Immersion

Sometimes, light, form, colour and texture blend in the landscape into something so perfect that it is not quite believable. There is an otherworldliness about it that it is just out of reach of our senses, although each one is being used to the full. Our eyes cannot encompass the whole but must flit from one side of the picture to the other, our ears hear the tinkle of ice-straws sliding from the pine needles into clear water, but cannot fathom the underlying stillness, cold air is snuffed up through warm nostrils, biting inside, but the chill has a scent that is nothing and all. 


There is a yearning, a pull, to experience everything to a greater depth, not by withdrawing from the world into the contemplative mind but leaping out into its physical aliveness.


So, in winter when the Lake lies like a silver skin, easy between its shores, it calls for skin to touch it, to slide next to it, to share in its space, to immerse and be the swimmer and the swimming; feel the silk of the water passing over every chilling pore and part and be the water passing, sucking, guzzling warmth at every stroke. The delight and the fear.


Of course, coming out looking like a boiled lobster, gravel underfoot excruciating, fingers too numb to put your socks on straight, and fat deposits stiff frozen, concentrates the attention wonderfully to the necessary process of being able to function again.  After a brisk rub with the towel and a cup of hot cocoa it’s pleasant to just stand in the sparse warmth of the sunshine and say prosaically ‘the view’s very nice  although the water's quite chilly’