Walking Through the Mist

2nd October 2025

It was pitch black when I set out into the Kilpatrick Hills. Beyond the beam of my torch there was nothing to see, only darkness and the sound of the wind moving through the landscape. The path was familiar enough, but in those conditions every step felt uncertain. The torch illuminated only a few feet ahead before the darkness swallowed everything again, and there was a vulnerability in that which I couldn’t ignore. A misplaced step, a hidden hole, a slippery rock – all of it was possible. Yet there was never any thought of turning back. The darkness wasn’t something to conquer; it was simply something to move through.

As I climbed higher, the air became thicker and cooler until eventually I realised I wasn’t just walking through the night anymore, I was walking inside a cloud. The hills disappeared around me. The reservoirs vanished. Even the horizon ceased to exist. Blues and purples drifted through the mist as the first traces of dawn began to gather somewhere beyond the cloud, and for a while it felt as though I had stepped out of the world I knew and into another one entirely.

The strange thing was that despite being completely alone, I didn’t feel lonely.

I’ve known isolation before, the kind that weighs heavily on the mind and leaves you feeling disconnected from everything around you. This was something entirely different. The solitude of the hills felt peaceful rather than painful. There were no demands waiting for me here, no expectations to meet and no noise competing for my attention. There was only the sound of my footsteps, the movement of the wind and the quiet awareness that, for this brief moment, I might have been the only person awake in the world.

As the darkness slowly gave way to dawn, the mist began to change. At first it was just a faint glow somewhere beyond the cloud, a soft orange light that hinted at the arrival of morning. Gradually the colours deepened, and what had been a featureless grey world started to reveal itself. Shapes emerged from the fog. The outline of distant slopes appeared and disappeared. Water reflected what little light could find its way through. The hills returned one piece at a time, like memories slowly coming back into focus.

Standing there watching it happen, I couldn’t shake the feeling that I was waking from a dream. Everything felt familiar and unfamiliar at the same time. The landscape was the same one I had walked countless times before, yet the cloud had transformed it into something entirely different. It was as though the hills had stripped away everything unnecessary and left only the essentials behind.

Perhaps that’s why I keep returning here.

The hills have always had a way of simplifying things. Life down below can become noisy. Work, responsibilities, deadlines and worries all compete for space in your head until it becomes difficult to hear your own thoughts. Up here there is nowhere to hide from yourself, but strangely that feels comforting rather than uncomfortable. The hills don’t ask anything of you. They simply allow you to be present.

This walk felt significant for another reason. I’m forty-two now, and recently I’ve started recording these experiences more deliberately. The photographs, the notes and even the voice recordings aren’t really for anyone else. They’re for me. Perhaps one day they’ll be for my children too. Maybe they’ll wonder why their dad spent so much time wandering through these hills before sunrise. Maybe they’ll look back through these photographs and words and understand that these places gave me something difficult to find elsewhere.

They gave me space.

They gave me perspective.

They gave me moments like this one.

As I stood listening to water somewhere beyond the mist, hidden from view but impossible to miss, I realised that not everything needs to be understood or explained. Some experiences are valuable simply because they happen. The cloud hanging over the reservoirs, the soft light filtering through the darkness and the feeling of standing completely alone in a landscape that somehow felt like home all combined into something that photographs can only partly capture.

It felt like quiet magic.

The sort of magic that exists all around us but is often drowned out by the noise of everyday life. The sort that only reveals itself when we slow down enough to notice it.

Eventually the light strengthened, the hills emerged fully from the mist and the world began to wake. People would be starting their journeys to work, school runs would begin and the rhythm of another day would take hold. But for a little while longer I stood there in the cloud, listening to the water and watching the landscape return from the darkness.

Sometimes the hills don’t offer answers.

Sometimes they offer something better.

A reminder that even in uncertainty, even when you can only see a few feet ahead, the path is still there.