The weakening eye of day

Wrapped up well against a clawing wind we wandered onto the Scar under a foreboding sky. With Pushka happily walking free I was able to concentrate on taking careful steps across the karst, but we still made slow progress along tiny trails through the heather and out to the high fell gate.

The Howgills, especially from these newly named Westmorland Dales, have always seemed to interact with the sky, and today they made the most of their cloudy canopy.  I leant a while and words heard long ago on my grandfather's knee came unbidden, it's strange where we go when we think our heads are empty - lines of a poem* I didn't know I knew, spoken in a long dead but never forgotten voice. I'd thought myself lost to the sting of the wind and the snapping of the rain, but somewhere a part of me at the turning of the year was looking back, a thing I think all of us do.
We turned for home, the Jubilee cross magnetic in it's solitude, the only thing to break the skyline for miles around. 
Home to the fire, a drink and some old books. 

Happy New Year to you all, may it bring you everything you hope for. 

*The Darkling Thrush, Thomas Hardy