So why does it feel like the days are on fast-forward, overflowing with the thaw before we’re through the freeze.

There are so many pieces of writing I’ve started. Lying dormant in phone notes and messy notebooks; not ready for sharing. But by the time they are, the moment is gone.

The mountains here fill me with awe. Driving the high road between island villages on a cold January Friday, I’m pulled into the present. My racing thoughts don’t matter for a moment; none of it matters. Every day, these familiar island roads are watched by something so much bigger than the traffic they carry.

I turn off the car radio. I let the mountains do the talking.

In moving silence, a space within me opens.

Mountains are powerful in silence. Ice-capped and frosty, they tell me it’s the season to stop climbing.

And yet, the illusion of constant summer pulls me like a magnet.

The changing of the seasons is visible here. All it takes is a moment to watch. The way the green of my scarf and the brown of my grandad’s coat are colours of the landscape. The precious island rowan tree that remembers summer fires, now locked in winter ice.

A winter still burns. But we can choose our return to light slowly.

I let myself sit for a while. Not run, or record a voice note, or listen to music. Just letting the sounds of a waterfall wash over, as the words from a book about silence circle in my head.

Leave your electronics at home, take off in one direction until there’s nothing around you. Be alone for three days. Don’t talk to anyone. Gradually you will rediscover other sides of yourself.