The most wonderful time of the year – to be outdoors
December is the month of short days. We often don’t notice as it is also the month of plenty artificial lights – festive decorations shimmer from many windows and light up the long dark nights.
We seem to spend more time indoors doing inside activities, be it crafting gifts, cooking festive feasts, snuggled up watching Christmas films or dashing round real – or virtual – shops finishing off gift shopping.
For me this is one of the most wonderful, if often overlooked, times to be outdoors though.
On social media people have been sharing amazing images of spectacular sunrises, fabulous frosts, splendid sunsets, amazing auroras and wonderful wildlife.
I am enjoying the brief lifting of light levels in the woodland around our house as all of the leaves have now fallen and the low wintry sun shines through the now-naked tree branches with a blinding but warming light.
Aside from all of the glitter and tinsel of Christmas, those of us living with a close connection to the outdoor world and nature are equally, if not more, mindful of the winter solstice coming closer.
This year it will be on Friday December 22 when the sun will be at its lowest elevation
in the sky; the night will be the longest and the day will be the shortest.
Although it will be barely discernible, each passing day will offer a few more minutes of daylight at the start and end of the day and the sun will rise slightly higher in the sky.
December – the middle of winter – can often be a tricky and slightly unrewarding time for livestock keepers.
The feeding and welfare checks are challenging and expensive and the colder weather heralds the ‘mortality season’ for wild and domesticated animals.
Mud plays a huge part of this season for anyone who is outside and keeping the outside outside can often prove tricky if you are bringing wet or muddy outerwear in to dry or clean.
Maintenance tasks from keeping water running to repairing shelters, keeping access tracks and paths clear and fitting everything into limited daylight hours create challenges and can mean rushing through outside tasks before returning to warm, dry indoor spaces.
However, it is worth pausing to acknowledge the rewards of time spent outside.
Our happiest memories of our time crofting on Rum are attached to this time of year, from selecting and chopping down our Christmas tree, foraging for evergreen foliage and colourful berries to weave into festive wreaths to bring indoors, the harvesting of tatties and the preparing of a croft reared turkey for our feast, the gifting of home made crafts and bringing out the preserves and produce lovingly prepared and stashed away earlier in the year and the gathering of friends to sing, make merry and celebrate.
We created our own customs around the winter solstice, huddling around candles with warming drinks outside to offer thanks to nature for her gifts from the year past and our wishes for the year ahead.
I no longer have livestock to tend or see through the harsh winter months but I still step outside into cold crisp frosty nights to consider the turning of the seasons.
I still track the waning and waxing daylight hours and still chart the dropping temperatures as winter takes a hold of the outside and enjoy the contrast with the warm and cosy indoors and the prospect of the return of spring as the days lengthen ever so slightly more each day once the Solstice has arrived.