Thoughts on a Mist Wrapped Hillside

Monday was wet in the highlands, and dark for the most part. Heavy cloud lay over everything, and scarcely a ray of sunrise or sunset was to be seen, just endless twilight in all directions. A small round lake of blue sky appeared around three in the afternoon as we closed the gate and headed in to make tea, but that was all. 

Lacy scraps of frost remained on branches and leaves and in crevices here and there when we arrived, but the white stuff was undergoing a swift transformation, condensing and rising into the air like fine silvery smoke. A light mist rose from the Clyde river at every bend in its winding journey, playing over the trees, fields and old stones. Here and there in the mist were the faint outlines of browsing deer and wild turkeys.

On such days, a pearly gray stillness lies over everything, and perhaps the expression wabi sabi describes it as well as anything can be said to do that. There is a kind of tranquil melancholy; a non-attachment beyond all coming and going which honors tathata or suchness, the turning of the seasons and the perfect spontaneous unfolding of the world around us.

Here we are in the middling pages of October again. How many times, for how many years, have I stood on this steep hillside and marveled at how it looks in rain or shine or snow, when seen wrapped in mist, against clouds or a clear blue sky? How many images have I captured here?  My old bones are not dancing as they consider the coming winter, but the doddering scribe and photographer feels something quite different. She remembers the sound of snow falling among the spruces, and she rejoices.