Alcock Tarn

It seems that I am being challenged with jobs that are difficult to do on your own at the moment. I woke to the little chirruping of the smoke detector telling me the battery was dying. The challenge being it’s at the top of the stairs and a long drop. Anyway, I managed in the end without ending up in a heap at the bottom and lying there for days before being discovered having survived by chewing on the herdwick carpet.
There seems to be lots to do at the moment and I spent the rest of the morning getting various things ticked off the list whilst looking at the spectacular world of white hoar frost outside. In the end I had to get out. 
The west facing slopes of Grasmere are good for catching the winter sun.
I walked up through Baneriggs, along ‘bit by bit reform’, past the Wishing Gate and John’s Grove and wound my way up the fellside. It never gets any easier and I have no idea how the runners do it up to Butter Crags (fastest time - just over 12 minutes!!!!).
The sun was setting as I was heading back down and, for the first time, I became aware of a smell, a smell that I realised I have almost always known. I wondered if Grasmere has its own unique smell or if it is the smell of the familiarity of a loved one and their unique pheromones. I wondered if all those atoms of existence over time are just hanging there in the late winter afternoon frozen air …

Time present and time past
Are both perhaps present in time future
And time future contained in time past.
If all time is eternally present
All time is unredeemable.
What might have been is an abstraction
Remaining a perpetual possibility
Only in a world of speculation.
What might have been and what has been
Point to one end, which is always present.
Footfalls echo in the memory
Down the passage which we did not take
Towards the door we never opened
Into the rose-garden. My words echo
Thus, in your mind.
                                   But to what purpose
Disturbing the dust on a bowl of rose-leaves
I do not know.

- from Burnt Norton, The Four Quartets - T.S.Eliot