Slow & Simple Moments | 01.25

At the start of a new calendar year, whether we're looking ahead, or hunkering down ready to emerge in spring, January has brought its own challenges, but also moments of intense natural beauty.

Jan 26, 2025

Welcome to Rediscover · Reconnect · Re-Emerge. If you find the fleeting changes of modern life wearisome, maybe even overwhelming, join me on a journey, a path well-trodden, as I share heartfelt and often nostalgic reflections on living slowly, simply, and in tune with the seasons.

In this series, I share some of the things I’ve been getting up to, places I’ve been, and other beautiful and special slow and simple moments from the past month.

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January, the first month of the calendar year, full of all the expectations which come with that, yet still firmly centred in the middle of winter. Having navigated Christmas and then New Year, it’s inevitable that our thoughts begin to turn to spring. In some ways, January feels the most polarised of months with, at one extreme, those pedalling the ‘new year, new me’ rhetoric, and at the other, those hibernating, closing off the world. I think that like anything new, January can be a tricky month to navigate. It’s easy to rush into thinking about the year ahead, yet we have to remind ourselves that there is plenty of time to come. Emerging slowly and gently into a new month and new calendar year has its benefits.

Whether you’ve made new year’s resolutions, set intentions, or like me, perhaps chosen a word of the year, we all have to find our own way along the path which we find twisting and turning through the month of January. In the past, our ancestors celebrated and feasted for the 12 days of Christmas, culminating in Twelfth Night. They marked Plough Sunday and Plough Monday as their return to work. Our modern world is a far cry from this. Before we’d reached New Year or even the end of December, Christmas had been quickly cleared away from the shops in favour of Easter and Valentine’s Day. Like it or not, we live in a commercialised world, and for those of us who seek a life beyond that, we find our path at times can seem heavy and unwieldy. There are many wonderful rewards from seeking a slower, simpler and more seasonal life, yet swimming upstream can sap our energy like the hottest of summer days.

I have found January a challenge. On the one hand, there is so much I’d like to be doing, yet on the other, time and energy are limited. Somehow, at the beginning of a new calendar year, we face those inevitably questions of what really matters to us. Only now, do I see more clearly some of those things in my life which I should perhaps have shed in the autumn. None of us has all the answers. Even for those of us seeking a slower, simpler and more seasonal existence, life is messy, and the journey ahead is rarely straightforward. Nevertheless, however we approach January, whether we look ahead or take shelter, hunkering down until we feel ready to emerge into a new spring, we can still find pockets of stillness and beautiful moments, seeking those cherished memories of a winter which will soon be past.

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January 2025

Almost as soon as we hit New Year, the temperature dropped, and winter suddenly felt like proper winter. After what seemed like an eternity of grey mush, it was a very welcome shock to the system. Snow, and then a deep frost were quickly upon us. Somehow, this weather is the childhood winters we dream of. The celebrations of a new calendar year soon gave way to back-to-work and back-to-school everything, almost as if Christmas never happened. I’ve learnt to embrace winter, and as much as my body and soul long for spring, I’m not ready to wish it away quite yet.

Here are some of my slow and simple moments from January. I hope they might inspire and encourage you to seek out your own in the months to come.

Frost

We had an intense week of frost, sharper and longer than I can remember for many, many years. With it came not only the deep cold (it reached -6c here), but also gorgeous sunshine and blue skies. How we have longed for this! With it came more photo opportunities than we could ever hope to capture, the beauty in nature seeming to grow even more astounding as each day passed. The snow too, brief here as it was, brought us those simple moments of magical beauty which a camera never quite seems to do justice to.

How has the weather been where you are? Did you have any snow? I wonder if you experienced the beautiful, frosty January days we did?

The sun setting over Stowe Pool, Lichfield'; January 2025.

Reflections

I could have lumped this under the heading above, but I think that sometimes, we underestimate the beauty to be found in reflections. The cold weather caused the water on Stowe Pool, Lichfield, to freeze over, and this brought with it gorgeous, icy reflections. We might easily describe it as ‘other worldly’, a scene from a book or fairytale where the reflection before us offers us a glimpse into the future, or maybe the past. We are lucky to live near several bodies of water, including the canal, and that in itself brought some gorgeous reflections, even if, by then, the blue skies and sunshine had long since departed.

Where can you find nature’s mirror near you?

a wooden fence sitting in the middle of a field under a night sky — Photo by Jonny Gios on Unsplash

Dark Skies

With the crisp, frosty nights brought an opportunity to observe a dazzling display of stars and planets. Of course, like many of you, we live in an area heavily light-polluted. Even in the 14 years we’ve been here, this has increased considerably. It means you have to walk out a bit further to get a better view of the night sky, and that’s what

Clementine Barton

and I did this month. Still far from dark, but better than we’d get standing in the garden at home. We vowed, perhaps in the warmer months, to seek out some darker skies a little further afield. There is something incredibly grounding about looking up, and still finding magic in the skies above. It also prompted me to re-read

Tiffany Francis-Baker

’s beautiful book, Dark Skies, which comes highly recommended.

How dark are the skies near you?

I look forward to seeing which slow and simple moments February will bring. Why not let me know in the comments some of your special moments from the month of January.