Between Seasons – Impermanence is Our Friend

1river-swale-near-keld
The River Swale, near Keld. North Yorkshire. UK

Hovering as we are between summer and autumn, especially times hovering between dawn and day and evening and night, I’m noticing diffuse ‘edges’. That’s diffuse ‘edges’ in the landscape, in feelings, in thoughts, and above all, in that ‘without edges’ we know when sitting quietly. (A call to move inwards.) And yet, last evening while out walking, the sun low showing up the undulations of the valley – there were defined edges, and yet not. Coming autumn is in the air.

1in-baldersdale
Baldersdale is on the east side of the Pennines. northwest of Barnard Castle. UK.

And yet…the road over the hill? I would imagine my road will lead me close to Baldersdale come next Tuesday. There is always that road that snakes across the landscape of our lives. Always moving, winter into spring, sitting to standing to walking to running. To driving….

1shy-creature
Do you see the eye in the grass? Before we can blink an eye, it will be winter. And before we know it, come the end of the year, days will be getting longer and that hovering between seasons, winter to spring, will be with us again. Impermanence is our friend. We are alive, be glad!

Thank you once again to Mark Rowan for sending photographs. For some reason, they nearly always inspire me to write.

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9 thoughts on “Between Seasons – Impermanence is Our Friend”

  1. I wonder if Mark knows Robert Macfarlane’s book, The Old Ways? In it he descibes 16 walks in various parts of the world sleeping outside mostly. It is written in tingling, poetic prose; every paragraph is packed with ideas and beauty. What a pleasure to read slowly! I’m on the last chapter myself and cannot recommend the book highly enough.

    1. Not that one; but I was given another of his, Landmarks, for my birthday and am looking forward to it. It’s written around a host of local and dialect words, each of which describes some particularity of the natural world, some feature that held significance for a word-maker.
      Joy in the multiplicity of the world. Only yesterday, William Blake’s one-liner was playing in my mind:
      “Eternity is in love with the Productions of Time.”

  2. The last image is of a Hare, most likely. This is what Mark wrote in his covering email,

    probably a hare, though it’s hovering somewhere on the border between form and formlessness and other interpretations would be possible.

    1. “…hovering somewhere on the border between form and formlessness…”
      It’s only just occurred to me that ‘form’ is also the word for a hare’s bed in the grass!

  3. Thank God nothing lasts for ever❤️ At these times, when we can see it, the Impermanent is really the Beautiful.

  4. Extraordinary. truly. I am just barely refraining from saying “wow” ….hovering on the border of speechlessness. For the pictures, the words, the truth of the matter.

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