Reviving my erstwhile stoic ambition, I arose from the lair this morning promptly around eight o’clock. I was greeted from the drawing room window by a distinctly winter view. Overnight the temperature lingered in the low minus teens, thus preserving the modest blanket of snowy perfection following the recent northern blast. Already temperatures are rising and are forecast to be the reverse image by week’s end with rain. The geography will no doubt recover its brownish earthiness. Whether we shall in the upcoming months beyond the Winter Solstice be spared mounting layers of snow is never assured by the Farmer’s Almanac projection. Certainly it appears to me that in the past several years we’ve endured less snow than when I was young (when – as I like to quip – we went to church through the steeple).

What however has not changed is the vaguely mournful regard of a winter’s day.  Even if the sun shines, the raw atmosphere appears overtaken by a shaded sheen of dull grey and blue, complicated by darts of white and brilliance. The preponderance of colour is softened hues and tints, the diminishing nature of which is accelerated by the unmistakeable low angle of the sun on the horizon.

From this prospect of age and indolence it is easy to characterize the change of the seasons. I confess having lost an appreciation of the immediacy of the alteration. The transformation from late summer to early winter was – quite literally – precipitous. It is no wonder the car dealerships are suddenly overtaken by bookings for installation of winter tyres. Yet even that vernacular is presently subdued.

Meanwhile, for those of us who have abandoned the model of evacuation, we remain assured to witness continued panorama of similarly softened edges.  If I were – as I am on occasion wont to do – to conceive a comparison of frozen hillside undergrowth rolling down to the river’s edge to South Carolina’s marshlands adjoining a vast and equally nebulous ocean, there is a recognizable likeness, the most apparent of which is the eye of the beholder. Just as the penetration, sharpness and wisdom come from within, it is thus impossible to escape the overwhelming nature of the view. I am haunted by fleeting memories, drifting and vanishing like the changing clouds, the softened edges of which disguise any difference of complexion or complexity…” We travel  the suburbs of our own mind.”

Whatever the outcome of that introversion, there is an undeniable merit in preserving  the status quo. The echoes of instinct – howsoever faint – maintain the subordinate rudder of change that manifests itself outwardly.