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I was thinking of what is a real winter day as I was wandering about Sewanee. I restarted my True North habits of getting up and out to make some snaps before getting down to work that was hanging the show.

While most people there drove, how else to show off the Range Rover, I was offered a lift, the Domain is small enough to walk everywhere, and I did so. Nothing is more than 30 minutes away walking, the roads are crooked enough to make it interesting.

The first morning walk was through the mauze, for a coffee at Stirling’s before heading to the gallery. The damp but warm – 5C – the mist heightened the surrealist of the area – community gardens with brightly coloured, electrified fences, chairs left out on porches and fields, a stone gazebo with a prepubescent naked life size doll that is supposedly a scarecrow. Thoughts went to the Rock except – no one was walking. There was no one to greet. Even the dogs that last time I was here would accompany me everywhere weren’t interested in a stroll.

The following morning’s walk was a bit colder but the sky was crisply blue. Deep shadows, I wandered by the Eastern Star Cemetery – bypassed all cemeteries as I deemed them too Southern, too gothic - on my way to downtown Sewanee.

The cameras of choice were Joãozão and the Diana. One would have thought that after the fiasco with aging cameras that I would have chosen more reliable ones but I wanted a rectangle if I got up the nerve and could slow down enough to take US 41 back. Proving that I never learn I also brought Ubirajara which caused all the trouble with the fogged film over the summer, hoping that I had fixed the light leak.

The walk downtown was for things passed rather than anything formal. Was more cautious than on the Rock, didn’t enter anyone’s property although I wanted to photograph the way that people use clothes lines – quite a few people had them on their front porches over the door. One property had over a dozen bird feeders.

These strolls were needed, I could see myself trapped in a gallery hanging a show – which was I was all afternoons worse my watch stopped and thought that it was earlier than it was wondering why all these students were hanging about when I was to meet them in a couple of hours. Winter days like these when I can be out without worrying about frostbite and windchill cannot be missed – although this being the South, the campus police were warning people about the impending snow – 2cm – and the possibility of icy conditions.

True North habits continued with tea and reading late into the night.