Pine reflections at sunset, Loch Mallachie
I love the quality of light at this time of year, especially on frosty, clear days like this. Rare, sparkling days that illuminate the gloom of a Scottish December. Sunset comes mid-afternoon, but beautiful sunsets with rich, warm rays striking horizontally for a graphic effect; cold air contracting into deep stillness all around, carrying a distant clamour of geese froma nearby loch, and haunting cries from – I don’t know what bird. The dark woods (of the imagination!) hold their inner secrets, in deep contrast to the sunlit edge.
“As I envisage it, landscape projects into us not like a jetty or peninsula, finite and bounded in its volume and reach, but instead as a kind of sunlight, flickeringly unmappable in its plays yet often quickening and illuminating. We are adept, if occasionally embarrassed, at saying what we make of places – but we are far less good at saying what place makes of us. “
— Robert Macfarlane ‘The Old Ways: A Journey on Foot’