattered frost across gravestones, accentuating the ethereal beauty of carved forgotten names, the silence more acute amongst the sleeping trees.

Mist curling around houses and hillsides added a sense of the dramatic to an already beautiful landscape. The standing stones were bathed in a late afternoon orange light that my lens never could quite capture. I can still feel the peace and beauty you radiated on every stop we made around the Island.

Even on your darkest, most stormy days, I can still love you from afar. You make me appreciate the warm glow of light and indoor comforts found under warm blankets, wooly socks and jumpers, and when I cradle a hot mug between my hands I burrow down further into the warmth as I listen to your howls outside whipping the last of the autumn leaves away.

The trees become spindles stretching up to the sky, pointing out your beauty when you bestow the skies with blue depths only you can master, casting a magic hue across the streets before the night turns to black, and then sprinkles of stars explode, again and again, the longer I look.

You smell like cinnamon and hot chocolate and fresh pine and German sausages (from the Christmas Fayre I walk past every day I exit the subway station). You taste of soup, turkey, pigs in blankets, Brussel sprouts, roasted potatoes, velvety chocolate, and my mum’s homemade trifle. You feel like love and comfort and give me permission to watch absolute cheesy sentimental nonsense and enjoy it.

You are wild and dangerous, and dark and beautiful… no wonder you make it difficult to get out of bed in the morning.