The days between Christmas and New Year are my favourite of the season, an emptiness into which hours tumble as life remains on hold. A Swedish friend told me that this time is known as mellandagarna in his country: the between-days.
Looking back through mellandagarna past, I noticed a theme: our family likes to walk between the years. My photo library records that for the last eight years or more, we’ve filled those quiet days with walks. Under clear skies and grey, through mud and through snow, we’ve unintentionally worn this path of tradition through our lives.
This year, the impending New Year brought clear skies and vermillion sunsets. We walked and stood on the hills until the temperature fell with the sun.In 2024, a series of temperature inversions turned the world upside down. Each morning, we’d set off up the hill through the clouds and emerge onto sunlit islands.In 2023, we felt the urge to move our legs despite the pouring rain and sodden ground. The desire to walk paths, to make lines on the world, is fundamentally human.In 2022, we walked one of our regular ways, signposted by this tree. It has clearly experienced some trauma, but has kept reaching up, undaunted.In 2021, ahead of the Covid lockdown, we walked the Dales Way Link from Bramhope to Otley Chevin. It was bleak, but better than what lay ahead in lockdown.In 2020, snowfall rounded off a year of lockdowns and anxiety. Our world shrank even more, but delightfully so: to footprints in the snow and the hot chocolate waiting at home.In 2019, we met up with family from New Zealand and walked the deserted Cherwell Down. It was a parting of the ways; I may not get the chance to see some of those relations again.In 2018, we walked out of Leeds – following the Dales Way extension through the edgelands. It was the start of a journey we’re still undertaking, one that will eventually end in The Lakes.
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