Letter # 1. The Art of Making Friends
From Pen-to-Pal🌿 On Seasons, Connection & Slowing Down 🌿
Welcome & Introduction
Hey Everyone! Thank you for following along and subscribing 🙂 For those interested, Alice Rizzo, my pen-to-pal, shared her reflections on our friendship endeavour with her subscribers last week. In this newsletter (which you can read here), she added a lovely detail that I wanted to quote, giving you a flavour of what you can expect in the weeks to come
Together, we’ll be exchanging letters—part personal reflections, part philosophical musings—and sharing them with you.
In theory, each letter should be able to stand alone without disembodying the author or erasing the epistolary format. If you enjoy what you read, please do share the love!
[Missed part 1, check it out here]
Letter #1 – 27 January 2025
A New Year’s Reunion in the Peaks
Dear Alice,
Hey! I hope you’re well and that the year has started off nicely for you. I began 2025 with a reunion—a hike in the Peak District with friends I’ve known for nearly 30 years. It was the first time we had got together for a group hike!
The day started with dense fog and mist (a driver’s nightmare, as you could barely see ahead on the motorway), but as we entered the Peak District and ascended before descending again, the sun rose, revealing gorgeous blue skies. An incredible cloud inversion stretched across the horizon, and to my absolute delight, there wasn’t a single cloud above us.
As we wound our way back down toward Hope train station, the thick fog returned. I thought about how things are not always what they seem. My friend, whom we were picking up at the station, would only see the damp, grey fog on arrival—completely unaware of the tranquil sea overhead. The sky was like a clear blue slate, untouched by cloud or care. Her ignorance (and frankly, ours too) was evidenced by the number of layers we were wearing, haha—she had two scarves on! As we embraced and said our hellos, I confidently assured her we would soon be quite warm. It sounded like fiction as we all shivered in the car park—my own fingers numb after removing my gloves to pay for parking.
Reflections on the Changing Landscape
I’ve hiked Mam Tor twice, but this time, we extended the route to include Lord’s Seat. I’m on a quest to bag as many ‘Ethels’ as possible. Do you know what an Ethel is? Ethel Haythornthwaite was an English environmental campaigner, activist, and poet. All the highest peaks are named after her, and you can chart how many you’ve scaled—aka how many ‘Ethels’ you’ve bagged.
It was incredible how the thick, powdery snow transformed the landscape, creating a completely different hiking experience from my previous excursions. It felt as if I were discovering Mam Tor for the first time. Seeing something familiar as if it were new made me think about perspective—and how, in the context of rampant capitalism, reality has become so collapsed that it feels as if there’s not much to distinguish one season from another. This relentless push to always produce and stay connected is exhausting. I’ve been wondering if the saturation of media—social or otherwise—only amplifies this fatigue.
The Attention Economy and the Need for Disconnection
The attention economy, anchored in an algorithmic manipulation of our desires and time, is something I’m growing increasingly discontent with. It either disconnects me from the reality before my eyes or overwhelms me with the worst that humanity has to offer.
I haven’t yet sat down to solidify my intentions for the year, but I have had some thoughts stirring that I intend to process in the coming weeks. Specifically, I’ve been thinking about downgrading my phone for a season—to connect with the moments of nothingness in my day, the discreet gaps, but also to carve out time for nothing in particular. To leisurely read, to think, to explore nature, to sleep!
A Compass for 2025
Being out in the hills did clarify one thing for me: watching the cyclical changes of the seasons is the compass I want to navigate through 2025. I’ve been reading Katherine May’s book Wintering, which takes inspiration from the natural world—particularly how animals and cultures across the globe adapt to winter. May weaves in themes of solitude, self-care, and resilience, advocating for a gentler, more cyclical approach to life’s inevitable difficulties. Ultimately, the book is a call to honour our own rhythms, accept rest as a necessity, and trust that spring will come again. I think maintaining a connection with our own inner voice requires this. My own inner voice has craved it for far too long.
Incidentally, I have recently applied to join the Food Union in Coventry. Running out of an allotment, the membership allows people to engage in gardening, learn cultivation skills, and connect with others passionate about sustainable food practices. I attended a winter solstice event run by the union and, as part of my reflections above, think it could be a good way to connect with the soil and learn a thing or two. Let’s see!
Otherwise, teaching begins this week. I’m nearly through the mountain of marking I’ve had to do. Thankfully, I have an excellent cohort of students on the master’s programme I lead, which makes for a really rewarding teaching and assessment experience :)
That’s all for now. Thanks for reading, and I look forward to our future exchanges!
Warmly,
Charlie x
