There have been some beautiful mornings lately. Not all as spectacular as yesterday when the skies flamed gold and the red kite greeted the sunrise. Some are quieter, softer… homelier perhaps. Some are simply magical in a gentle sort of way. I didn’t see the sun come up at all the other day. The land was shrouded in a white mist and the landscape looked like a delicate watercolour.
Mistwraiths danced over the ploughed earth, a copse of trees became an island floating in the earthbound clouds. All seemed wrapped in a sleepy stillness. Even the pheasants simply stood and watched till I was within feet of them. The land looks very different on mornings such as these. There is no blaze of glory, no conflagration of the skies; just a silent waiting in a place rendered unfamiliar by ghostly cerements.
The lane through the trees seemed a portal into another world; some hidden destination beyond sight. There was no way of knowing where it led… even if you knew through experience what lay beyond the veil, you could not see it. How then, I wondered, could you be certain it was really there? Perception was no help; with sight veiled and sound hushed in the mist there was only memory to guide, only trust to lead your footsteps.
As the sun rose higher the mist seemed illuminated from within by a pure brilliance. You could not see the orb itself, but its light drew the eyes, marking the source. Yet that very radiance made the landscape close at hand appear darker, casting shadows at my feet and creating stark silhouettes, black on white. I wondered at that… the journey through trust where all seems even darker before you because of the light beyond. I could see the lesson in the morning clearer than I could see the path before me… and that too was an evocative thought.
Yet there was a moment when the mists lifted… colour came back to copper toned leaves, distant hills emerged from the pall, there as they had always been beyond the mystery of their pall, far beyond my ability to pierce their mantle. The sky was the clear blue of a sunny day above the lingering swathes and the path before me was clear. Sometimes it seems that earth and sky conspire to remind and reassure, and I doubt there is a better teacher.
France & Vincent 