Thursday 11 September 2008

September Sun

The last festival tourists have gone, torn posters swirling with the leaves. A grey blanket of cloud swathes the city, giving heat like a Morningside miser. I'm wearing my jacket again. There's no denying it's dark earlier. Vegetable soup, log fires, and hot water bottles. And trips to the Highlands being planned: fire in the grass and bracken, deer roaring, friends gathering for a spiel.

And then I cycle to work today, a rare warmth in the sun, blue sky begrudging nothing, generous in its light and heat. People are walking more slowly, enjoying the experience.

Autumn can wait one more day.

2 comments:

Rune said...

You were saying that you're planning an expedition up to the Highlands. I've been heading up to the Highlands for years every November to celebrate my birthday.

I must admit that I like the Autumn/Winter period more than the rest of the year.

When I lived in the Highlands a few years back, I was reintroduced to the smell of a coal fire when the nights started to draw in. I hadn't encountered that smell since I was a boy.

I travelled through the highlands with a friend of mine for over a year and a half in an old Volvo. The old car had heated leather seats and we'd cruise though the snow in the mountains, dim light, swirling snow, taking things nice and slow.

I don't know why people always want to see things in blazing sunshine with no clouds. The rough weather is great and, to be honest, I enjoy it more.

Robert Craig said...

Hi Rune

I've always liked autumn too. And spring - the turning of the seasons in general!

Billy and I will be heading to the Blackmount in October, a time of early darkness, shivers of anticipation and frost in the air. I love the smell of a peat fire burning in the bothy hearth; tall tales and winter adventures, summer chased away down the glens, the gods of winter riding free about the hilltops.

I think it is just artists and hillwalkers who prefer winter!