In the city, but thinking about being back inside the mist. Black streets and sodium lamps. No cars except mine. Wet and calm. Muscle aches and pains. Circulation’s Colours album. Familiar roads out to the city limits and into the black morning. Talk about Christmas. Sun risen but hidden. Mild anxiety in the dark. Lanes wind round and round like patterns on a seashell.

Beautiful countryside that can’t be seen. Crows blow across the fields like ash. Fog thick as smoke and lights in the middle of nowhere. For a while, we’re lost. Back to familiarity as the light gets brighter. Picture-memories from childhood.

Dogs and tight laces. The mist even more like a cloud. Birds and water drops heard but not seen. Circle around the back of Thorpe Cloud. Mud begins. Complaints happen. Stiles, river and phones. Limestone gorge with high, ancient sides. Quiet and a heron in the air. Dark trees reaching up from the swollen river into the grey. Sometimes bits of them are lying around on the ground or washing down the river and out towards the sea. Do all rivers flow to the sea? Another heron. Going against the stream.

Feet and legs underwater. Limestone worn and smooth as glass. Hilltops invisible in the clouds and a third heron glides across the water. No other people around. More memories. Tony laughs.

Wood that looks slippery but isn’t and water racing past and underneath. Slow and steady progress and pains have gone, maybe due to the deep cold water and maybe due to the muscles and tendons being used again. White mist everywhere. Or perhaps the sky is the same colour and the two are impossible to distinguish. Fog hides the tops. Feel hungry but good. Ferns, trees and rocks. Other side of the river. Herons have gone.

Up to the tops, hidden in the vapour. Steep hillsides. No visibility. Dirt-coated fingers and muscles that burn. Mud and leaves turning into a beautiful rot. Water, maybe once someone’s tears, touches skin again. Rocks that haven’t yet become soil jut from rocks that have. No running for a while. Complaints again. Joy. Cold.

Quiet.

A few people at last. An old lady on a bridge. Some voices on the wind. Same light for the last few hours. Wondering which way to go and how to to do it. Lost. Tony on the floor and covered in mud. Hard to run. The miles pile on top of each other somehow.

A farmer. And then a route down toward the car. More slippery than ever and the going is slow. Bottom corner of Bunster Hill. Fields like a rice paddy. Nearly back. Feet in the river and then into the car.

The drive back has a dreamlike feel after 3 hours of running up and down hills in the mud and the mist. We get to Sheffield and its still foggy and wet. Muscles hurt. Circulation’s Colours album. Home. Lisa.

pictures from Dovedale