The Key To The Gateless Gate

Here are a couple of photographs. The first one from Angie, faithful reader in Yorkshire. The second from my walking companion at Throssel, also faithful as far as I am aware. I’m soon to be there in Northumberland walkin’, talkin’ and eatin’ and generally joining in the life of the community for a week. I’m looking forward to that.

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on the moors, my walking companion stands tall.

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in Yorkshire, islands of snow with skirts of ice.

We have the saying, and who knows where I am quoting from, which goes something like: When it is hot be completely hot, when it is cold be completely cold. And there are lots of opportunities to be cold in Britain this evening. And all next week probably. What is being pointed to in this quote is to accept what is, what conditions actually are. There is nothing like extremes of temperature to force one to accept conditions. But that is not the end of it, of course.

Last week we were being warned of a lot more snow to come. It didn’t come. At least not where I am staying in the Upper Eden Valley. I went into snow denial, snow? what snow! People on the street were saying, Snow? What snow. They have it wrong. Again. Gradually as the days went by I realized I wasn’t preparing as one should for winter road travel. So I have now packed for extreme conditions. I’ll be driving away towards Throssel tomorrow morning with the full kit aboard. Including a set of Autosocks. Good on snow, good on ice.

And there we have it: All acceptance is the key to the gateless gate. However if we don’t pick up the key and open the gateless gate, we are likely to be left spinning our wheels. In other words acceptance of conditions comes together with taking action.

Thanks for the photographs. This wasn’t quite what I had in mind for this evenings post however this is what came out of my fingers.

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