Sunday 19th December; expectation and hope.
Fitfully flashing through murk and gloom, the weak light of winter had, until two days ago, promised little. And then the rain clouds cleared, the winds dropped and the ground began to dry. And hopes for a clear winter solstice day began to rise.
The transition from autumn to winter and the run down to the winter solstice have been both drab and dreary. Apart from the storms of course. Those have been exhilarating. Great howling globules of energy and sound on repeat, some storms named, other mostly not, unless in muttered scowls from locals trying to get on with doing things, or simply with being.
Sunday was corralled into a cold clear start by the last full moon of 2021. It rose over the small hill that overlooks our croft, Cnoc an Fhurain. Below it the ground was rust-red as if blood had been spilled everywhere and freeze-dried in the wintry air. It is said that in ancient times Druids would perform rituals in the light of the midwinter full moon using acorns gathered from particularly important and sacred oak trees. There are no full-grown oaks in South Erradale, only memories of them in place names on maps. But mystery and magic remain in this place.

This ‘Cold’, ‘Frost’, ‘Before Yule’ moon arced over the night and traced a wide, milk-white sky-road all the way from the Torridons in the east to the Hebrides in the west. The largest and longest full moon of the year, it poured with promise and dragged the day into being. When it finally dipped into the west, the morning air foamed pink and rose. As I turned my face to the day, a rising sheen of yellow and turquoise hissed on my left, while a thinning smear of lavender, above a sea of palest turquoise, shushed on my right.
And beyond the Outer Hebrides, a purple scarf of cloud.

A few years ago, the same almost-solstice moon swam through similar pinks and mauves, growing in size until it eventually slid away through a gap in the islands and vanished altogether. I sat on the beach that day, dog keeping my feet warm, ice crystals on every sand grain, otters playing at the water’s edge, and wondered about the strangest sensation of settlement, of pausing, of holding one’s breath. Only it wasn’t me that paused but the place in which I sat.

Every year I hope to find that same sensory moment, of pausing and expectancy, loss and longing, either in the sunrise or at sunset. Often it comes unexpectedly at one single point in the day, but most often it finds me in the darkest hour of night.
This Sunday’s clear dawn grew swiftly under a rich deep blue dome of sky. The forecast promised much. Unusually, the mountains appeared as thin crumples on the horizon, shrunken somehow in the icy cold. Wrinkles of deep time perhaps or merely a rumpled bed sheet? I couldn’t tell. In the magical time between first light and sunrise over Maol Ruadh (the long hill that creates the southern edge of our valley), the sky filled up. A watercolour wash of pale salmon-pink.

Throughout the autumn and early winter, the crofts of South Erradale have mostly held onto their greenness because it has been so mild and wet but in Sunday’s low light, as beams of warmth spread across the valley, they looked brushed and napped like velvet, all their grassy fibres leaning into the sun, just as I was.
On such clear days, once the sun has breached the hills, our little valley echoes with noise. There’s a sudden rush into action with sheep bleating, cows lowing, dogs barking and chickens clucking in a domesticated dawn chorus. The wilder residents add their songs too and soon the whole valley is reverberating, stratified with sound. Tip your head this way or that, up or down and you can discern individual voices welcoming the light, each in their own way.
These midwinter days are so short the sun soon dips once more behind the hills and cold shadows run swiftly along the river. I find myself searching again and again for the elusive moment, when midwinter holds its breath and I hold mine.
Often midwinter days are letterbox thin, only just wide enough to post a few thoughts, sandwiched between hard cold and deep night. Or they are a roll of shiny Christmas wrapping paper reflecting a thin line of light but holding a metre or two of expectation.
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Tuesday 21st; midwinter; cusp of a new year.
The wild cherry tree by our gate has its little tangle of Christmas lights. From the kitchen window they look cheery and festive. Outside, under the gaze of remote high peaks and moorland, surrounded by such emptiness they twinkle, minute fireflies lost in the scale of the landscape enveloping us, devoured by wild grandeur, but merry as hell all the same. We put them up out of habit and because we think of our children and their children as they flicker and fidget in the wind and dark.
This morning the solstice pre-dawn mountains once again rose tall and grand though they were veiled and shrouded, their powerful, familiar forms blurred by pale shifting mists. As the light crept in the mists swirled about, shapes and shadows changing every few seconds.


When it breaches Maol Ruadh, a midwinter sunrise can feel strangely close to South Erradale, almost within touching distance, and today, the light seemed dense and finger-burning hot despite the frost and snow-covered slopes. Then for little more than a few deep breaths, a single flare rose up from the disc of sun. A trumpet blast of golden light, a promise of renewal and restoration.

Solstice light is always special though the day may be fringed by pastels and dimming and cold sorrow. For me it is a time for remembering the lost but also for welcoming the resurgence of hope. Winter solstice becomes a threshold, a doorway into both the past and the future.
I cannot walk fast or far just now but the short, hard cold is cathartic and strangely heart-warming. Even the pale sunlight of midday feels like a blessing. My winter solstices are forever wrapped up in personal loss but they are never without hope. My mother died at midwinter long ago. Before she fell into her last sleep, she asked me to remember her, not in a church but in the fiery sunsets of winter and in the smiling face of the ‘Frost’ moon.
It is a few minutes after midday. Cloud is rolling in. The day is dimming already. Colours swirl about – pistachio and teal, pewter and sulphur. The sunset may well be hidden from me this year. Or it may not. I’ll let you know.
Whether you believe in the oldest traditions of Yuletide or not the days will begin to stretch and lighten. I hope this solstice brings you relief from the heartaches and stresses of yet another pandemic winter.
Look to the heavens for the promises light holds. You might see future summers in the flicker of starlight or feel them in moonbeams on your face. I shall be thinking of my mother as always. And this year, once again, my children and their little ones. I miss them all terribly.
Later, when I say farewell to the day, I’ll watch the moonlight play over the mountains and listen to the wild whispering my name, just as my mother used to do.
