Journey with me…
A long day of travel on a frosty tree-lined remote road wears away at the last stores of your energy. Your once limber movements stiffen as the sun sinks rapidly below the horizon. The degrees drop lower and lower and a chill sets into your limbs. Aches and weariness creep over you as you look into the dark stretching out ahead of you. The road bends to the right and climbs a small hill. At the crest a glow reaches toward you casting flickering yellow and orange light across the road onto the edges of the surrounding trees. A refuge awaits, the roadside tavern, a place of welcome and hospitality to the tired winter traveler.
Your gloved hands rub together, and you shift the weight of your pack. A burst of warmth spreads through your body. Your frozen toes tingle back to life. The excitement of this sight sends your mind dreaming of firesides, hot savory meals, a luxurious bath, and fresh linens. You feel like you could run the rest of the way, but your exhausted joints ache and hobble your progress. The wind moans as if to remind you that you’re still in the midst of the winter night, you can’t rest yet, you must press on or succumb to the unrelenting cold. You breathe out hard through your nose, asserting the fire of your being against the seasonal forces, and step by step limp your way to the inn.
As you approach sounds of chatter, laughter, clinking dishes, and scooting chairs break the stillness of the day’s silent journey. Aromas of cooked meat and baked bread waft into the freezing air and lift your fatigue. You reach for the door latch and pull open a portal summoning you from a baren blue shadowed land into a honey-gold and wood-brown haven. Patrons and staff recoil at the draft from outside as you clunk the door shut behind you. A hostess calls out to let you know she’ll be right over to welcome you inside. You breathe deeper of those rich and delicious fragrances spilling out from the kitchen while unburdening yourself of your pack. The hostess arrives to check you in and seats you at a table next to an open fire. If not for your rumbling stomach you could fall asleep then and there.
Tired weariness melts into contentment. A foamy drink is at your lips. Your body heats up from the outside in instead of fighting just to maintain an internal temperature. A meal arrives steaming and with plenty of sides of butter. Warm, spiced, and salted sustenance enlivens your taste buds. After a few scrumptious bites you lean back in your chair and gaze around the room. People sit gathered at tables in lively conversation, a few pairs put their heads together for more intimate dialogue, in the corner a musician strums and hums a quiet tune, and wait staff bustle about taking orders and clearing dishes. In the window across the room white flakes appear here and there with increasing rapidity. Turning back to your meal you contemplate whether you would like to linger here in the common room longer after dinner or retire to your room to get cleaned up and rest after the long day.
The roadside tavern…
In yesterday’s post on winter ambience I included a list of medieval tavern ambience and music videos noting that these are the places I long to be in the midst of winter. When I want to feel safe and cozy and productive, the roadside inn or tavern is the most ideal scenario to me. Somehow it’s better than a library or a cottage nook or remote cabin. I think it adds an additional ambient quality of life and liveliness. The idea of cooks and patrons and waitresses and inn keepers going about their business a little apart, a little distant, from where I might sit by the fire and write or read or watch the snow fall outside the window makes me feel even more comfortable and at ease than alone in a quiet study.
It has long been my intention and endeavor to bring attributes of the roadside tavern into my home so that I can indulge in the pleasure the scene described above brings to me. The YouTube ambient music videos with their sounds of people talking and clattering about in the background offer a little of the aesthetic I want to achieve, but it’s even better when I’ve prepped food and beverages that taste and smell like I’ve entered a friendly vibrant fantasy inn. Since October I’ve been working on recipes for mulled cider, hot chocolate, and other goodies for warming up after being out in the cold. The right kind of lighting, soft and warm, cheers up a dark day or night, like the lamps and fires you’d find in that dream tavern. And having a blanket piled bed or bathroom waiting with all your required accoutrements, as though the inn keeper prepared the rooms for you, lets you live out a little winter fantasy all of your own in your own space.
The set up takes a little work on your part, and to make it extra delightful, it’s best experienced after spending time outside getting a little cold or working a little hard so that you come inside to that beautiful contrast separating the golden warm inside world from the blue frozen outside world. It’s a perfect experience for relaxation, creativity, and rest. If I ever built a theme park, it would be modeled on this. It would be a winter world replete with adventure and sport with roadside inns and taverns to welcome you for refreshment and relaxation with gloriously cozy charm and hospitality.
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