From: lgt1@ohm.york.ac.uk (Laurence Tyler (Guest - CompServ))
Newsgroups: alt.pagan
Subject: Re: night and winter
Date: 28 Sep 92 20:59:57 GMT
Organization: Electronics Department, University of York, UK

[**SORRY IF THIS APPEARS TWICE - I THINK THE FIRST GOT TRUNCATED**]

Janis Cortese writes:
>Anyone else out there like nighttime and winter?

Bekki Lyn writes:
>YES!!!!!!!!!!!

Me too! I'll give that a big 'Yes'!


>I actually like all of the seasons, but being very fair-skinned,
>the sun is too much for me to tolerate sometimes and I don't
>like the sun's glare too much when it's very bright outside.
>In the summer, I'm generally a shade person.

I like the summer, but often find myself unable to enjoy it, mainly
due to suffering badly from hayfever (or antihistamines, which can
be worse!). Like Bekki, I can't tolerate too much heat and light,
and usually prefer to stay in the shade. My favourite bits of summer
tend to be very early mornings and late evenings. I have a
particular spot on the riverbank near my house where I like to sit
just after sunset in the cooling air and watch the sky slowly turn
orange, then sea green, then dark, dark blue.

My personal hell is being stuck on a beach on a sunny afternoon with
nothing else to do but lie there and bake...

I feel I am much more alive in autumn and winter, particularly on
frosty mornings. I love to be out with the freezing air making my
face zing and grass crunching underfoot. Early autumn (round about
now) can be particularly beautiful I find, with the morning mists
hanging in the air, cobwebs laden down with crystal droplets,
wonderful organic things going on in the decaying leaves and strange
fungi popping out all over the place...


>             It's great when I can sleep in for as long as I
>want.  It is not too pleasant for me to have to wake up in
>the cold when it's still morning and wanting so intensely to
>stay under the covers.

I seem to be having more trouble with daylight hours the more I try
to live in tune with the seasons. I can cope with the dark and
cold quite well if it's on my own terms; what I find difficult is
being expected to put in the same hours of work, at the same (clock)
time of day, all year round. The worst bit is when the clocks go
back in autumn (all too soon now) and outside suddenly gets a lot
darker in mid-afternoon. My feeling is that I want to retreat from
mental work and move to a more inward, 'winter' mode, but that's
just not possible. If I had a free choice, I would probably work
shorter hours in winter and sleep more, and work longer in summer.


>Yet, after the sun goes down and I'm not woozy from just having
>gotten up, I can enjoy both the cold and the night.  It seems
>so mysterious, like an enchantment, when the icy wind swirls 
>around me.

You said it! For me, it seems far easier to see the magical side of
things at night; whether due to low light or reduction in the number
of nearby 'chattering' conscious minds, or something else - I don't
know. I do know that my ideal sort of celebratory event involves
being out at night in a woods somewhere, far enough from the road
that it can't be heard, with a few friends and a small campfire, and
preferably a full moon and a few clouds. Add musical instruments and
refreshment to taste. Some of my most profound and magical
experiences have occurred while out in the night like this.


>It is especially fun to walk around away from cars and see the gleam
>of the moonlight on twisted trees that have been iced over.

>An enchanted forest indeed.

I remember vividly an occasion when I had been to a rock concert
held in a hall adjoining a park. It was a full moon in autumn.
After the gig everyone piled out of the hall and most set off over
the park, which was completely frosted over, with the full moon
brilliantly lighting everything up - a truly magical scene. People
started spontaneously chasing across the park, leaping around and
rolling over in the frost and laughing. The sky was particularly
clear and cloudless with diamond-point stars. Beautiful!


>The one complaint I have is that I rarely ever can see my surroundings
>blanketed by a deep layer of snowfall.  My sled has been stored in the
>attic for over two years.  Sigh.

Never been sledging, though I did get to slide about 200 metres
down a snowy glacier once - that was real fun *AND* terrifying! (It
_was_ deliberate, not an accident :-).

Last winter I went out in a
snowstorm to visit some willow trees by the river that I often walk
under in summer. The snow was very fine, like sugar almost, and had
been whisked around by the wind into strangely shaped mounds and
drifts in amongst the trees. Their long whippy branches had tracked
back and forth over the snow, blown by the wind, and made strange
random pictures in it. As fast as this was happening, the snow was
covering them up again, and there was _no-one_ else around at all.

It was strange to think that I was the only human who had or would ever
see those particular patterns, and only because I had put on all my
bad-weather gear and gone out into a howling blizzard when any
'sane' person would be indoors in the warm. I felt it was worth it.


>Autumn does sometimes have an evil ominousness about it, but yet that
>that sense of fear to me is wonderful.  It is not a dangerous fear, but
>one that I am a part of.  Like I can call out to others:  "Look!
>I can show you something here, something you don't know, but one that
>you would want to know if you knew it."  The fear of the unknown.
>The exhilaration of the search to find it.  

What's that sound in the undergrowth? A hedgehog? Worms? Frost??
Is that dark shadow beyond the clearing a tree swaying? A deer?
 One of your friends? A fox? A dryad??
Is that a puddle you're about to step in or a pool of moonlight on
 the forest floor?
What is it that is calling silently to you from the dark of the wood?


>I know I'm probably not making any sense up there, but it's a strange
>sort of feeling that I have trouble finding words for.

It seems to make good sense to me!


>Bekki Lyn

Blessed Be,
Laurence . *

------------------------------------------------------------------
Laurence Tyler (Systems Group)
University of York Computing Service, UK
email: lgt1@york.ac.uk

-- 
Laurence Tyler (Systems Group)
York University Computing Service, UK
email: lgt1@york.ac.uk