"This waymarked walk climbs above the back of the ski-centre across the northern slopes of the Pentlands, offering excellent views over Edinburgh."
We got none of those views but instead we got a very different experience. The heavy mist made our walk a very solitary and surreal experience, in the best possible ways. Most of the time I was only 80% sure of whether we were on the correct path, which created a sense of (a safe) adventure.
Sometimes when I stopped to take pictures even for a very small moment, I noticed I was completely alone because of the short range of visibility. When I hurried along the path to catch up, slowly a familiar figure would emerge again.
When struggling with projects I have often used fog as an analogy to describe how I am feeling: I have no direction to go to, I am walking in a fog and hoping I run into something I can hold onto, but I don't know that it's coming until it's already right in front of me. I have never disliked fog as a weather phenomenon (how could I as photographer?), but I found it a useful way of describing the desperation of working on a project and having no sense of progression or direction.
In fact I found the actual fog a very different emotional experience. In a way it is an obvious thing if you have already taken the time to go on a hill walk, but I found it very liberating to realise that it is perfectly okay if we take the "wrong" path. We can always come back, and we might experience something we wouldn't have otherwise seen. The fact that this was something I was able to realise should probably tell me that I have spent too long without going to new places... 15 minutes to campus. 25 minutes from campus to work. 35 minutes back home. 10 minutes to Lidl. Repeat.
During the past few years I have been rather liberally joking about how "my life is on hold" because of my studies, but perhaps I have let that become too real. Towards the end of the academic year I started to joke more about how "life continues", and seems like it is time to make that real too.
