Notes

My boots crunched through the powdered snow. They detonated like Christmas crackers every time my feet hit the ground. The world around me was imprisoned in a glair-white silence. Nothing sounded, nothing stirred, nothing sang. Winters slavering fangs had come and gone. Its lacerating winds had stripped the last leaves from the trees, leaving them naked and brooding in a harsh world. They were wrapped in their surgical coats now, groaning under the weight of the snow. Occasionally, a great limb would creak, crack and collapse. It sounded like an explosion going through the forest. Other than that, an alien serenity garbed the forest. There was no dawn chorus, no symphony of sound, no avian orchestra. The world was entombed in a dome of silence. Winter’s deadly clutch had strangled and stifled all life from the land.

A week ago, a great storm had come screeching through. It had snarled and mewled with its deadly voice, sounding like a wailing spectre. It had ripped slates from roofs and its slavering fangs had sent the last of the squirrels into hibernation. Its scavenging skies had compressed down upon the land, surveying it with a deadly malice. The rain it had brought with it was bitter, like ice-silver bullets of spite. It had gashed and gouged at every living thing, sparing no one. Doom-laden clouds, bloated with hatred, had roiled in the sky before unleashing their vengeful wares. Now the blaring of the wind and blasting of the rain was over. This was the aftershock. The world was becalmed. The furious winter tempests had given too much of themselves. They were spent.

High above me, the last of the morning stars were winking out sadly. They flashed their last, like bling-silver grains of sand in the dawn sky. Their bejewelled brilliance fading into nothingness was a wonder to behold. A ghostly, orb-white, winter moon hung there, imitating a pale strobe light. A corona of shimmering yellow ringed its dying glory. The sky around it was a wide sheet of grate-grey, hemmed in the horizon with a plum-purple tinge. It was a snow sky, Gods perfect gift for Christmas. Fluttery snowflakes puffed down on me, sylph-like in their airy silence. They created a mantle of Lapland-white. When they landed, they glinted like pulverized diamond dust. It was as if I was walking through an outdoor version of the mines of Solomon, a sparkling winterscape of white and silver.

Far below me, coils of smoke drifted up from sleepy hamlets. The cocoon of silence was ruptured by the sound of squealing. Some children were up early, playing on the duck-pond. From my height, it looked like a frozen salver of polished glass. The zero temperatures had encased the water in a prison of silver. In the distance, the peaks of the mountains were wreathed in a necklace of snow. The sun was coming up behind one of them, looking like a glowing torc as its full majesty was blocked by the mountains enormity. It threw down its watery shards of sunlight in vain. Its power was muted by nature’s iron-clad laws. Nothing it could do could banish the wonderland of white beneath it. Its only effect was to smash the flint-grey sky into wonderful striations of yellow, pink and orange. It was enough. The ornamental beauty of the land returned. All around me, the snow flashed and glittered like angel-fire. As my walk ended, I marvelled at the might of nature. Its awe inspiring majesty made my soul rejoice.