Waking up

Thinking about waking up, there is such a difference between waking up in the city or in rural surroundings.

Staying in the Cotswolds at a friend's "cottage" , a very quiet spot on a bend in the river and a dip in the valley, I would wake up by the cloppity-clop of horses. No cars or milk floats, but horses. It somehow defined the slower pace of life. Putting myself mentally back in that place, happiness seems to well up in me.

Waking up in a room at the back of a small hotel in Austria because of the soothing noises of the stream just under my window, fast flowing across the pebbles. That is bliss too.

Or from my bedroom window in another English village seeing a fox at daybreak walking proudly in the middle of the road, on velvet, king of the morning.

A beach house in North Carolina, a house on stilts, the waves of the sea breaking almost against the poles. Seeing dolphins jumping happily along while the sun rises red on the horizon. That too is bliss. 

Waking up in the middle of the night in a primitive compound in South-Africa, hearing people outside the camp singing and dancing, till daybreak, waiting for the rains to come. A land without cars, only horses and goats, and then the strange sounds, unreal, almost eerie. Another world.

Seeing the early morning light on the top of a snow capped mountain from one's bedroom window, inhaling the cold and fresh mountain air before going back to sleep again.

Watching the sun rise over a lake, the water steaming, an early boat going out to fish vaguely visible through the amber coloured mist, the doleful sound of loons greeting the new day.

The low morning sun shining through long, diamantine icicles hanging from the roof of the house after an unexpected and early snowfall in the depths of Colorado.  A herd of elk moving slowly in the distance, the shrubs on the foothills like an iced crumble cake, blinding in its purity.

And Chambord, the foolishly ornate palace now only inhabited by swifts and martins, joyfully flying in and out among the crenulated chimneypots and the spiral towers.

All those places are magical. But when I want to write a story, a story which has been forming itself in my mind over some time, wanting to get out, to be written, I imagine myself back in the Cotswolds, in front of the open bedroom window, deeply inhaling the cold morning air. I then put pen on paper behind the antique writing desk, float away into that magic world of fantasy, unencumbered by any worries or daily chores. This is where I escape to, this is where I find inner calm.