Winter Walking – and Writing!

Winter isn’t traditionally the best season for walking in Europe, but in November this year I went to snow-bound Sweden on a walking-and-poetry residency.

As well as being an Associate Lecturer in Creative Writing with the Open University (OU) in Scotland, I’m a poet, novelist and short story writer, and my plan was to walk and to write a series of poems inspired by themes of journeying and pilgrimage.

I was awarded the residency opportunity through the AIR Litteratur residency grants programme, based in Västra Götaland on the west coast of Sweden. The programme gives writers from all over the world space and time for artistic development.

I stayed in the lovely small town of Bengtsfors, set among lakes and canals – a landscape which, during the four weeks of my stay, became covered with snow and often ice. My walks were also curtailed by the short days – something I hadn’t thought through properly while making my plans in summer!

It became dark soon after three o’clock. I didn’t do the longer stretches I had imagined undertaking, when I’d thought I might sleep out of doors. But just as in life, even the paths we hadn’t at first planned to take can turn out to be the most inspiring.

I wrote the following poem on my residency in Sweden while thinking about the winter solstice that was approaching. It’s about how often the apparently darkest time can be the point where we choose something new and begin a different journey. I thought a lot about how things beyond our control give us new choices – like the ice, which turns a former barrier into something we can cross.

I also liked finding flooded paths – still wet, un-iced – at the beginning of my month’s stay, where walkers before me had lain tree trunks across the flood, for me to walk across.

Maybe we need both: to keep our mind open as life changes around us and notice where exciting new opportunities lie – choose the different path across the frozen lake – and equally, to appreciate the crossing places that have been put together for us by others. To take the help and take the chance, balancing on a route we wouldn’t have chosen for ourselves.

As an Associate Lecturer on the OU’s Creative Writing module, it’s great seeing my students bring their experiences to the page. Many of them are older than typical university students, many may not have studied at university level before finding the OU.

I think adult education is a path which opens up your journey – maybe just the pleasure of exploring a fresh mental territory, or even different work you may be able to do with a new qualification.

We tend to think of winter as a time for hunkering down and planning next year’s journeys: and it is. But that doesn’t mean we should stop moving.

Winter Solstice, by Sophie Cooke

We are at the farthest point. Summer’s been flung

behind this endless grey. This

edge of the out-breath lives by the moon, and short days

in which to walk. Too cold to sleep out: so

you find your paths circumscribed, set about

with practical limits. There’s more to plan for, now. But

in the crook of the dark days’ elbow,

the lake ice glows: thick, white,

almost a light source. When else

can a barrier become your roadway?

The distant forest

is suddenly reachable.

Put your skates on. Put

one foot in front of the other.

Make the journey you can make today.

Tomorrow will be the smallest step

of the year’s long in-breath. Summer’s trails

will still be waiting: all the greenness

lies underneath this week of snow.

Photos of lakes and forests in Bengtsfors, Sweden, by Sophie Cooke.

22 December 2023