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by Maria Ede-Weaving

Of all colours, brown is the most satisfying.
~Mary Webb

Before my Pagan journey began, for many years I hated the descent into winter; as life retreated and the darkness and cold encroached, my gloominess increased. Pathologically blinkered against the beauty of winter for so long, I remember the change as a kind of road to Damascus moment, and the lightning bolt that struck was not electric blue or dazzling white but good old dependable brown.

I had once called brown ‘boring’, an absolutely no thrills colour. Maybe as we get older, flashiness grates and we yearn for subtlety, the spectrum of our appreciation widening. Or maybe, life cannot bare anyone missing out on the full extent of its beauty and so gives us a swift but sharp poke when we succumb to ignorance.

When I started to really see winter, I saw brown as if for the first time. Suddenly I was seized by the inadequacy of the word. How could there be only one quiet syllable for what appeared to be countless shades? It started with dying bracken; I couldn’t stop noticing it; the warmth and depth of the colours that networked the lanes and fields, covering woodland floors. Then it was the ploughed soil itself, the mud that tenaciously clung to my boots as if to say ‘notice me!’. Soon every brown became a focus for my fascination, the contrasting tones rich and exotic to my newly educated eye.