Published on 15 December 2025 under the Post category.

The sun sets early at this time of year. Now that I think about it, the shortest day of the year is coming soon, after which point, each following day will be longer. Anyway, I went for a walk before the sun set. If I don’t go out now, I’ll have to wait until tomorrow. That motivated me to get outside, despite the crisp chill that was with me from running errands outdoors early in the morning.

Walking makes me feel alive. I love the feeling of my breath changing as I walk at a faster or a slower pace. I love the moments where I see some place I have seen many times in a new light. I appreciate the feeling of one foot going in front of the other – of movement.

I got back home ten minutes ago or so and I still feel my breath settling after the walk. I feel excited. Walking not only uses but gives me energy. Just like writing in a way – when I start, I find it easier to keep going. Indeed, that is part of why I sometimes write in bursts; there are days when I start and want to keep going, every paragraph giving me the energy to keep going.

On my way back from my walk, after having spent a bit of time resting with a decaf flat white in a coffee shop, I noticed there was a hint of purple and yellow in the winter sky on the horizon. That’s pretty. It took me a while to notice the yellow; I knew the colour was there, but the colours of sunset have a way of evading description, in that moment when all you can do is appreciate how beautiful the colours are.

Later on my walk, the sky turned pink. The pink is so pretty! I thought. I wrote down the words so that I would not forget them – my immediate reaction to the change in the colour, in words as natural to me as the sky itself. Whether or not I was going to write about the sky, I knew that the note The sky is pretty! would make me smile.

I noticed the buildings in the valleys soak up the pink; the fields, too. It’s hard to describe. The fields were not pink, but the sky painted them with a subtle pink hue that would last until the colours changed once again. Toward the end of my walk, I reached a gap between the hills in another direction where I saw rolling clouds and orange between them. I’m glad I looked here, I thought to myself; I got to see another colour in the evening sky, one that stretched as far as the eye could see. I looked back and noticed that the sky was turning a deeper blue.

Now, the sun has set – the sky is dark. But the colours are alive in the words above, reflected into this essay as they were onto the buildings and fields in the valleys of the Scottish countryside.