Out of The Dark Season, and Onward!

In all my walking years, I cannot recall a Dark Season which has passed as rapidly as this last one did, seemingly come and gone in about half the time that they'd normally take, and that has to be in part due to effectively going to ground completely after the end of 2021's open season, taking a well earned rest that rapidly turned into an extended period of isolation - hibernation as the risks posed by the Omicron wave of the Covid pandemic washed over ahead of Christmas, when all focus fell upon having a normal sort of Festive Season before we embarked on 2022's journey.  I can't place how we managed to get January to shift through so quickly though, as it's always the month of the year that feels like it's over six weeks long, but this one has flushed through in no time too, come and gone rapidly after getting in our necessary weekend of social interaction at its start while toiling through a busy month at the hospital which never gave me the opportunity to feel bored, with the sunshine returning in the evenings with almost indecent haste, all combining to make our passage from Samhain to Imbolc, via the festivities of Yule, almost bizarrely short. Maybe it helps to find distractions to pass the time away, and becoming a moon watcher in 2022 has helped with that, as I've never quite been familiar with its phases and location in the sky through its orbits, and this has been a particularly good month for watching it wax and wane, awhile taking an interest in seeing it in its crescent and gibbous forms, revealing it cratered features and many mares when contrasted in shadow, around the appearance of January's full moon, the Wolf Moon, which I can only hope every howled at on the evening of the 17th. Now having a decent idea of where to look for it in the mornings and evenings, that can be fitted in around a renewed engagement with a bit of astronomy, an interest of mine that has become very minor over the the last decade, and the month has also been spent spying Jupiter in the evenings during the early going, while chasing Venus in the dawning skies later on, both repeating the reality-altering experiences of my youth when I first regarded them with binoculars, namely spotting the former's system of Galilean moons across the vastness of space, and seeing the latter resolve as a crescent showing it as a planet, and not just a bright star in the morning sky.

The Conclusions of 2021

Wrapping the 2021 Season
at Shipley railway station.

As 2021 slips into history, we again find ourselves in the moment of reflection, looking back at the end of (almost) a whole decade of walking around the West Riding of Yorkshire, and beyond, and being mildly amazed of how much we've seen and learned across the course of those years, how a few months of useful exercise back in 2012 have become no less than an active career of travelling on foot, seeing more sights and pacing more miles than I ever would have thought possible, while again pondering the annual question of What Have We Learned in 2021? Honestly, most of the take away from my tenth season of walking amounts to 2021 has been an extremely frustrating year, as a simple extraction of achievements from the list of targets that I posted last January would make it look like this year has been a significant success in light of the ongoing pandemic conditions, a more reflective regard would have things appear very differently. Indeed, my local aims in the early season came together very well, getting down plenty of miles in the circuits from home during the third national lockdown, before expanding the season in April while I waited for travel restrictions to be lifted and the effects of vaccination against Covid-19 to take hold, getting in my local multi-part trial before then busting it open wide in May, starting out my long ruin of trails between Calderdale and Airedale and getting in the cross-country trail, in the form of the Bronte Way, which I had promised myself. Summer then saw us being mostly successful in pushing my experience field out to the northwest from Calderdale, over the high moors in that corner and making ourselves acquainted with the Boulsworth Hill massif and the lay of the East Lancs valley, before keeping the legs going through the autumn's dour months to check off most of the unseen paths in the vicinity of the Calderdale - Bradford high moors and the most notable towns of their boroughs, while pressing ourselves past 500 miles on the year, which was always my stated goal, and achieving the 5,000 miles before I'm Fifty target with considerable ease, with almost three and half years to spare.