It’s a cold one this campervan morning and the first of December to boot. Thick frost everywhere, white encrusted roofs, leaves and floors. As the fantasy writer Vera Nazarian evocatively wrote ;
“ You can almost see the winter fairies moving in . . .
But first, you hear the crackle of their wings.”
Oak leaves in droves falling onto the grass like rain, they scrape against branches on their way down, spiralling, spinning, flipping over and over through the air and hitting the ground with the gentlest of taps. Mesmerising to watch there descending journey. The grass now a carpet of white and yellow. Thick heavy impenetrable cloud, I can hear gulls calling but they remain unseen. Thick steam rising from coffee cup and spiralling on the brisk morning air, its warmth most welcome this morning, a cold one at last, minus two according to the thermometer. The official start of meteorological winter. The birds seem reluctant to share their song this morning, or maybe just conserving their warmth. A few big crows calling out and responding from the trees around. It’s Friday and where has the week gone, one of the fastest yet, the weekend lies ahead around the corner. White appears to be the colour of the day, white cloud, white ground and white cold. A beautiful morning, almost perfect, all I would need, speaking personally is some snow. Hands thrust deep into pockets to regain some warmth, as the coffee has now run out and the mug long cold. Jim Crumley’s book ‘The Nature of Winter ‘ opens with the sentence ;
“ Winter is the anvil in which nature hammers out next spring “
He talks of the simplicity of winter ;
“ The wild world is reduced to its barest essentials “
I think this is the forth winter that I have sat and written under the oak or traveled in the van experiencing it in the wild. A delicious time of the year. Where has all that time gone. Fast years and fast weeks at the moment as we spiral to the end of another year. Apparently time appearing to move faster as you get older is an actual thing. Lovely days people.
“ I leant upon a coppice gate When Frost was spectre-grey, And Winter's dregs made desolate The weakening eye of day. The tangled bine-stems scored the sky Like strings of broken lyres, And all mankind that haunted nigh Had sought their household fires.”
Thomas Hardy.
Comments