Dusting

We wander into the local woods, a matter of a few meters from the door step. The air is refreshing and my nose and cheeks quickly start to tingle with cold. Crunching and squeaking, my feet are reassured on the snow and ice with the spikes I'm wearing. Rather than hesitant foot placement (I've fallen over a lot), now there is a confidence which makes walking a joy again.



The dusting of snow creates exaggerated forms out of the trees, the Norway Spruces of Christmas abound here and the scene is almost from a Dickensian BBC special. Scots Pines curve sinuous forms until I come across trees fallen by recent winds. Here they abruptly point jaggedly at the sky, aborted in their ambition. Snow tries to cling to the broken growth rings, accentuating them, highlighting the pattern, the dark trunks in counterchange with the lightness of the ground and sky.

In Norway snowshoes are called 'Truge', but with the spikes it doesn't feel like trudging, just freedom. Ice and snow covered rocks are easily managed and I feel liberated. A different footpath; they're still new to me and in snow another landscape and environment has emerged.

The sun breaks through into a clearing above us. Curious lollipop shapes of teasel heads are topped with snow helmets, light bouncing off them, the novelty delighting me. Snow nestles in the crook of branches, covers the ground in a broken pattern; the snow isn't deep enough to blanket the world yet. Bald raspberry canes show promise for next year, blåbær lost their leaves long ago and are now just green stalks which swathe the woodland floor like thin branches of coral.

Stopping to absorb the feeling of space, everything quietens down. For a while anyway, until the noise of the outside world goes away to replaced with an irregular drumming. Coming from above I see movement revealing a Great Spotted Woodpecker, moving about in the trees, trying to find nourishment. Awareness spreads and over there is a Nuthatch, negotiating a tree and performing daredevil stunts of walking down the trunk. Great Tits chatter amongst themselves, flitting between the Willows and Birches, are they annoyed at us making a brew beneath their home?

I feel glad to go to another place and look forward to more snow and more hills, but to escape for an hour of two and to be absorbed into this other kingdom; this feels so vital in every sense of the word.