Winter is a colour
December 2, 2025, 6:42 am , by Richard Lutz
Richard Lutz feels the chill factor
The temperatures drops. The wind cries freezing. The Water of Minnoch roars. The air bristles with ice. No snow…yet…but winter has held its breath too long. Now November drops into December.
On the shoreline, a work party labours on a steep gully. A grey sea below. A restless sky above. Way out on the horizon a faint outline of an island.
The team is repairing a 100 mile coastal path. It’s endless, a Sisyphean task. Four seasons a year. Winter is for serious groundwork, such as step renovations where rain, wear, time and southwesterlies cause constant damage.
Inland- and frost quietens the woods and glens.
On the riverbanks of the Water of Trool, bullrushes freeze and are coated with ice, leaving a white valley.
A wall of bushes, possibly willow, are tinted white too.
The tiny details are not flowers at all, but fragments of frost that have frozen Glen Trool, a remote valley surrounded by names: rounded peaks called Lamachan Hill and Curleylee, a ridge called The Rig of the Jarkness and a tiny dot of a high level pool called The White Lochan of Drigmorn. A mountain called The Merrick dominates all.
Further down the cold glen, there’s an old packhorse bridge. It goes nowhere. It comes from nowhere. No one knows when it was built to span The Minnoch. It’s lasted for centuries of winters.
It’s a bridge of questions and untold stories. It stands arched, grey and unmoved. We can only see it as we squint into the low lying winter sun. The fading light dims.
The sky, a cold sky today, turns crépuscule….I like that word. Thelonious Monk used it for a piano solo about his wife Nellie. The evening draws over us and it’ll be dark by four.
pix credits: Anthony O’Neil (walker)/ David Baird (river)
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Martin McCrindle
Was he meaning to be complimentary about Nellie?
Ian McD
I feel I was there! I always enjoy picking up new words too – I’ll add ‘Sisyphean’ and ‘crepuscule’ to the list to be dropped casually into future conversations ……
Bella Houston
👍
Lani Peterson
Thanks for taking me on this crisp walk to take in winter’s promise.
Alex Davidson
Glen Trool, Merrick, the Murder Hole, the Raiders. All my bare legs in cycle capes and boots with no nails in them! Those were the days
Barb/ Seattle
The photos, those Names!! The Rig of Jarkness!!!
RSD
Wonderful photos… the first one of the glistening rock and water textures is exquisite. And the bridge reminds me of a teacher I had named Colin Reed from Suffolk, who
explained that stone and masonry bridges usually have a center trapezoidal “keystone” and my search for keystones continues 65 years later.
Gordon Brown
Maybe the first time that Thelonious Monk and The Rigs of Jarkness have been linked.
Laurel Rice
I always remember Jack Frost visiting at night( along with the possible spying of Santa and his reindeer) as believed That intricate lacy patterns on the winter bedroom morning windows needed some explanation!
Kaye Rayner
Magical place
Bella Houston
There’s Poetry in that glen
Mary A Freeman
One of my favorite words in Spanish is crepúsculo – i.e. twilight:-)
Mike Cuellar
I like that word crepuscule. I looked it up.
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