Autumn Mist
11th November 2016
11th November
Autumn Mist - Enter The Twilight Zone
Autumn is the season of mist and fog, where the world is changed and distorted. The familiar is now tangibly different as all sense of size, space and location are questioned.
The season brings a fundamental change in weather phenomena. As night temperatures plunge cold air rolls down into the valleys forming a dense cloud of suspended water droplets that, on touch, both freeze and drench at the same time. Across the high moorlands the watery air forms and condenses around every blade of grass and slowly rises as a shimmering curtain of haze. The scene is that of a gothic movie where the mist rises in filaments and drifts across the landscape.
Traveling over the high mountain passes you look onto the valleys below and experience autumn in its most profound. Over every lake a thick nebula of mist forms, shrouding the immediate world in a grey, monochrome murk. Like a visitation of alien craft, these dense watery clouds hover over the water, shrouding the enclosed valleys, making them secretive, seemingly inaccessible spaces.
In each instance the colourful world is cut off, and left outside. You are now contained within a bubble, an alternate reality and, like Alice passing through Wonderland, all sense of size, distance and shape have been changed. You have now entered the world of the 1960 sci-fi series - the twilight zone.
"You're traveling through another dimension, a dimension not only of sight and sound but of mind. A journey into a wondrous land whose boundaries are that of imagination. That's the signpost up ahead - your next stop, the Twilight Zone!"
The mist is is not just a monochrome layer, stealing away the dimension of depth, but a twisting, shape - changing medium. Held within the silvery substrate there are a contrasting mixture of swirling imagery and profound stillness. Your senses have a limited variation of information to absorb so you are easily confused and disorientated. Your eyes and ears have few references to anchor on to, so the world becomes disconnected and unhinged.
In this sensory desert, you are absorbed into your own 'personal wilderness'. Set adrift in a flat ill defined world, where the lack of varying information confuses all ideas of time and place - you could be anywhere and at anytime.
The world is now a stone coloured impressionist painting. Small rocks can seem like huge crags, steep drops seem like cavernous holes that fall forever. Shades shimmer and glide through the murk, curving, twisting; changing shape and form, eventually emerging from the grey shroud, transforming the giant into a walker, a man eating beast into a sheep, an ancient, foreboding fortress into a summit cairn - all a shape shifter.
Recently I spent a day walking the hills of Dent. A beautiful, winding valley tucked between the hills of the Yorkshire Dales and the Howgills. On this particular day it was a dark, brooding valley, shrouded in a watery haze of mist. The day was cold, grey and wet, but slightly warmed by the occasional, welcome glimmer of a pale sun that struggled to shine through the murk.
In these opaque, silvered mists, the call of Black Grouse is mechanical, maniacal and piercing. The noise of the wind, or a tumbling beck are all distorted by the lack of depth - where the origin for these sounds, be they bird or the elements, are unfixed. They swirl around you within the 'clag'.
You are on your own and your understanding of the world is just the few feet in front that opens up as you step forward, and closes permenantly behind you as you pass through.
Then, in complete contrast, after toiling through dense, wet, disorientating mist you suddenly break through into a world of bright blue skies. Again, like Alice, you have entered a world turned upside down. Bright skies, warmth above and cold, wet below.
This time you have entered Xanadu, found the lost portal into a utopian land that floats on top of the clouds.
Unfortunately you are not a permenent citizen. You already know you will have to once again plunge back into the cloud, passing through the shadowy dwelling of wraiths and ghouls to hopefully find the sanctuary of the valley floor.
Autumn is a wonderfullymagical time of year, where the inevitable mists create a landscape where the imagination can escape. Absorbed in the mist, in your own 'gold fish bowl' of reality helps the mind to wander further afield. Each journey, this time of year, will bring new and different experiences that test and tease, but also reaveal more in their shroudedness than they do in plain sight.
“I wonder if I've been changed in the night. Let me think. Was I the same when I got up this morning? I almost think I can remember feeling a little different. But if I'm not the one same, the next question is 'Who in the world am I?' Ah, that's the great puzzle!”
― Lewis Carroll, Alice in Wonderland
Autumn Mist - Enter The Twilight Zone
Autumn is the season of mist and fog, where the world is changed and distorted. The familiar is now tangibly different as all sense of size, space and location are questioned.
The season brings a fundamental change in weather phenomena. As night temperatures plunge cold air rolls down into the valleys forming a dense cloud of suspended water droplets that, on touch, both freeze and drench at the same time. Across the high moorlands the watery air forms and condenses around every blade of grass and slowly rises as a shimmering curtain of haze. The scene is that of a gothic movie where the mist rises in filaments and drifts across the landscape.
Traveling over the high mountain passes you look onto the valleys below and experience autumn in its most profound. Over every lake a thick nebula of mist forms, shrouding the immediate world in a grey, monochrome murk. Like a visitation of alien craft, these dense watery clouds hover over the water, shrouding the enclosed valleys, making them secretive, seemingly inaccessible spaces.
In each instance the colourful world is cut off, and left outside. You are now contained within a bubble, an alternate reality and, like Alice passing through Wonderland, all sense of size, distance and shape have been changed. You have now entered the world of the 1960 sci-fi series - the twilight zone.
"You're traveling through another dimension, a dimension not only of sight and sound but of mind. A journey into a wondrous land whose boundaries are that of imagination. That's the signpost up ahead - your next stop, the Twilight Zone!"
The mist is is not just a monochrome layer, stealing away the dimension of depth, but a twisting, shape - changing medium. Held within the silvery substrate there are a contrasting mixture of swirling imagery and profound stillness. Your senses have a limited variation of information to absorb so you are easily confused and disorientated. Your eyes and ears have few references to anchor on to, so the world becomes disconnected and unhinged.
In this sensory desert, you are absorbed into your own 'personal wilderness'. Set adrift in a flat ill defined world, where the lack of varying information confuses all ideas of time and place - you could be anywhere and at anytime.
The world is now a stone coloured impressionist painting. Small rocks can seem like huge crags, steep drops seem like cavernous holes that fall forever. Shades shimmer and glide through the murk, curving, twisting; changing shape and form, eventually emerging from the grey shroud, transforming the giant into a walker, a man eating beast into a sheep, an ancient, foreboding fortress into a summit cairn - all a shape shifter.
Recently I spent a day walking the hills of Dent. A beautiful, winding valley tucked between the hills of the Yorkshire Dales and the Howgills. On this particular day it was a dark, brooding valley, shrouded in a watery haze of mist. The day was cold, grey and wet, but slightly warmed by the occasional, welcome glimmer of a pale sun that struggled to shine through the murk.
In these opaque, silvered mists, the call of Black Grouse is mechanical, maniacal and piercing. The noise of the wind, or a tumbling beck are all distorted by the lack of depth - where the origin for these sounds, be they bird or the elements, are unfixed. They swirl around you within the 'clag'.
You are on your own and your understanding of the world is just the few feet in front that opens up as you step forward, and closes permenantly behind you as you pass through.
Then, in complete contrast, after toiling through dense, wet, disorientating mist you suddenly break through into a world of bright blue skies. Again, like Alice, you have entered a world turned upside down. Bright skies, warmth above and cold, wet below.
This time you have entered Xanadu, found the lost portal into a utopian land that floats on top of the clouds.
Unfortunately you are not a permenent citizen. You already know you will have to once again plunge back into the cloud, passing through the shadowy dwelling of wraiths and ghouls to hopefully find the sanctuary of the valley floor.
Autumn is a wonderfullymagical time of year, where the inevitable mists create a landscape where the imagination can escape. Absorbed in the mist, in your own 'gold fish bowl' of reality helps the mind to wander further afield. Each journey, this time of year, will bring new and different experiences that test and tease, but also reaveal more in their shroudedness than they do in plain sight.
“I wonder if I've been changed in the night. Let me think. Was I the same when I got up this morning? I almost think I can remember feeling a little different. But if I'm not the one same, the next question is 'Who in the world am I?' Ah, that's the great puzzle!”
― Lewis Carroll, Alice in Wonderland