Rising

On Choosing the Cold over Comfort

It would have been so easy to turn over and surrender to the dark. It was cold. She was tired.

Her hand hovered over the snooze button. By 8:30 she would either feel quietly triumphant or threaded with regret. That was enough.

Her mind was as fogged as the window. Still, she pushed back the duvet and crossed the carpet to the orderly pile of clothes waiting on the chair. Their neatness (she did love neatness) did nothing to make them more inviting. Ignoring the small internal rebellion still craving sleep, she dressed, slipped downstairs, and eased the door shut behind her.

The air hit like a warning. One degree. The aerodrome would be much colder. She wrapped herself into her padded coat, tugged on hiking boots, skiing gloves (never used for skiing, but beloved nonetheless), scarf, beanie, torch. Keys. Phone. Resolve.

The car grudgingly warmed. Fog pressed low over the roads as she drove carefully, blinking against lamplight glare, the world hushed at this hour. Five minutes later she turned into the aerodrome entrance. Even then, she still felt like leaning her head against the window and drift off, just for a moment…

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Image: T. Sinclair

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Once a World War Two airfield, its perimeter was marked with old photographs and placards. Black and white images of young men beside aircraft. Her grandfather had flown from this runway to Africa, Egypt, Italy. She remembered sitting on the arm of his chair at eight years old, crumpled, sepia photographs balanced on her knees as he told his stories.

A few roads away had stood the house where her father grew up in army quarters. It was long gone, rebuilt after the bombing. She never imagined she would one day live so close to the ground her grandfather once walked. Sometimes she tried to picture his boots on the runway beneath her own.

Now the airfield belonged to gliders and dog walkers and families. Though not at this hour. At this hour there were only a few distant torchlights drifting through the dark. She had named them all: French Running Lady. Black Dog Man. Rottweiler Couple. Irish Cycling Man. Three Dog Man. They rarely spoke. People out before dawn come with purpose. No one lingers idly in the cold.

She always walked anticlockwise. It mattered. The timing of light mattered.

She too had her purpose.

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Image: T. Sinclair

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At first, she moved briskly to warm herself. Breath bloomed white in the air. Her lungs filled with frost-clean oxygen. Nose and cheekbones tingling. Above her stretched an infinite inky dome pierced with sparkling jewels. The moon hung like a silent lantern. The stillness felt tangible. A soothing cloak of silence, almost sacred, as if everything were holding its breath, waiting…

Then twilight began to loosen the dark. The torch was no longer needed. A few tentative birds tested the air. Within minutes the dawn chorus gathered force. A bright, swelling tapestry of sound. Skylarks darted. Branches whispered, joining the feathered melody. She greeted a familiar cluster of trees as she passed, their sway answering her softly. Even the crows took their places along the fence.

Everything ready.

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Image: T. Sinclair

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She turned the corner at the edge of the runway. The horizon waited.

The sky shifted from black to deep sapphire. Blue hour. A slow unfurling. Colour spread in measured strokes, a pallet of mauve, peach, and rose layered across the wide openness. The hand of an invisible artist at work. Clouds thinned into ribbons, then caught light along their edges. Reaching and dancing across the heavens in a celestial display.

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Image: T. Sinclair

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The symphony of colour and movement built in pace and intensity. Pastels ignited into molten orange and fierce red. The air seemed to tighten with expectancy. The growing crescendo of an orchestra signalling a royal arrival.

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Image: T. Sinclair

Then, a blade of fire split the horizon.

It rose steadily, impossibly bright, until she could no longer hold its gaze. Warmth brushed her face, faint but undeniable. She closed her eyes for a moment and let it find her.

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Image: T. Sinclair

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When she opened them again, the masterpiece was already dissolving into morning. The sky cleared. The runway returned to its ordinary self. But something in her had shifted.

By the time she reached her car she was no longer tired. She felt awake in a way sleep never offers. Claimed by the light. Accompanied. Alive. Joyful.

All she needed now was a cup of tea.

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