A photograph of early morning light in the woods. There are many young trees of mixed birch, oak and rowan. The ground is patchy and uneven and covered with dappled sunlight. In the distance bracken ferns can be seen thriving in a clearing. The words Morning person appear in the bottom left of the image.

Tags: post, nature, connection, time, summer, morning

Author: Maz

Date: Friday July 31st, 2026

"Its amazing how much I've embraced being a morning person recently" I think to myself as I easily slide off the bed and look out of the window at the day.

An externally imposed change of routine has me rising earlier and finding myself falling asleep on a different side of midnight than is typical for me.

"Who knew I could be such a morning person," I continue, as if the only thing that has changed is the numbers on the clock, "I wonder if....oh" as the realisation finally hits.

We are creatures of such short memories at times, us human beings. How soon we forget that the season we are in is not the season that we will always be in. Its so much easier to be a morning person in the summer, even in the heatwaves the morning is the easiest part of the day. I'm playing through a game on easy mode and thinking I'm suddenly an incredibly skilled gamer, rather than the game is going extremely gently on me.

Of course mornings are easier in the summer, we're genetically coded and biologically built for it. Lighter, warmer mornings are inviting, enabling and our bodies respond to it, sliding on in with a minimum of effort. We're connected, living on wild time, in rhythm with the season.

Then comes those winter mornings; dark, cold, repelling. Yet we follow the clock as if the days are somehow the same, wild time is abandoned, now we're living on capitalist time.

Summer morning us still struggles to remember it, though. Its like a circle of pixies are dancing happily in our heads, singing "This is how it shall always be, for forevermore!".

I think we really could all learn a lot from these summer mornings and its not that summer mornings are easier in and of themselves (spoiler alert, they are) but its really that wild time is easier to follow, we just happen to overlap it more in the summer.

What could life be like if we followed wild time all the year, I wonder?

A black and white photograph of an adult female fox and a fox cub, taken with an infrared camera. They are in a garden area but very little can be seen beyond them and the grass on the ground. The words With the foxes appear in the bottom left of the image.

Tags: post, nature, connection, foxes, night, quiet, queer

Author: Maz

Date: Monday August 10th, 2026

Late every night, every single night, I have to make a short drive, because responsibilities dictate it to be so.

I like driving late at night, largely because the roads are so much quieter. I intentionally keep it that way as much as possible, keeping as much of my route to the quietest residential streets, embracing the 20mph limit with deep enthusiasm. I slide quietly along, taking a couple of minutes longer by going that way but I'm good with that, it leaves more time to listen to whatever my current audiobook is.

Having to rejoin a main road part way through can feel jarring; there's as many as half a dozen other cars out there, how dare they invade my mysterious communing with the night!

I like that sense of being awake and active while so much around is sleeping. Darkness cloaks everything that does not fall within the limits of the light, making anything beyond seem possible.

I am not alone on these silent streets, however. I share them with the foxes.

Is there a creature more maligned than a fox? The simile designates them sly, projecting our negative tendencies on to an animal because it is intelligent, as if we cannot possibly imagine intelligence being used without it turning to secrecy, self-interest, manipulation. Fox doesn't care for its outcast status, it lives on the edges and scarpers when the normies come. Fox understands queer.

I have learned the foxes along my night time route, learned where they will be, how they will likely behave as I drive past. There are foxes who will always sprint across the road at the first sight of me, desperately disappearing into the black. There are ones who will sit down and wait for me to glide past, watching me as I go. There are ones who will stop and stare and I will stop and stare too, making eye contact with untamed wildness and feeling it echo back within me in understanding.

There are the cubs that I have watched grow over this spring and summer, from cute bundles of fuzz who would play by the kerb and only reluctantly move away to the safety of a hedge while I crept past, to now gangly teenage style, throwing a look of defiance before slipping into shadow.

I see you, foxes. I see you simply wanting to live your lives and take the opportunities and be at home in your homes, without the interference of others. I feel you and I appreciate you. I long for these moments of connection.

4am rolls around and I am woken by a noisy family group of foxes right outside the window, bickering and playing and looking up when I get to the window to watch. Did they come for connection too? Be your noisy selves, foxes, take up the space that no one else wants at that time. Be yourselves. Be free.