Roads to Joy

My beloved says, of snow, that she enjoys it from far away, in a scenic setting. Up close and personal not so much.

Perhaps you have to be born into a snowscape to love it for itself, for the feeling of it. However the context, its presence heralds the cold. We passed below many snow-covered hills, yesterday, on our second jaunt to the sawmill to retrieve another load of logs for the fire.

When the fire’s burning briskly, and the place is warming up, I can get myself sorted and begin my writing day. Like the snowy hills that are far away, the completion of any given writing task is a distant landscape in my internal vision, a way-post to remind me that life is not limitless. There are boundaries that will constrain the work, but within that context a certain freedom reigns.

So I’m trying to develop a broader attitude to the writing I feel I need to do; a simple schedule helps, and my Christmas present writing chair is a great blessing too. In my little writing nook I can wander through the fields of imagination, exploring new thoughts and developing new understandings.

I managed to create a real fictional story, yesterday morning, based on the delight of the ice crystal facilitating fungus we studied earlier. I feel I need to spend more time in that fertile space where wonder and surprise reside. But I’ve loved the factual writing that’s come with the territory of my life, still do.

Doubtless I shall pursue endeavours in both spheres, like a camera captures both snowy hills and sheep grazing on green pastures below, at the same time.