Winter is pretty much my least favourite season, but that’s not to say there’s nothing to reccomend about it. There’s something about the very bleakness that I find compelling after the explosion of colour that was autumn: it’s somehow a calmer time of year, the bustle of Christmas & the New Year notwithstanding. It’s a time to draw together, or within yourself, to generally stay inside, to recoup after the years exertions. The very choice of clothes is simpler: warm and waterproof. In fact, it’s a simpler time of year.
And then, of course, there’s snow. I’m of an age to recall when winters were more snowy, colder than they are now and I loved it immensely, even the brutal winter of 1962-63. From the ages of about eight to fifteen, sixteen, my father used to take me on a long Sunday walk while mum cooked lunch and even in the depths of winter he found something of interest to point out to me, or showed me how to really see nature, or listen and realise that even in silence there was something to hear. If he said “now, boy” – for I was always “boy”, up to his final days – or he stopped and lifted a finger, I knew I was about to learn something. I once walked from our house in Crondall Lane to Crooksbury Hill and back in January snow, a distance of some ten miles, just because I could, and because I wanted to. Took most of the short day, but it pleased me. Snow adds another dimension just as it takes one away: silence exchanged for colour. I’d love just once to have a week or so of real snow. Who knows?
