I thought that I might eat my words, saying that I was looking forward to the winter, that I was glad to see the back of what was a wet summer, but it has been all that I had hoped for, once again our north west winter has been for the most part sunny, calm and dry. And what a change to have a winter, a season, as it should be, this one white, cold, of snow and ice, of frosty nights followed by blue sunny days. What can be drab dull grey places at this time of year became enchanting wonderlands of gleaming bright beauty. And our winters here really can be very wet, and very windy, all winter long, so what a joy its been.
This winter though, for me, and the days and weeks of it, have passed like snow flakes in a blizzard, all lost and as one. This blizzard, as brief as a passing shower, a flurry even, this winter, and its days, are as lost to me as one snow flake in a snow storm. Months, a season, can go by un noticed until a moment of beauty, that seems to last longer than all those lost days and weeks, brings you back to where you are and where you should be, to awareness. Even living here in such a beautiful quiet out of the way place, you can become lost in your room, that room that we all have inside of us in which we spend too much of our time, looking inwards, into it and at all that we put inside it, our everyday cluttered to dos, worries and busy ness, focussing on ones self and ones thoughts and ones voice and those of others talking all the time, ceaselessly going from one concern to the next and not seeing anything outside of ourselves, shoe gazing in a sense. For me it has only ever been nature that has opened the doors and windows to my room and reached me inside, making me look up from my thoughtful down ward, inward gaze, to look out at or to listen to or feel that what it was that touched me, reached me, those moments of beauty.
I had been away for nearly a month, and was walking through a sea side wood on a sunny day in early January and it appeared ,all of a sudden to me, making me look up, lighter, brighter...why was this, had someone been felling trees in the wood, letting in more light? It was only after a few moments that I realised that it simply was brighter, the sun was higher, and only then did I realise that a month had gone by, and during this time the shortest day had been and gone, I realised that the dark days of November and December were behind us, that Spring was just around the corner, and I had not seen it coming! That was one moment that lasted longer, or so it seemed, than the month gone that it made me think about. There were others, (many, I'm sure) but it seemed weeks , months, in between them. Those moments, and those longer times spent aware, with nature, are stored in our rooms too, always there to draw on when needed, keeping us right until we can be there again, looking out, not looking in.
I went away, down south, just after the snow came and then froze in mid December, that same snow and ice was still there on my return, and the whole country, north to south, was white. A day or two before leaving I came across a dead ram half submerged in the shallow waters at the edge of a loch, close to it perched a sea eagle, a young female. She flew away down the loch, putting up another previously unseen male sea eagle, which circled out from and back into loch side oaks above the carcass, but wasn't seen again. The young female was caught up with, further along the loch shore, perched in an ash tree, she was a huge magnificent predator, and one that I got closer to than I ever had before, we were just about beneath her tree, as was the bridge we needed to cross, before she flew off, back towards the dead animal. I wondered, during the days that followed and whilst away, what went on at the loch side, especially once the long freeze came, who else visited to the carcass, and how did they all interact with one another, predators and scavengers, during what would have been hungry times. Hungry times for most, but maybe not for predators and scavengers
I have no tales to tell though, of days out in the icy hills, didn't see how the life that stays in the winter hills or indeed the white woods and fields and frozen sea shore, coped with the long cold.
And now it is spring...it is spring! The winter has passed quietly, like its many still days, like the quiet of falling snow. Then one early March morning, as if within a vast winter cathedral whose doors had been left open through the night letting in the cold and the frost, turning the great domed ceiling blue, and like crystalline instruments being played amidst pillars of ice, birds had come in too to sing clear songs of spring in the crisp sharp air as the sun shone in through the open doors, warming the great hall and the new day.
And since then, chasing and rising and falling and calling in the brown fields, there buff bodies and transparent cream plumes caught and lit by the suns rays as they twist and turn, skylarks. When they move on, it is northwards that they go. I don't suppose many will know these delightful bringers of spring that in just a few weeks will sing in the summer hills, or the pipits among them, or the small group of golden plover, or that lone lapwing in display. (or the muscle bound peregrine, eyeing them all up) More perhaps will see and know the frogs spawn in pools and ponds, the blooming of snow drops, will feel that warming sun, hear the singing of birds, and know what it all means, that it is spring. I would hope though that these cheerful little parties of birds are noticed, and wondered about, and enjoyed, as they and all that they are and do, embody the joy of spring.
I cannot help each early March to smile and feel elated when I see and hear the skylarks back. This wonderful winter has passed me by I feel, in a moment of beauty, but spring skylarks have not, nor ever will.
(I have just stepped outside, and flying and calling over head...whooper swans! It really seems no time at all ago when I heard then flying south)
Sorry again for the long wait!
