Since a couple of years ago I regularly spend the time between Christmas and the New Year at the Baltic Sea. It is a wonderful place to gather energy and contemplate the past year, especially so in winter when it is less crowded and generally more quiet than in summer. Last winter was spent on the little isle Poel, which is lesser know than Ruegen or Usedom. The earthen colours of the coast and gentle blues of the sea served as the perfect background to quiet the mind.
..the fields might fall to fallow and the birds might stop their song awhile; the growing things might die and lie in silence under snow, while through it all the cold sea wore its face of storms and death and sunken hopes…and yet unseen beneath the waves a warmer current ran that, in its time, would bring the spring.
~Susanna Kearsley, The Winter Sea ~
