(📩 330 words, a two minute read)

I love to discover a scene that epitomises (for me) the main characteristic of each month. January is a particular challenge!

I took this one dangling the iPhone precariously over the safety railings of the village’s old bridge. As can be seen, the River Kent is in full flood, though not dangerously so.

In mid December, 2015, the ‘once in a lifetime’ flood waters came to within four feet of the road level. One hundred metres along the road the tarmac was six feet below the water’s surface.

Today, the river was energetic but stable. We get used to its background noise but it really does ‘roar’ as it adds another fraction of a millimetre to the depth of the gorge. The South Lakeland limestone here is mercifully very hard.

Advanced canoeists shoot these rapids. It’s quite a sight and not for anyone else. Occasionally, a police helicopter is seen hovering over this stretch of the river. It’s the nature of the gorge to reveal the body of anyone who has tragically entered the river upstream in Kendal… and lost their lives or been injured.

It’s deep, powerful and potentially ominous. But most of all, it’s Nature in January at its most potent.

The other side of the bridge reveals one of my favourite views. It’s a great vantage point from which to capture the melancholy ‘fullness’ of what can be a rather depressing month.

But not here…

©Stephen Tanham 2024

All photos taken and processed on an iPhone 12 ProMax.

Stephen Tanham is a writer-photographer and mystical teacher. He is the founding Director of the Silent Eye, which offers an emotionally-guided journey from the conscious state of personality to the awakening of realised personal Self and its world of Being.

There are two blog streams:

http://www.thesilenteye.co.uk

(mystically-oriented writing)

and

http://www.suningemini.blog

(general interest, poetry and travel)