Stride out, into
the bite of the wind.
One dot of snow
for every ten steps.
On this dry ground
the ice is limited: it finds some puddles and makes crystals out of mud. Sun
beams over all of it, but the wind has blown the warmth away. Over the stream,
over the stile, over the field where the old barn crumbles out the last of its
days and the white peaks of Dartmoor edge the view. Dog and me and the sun and
the wind and the rare snow make tracks all the way to the river and through the
woods.
On the slopes of
the Tamar, encroached by the growth of the woods that once fed furnaces, there
are the remnants of industry: a post for a chain bridge, dug back areas of
rock, two old quarries, drainage tunnels, cart tracks, lime kilns. Across the
river is the straight wall where a train ran on a broad gauge track.
We follow a
drainage ditch down to the bank where the beached tree has been partly cleared.
It is cut exactly right for me to sit on, a pile of sticks at my side, to throw
for Dog, who has healthy bracing swims to fetch them back. Sunlight rides on
the water surface. Snow falls erratic as butterfly flight paths. I dangle my
legs from the cut tree until cold prompts movement.
Climb up to the
top of the woods: a good warming angle on that slope.
Under my boot
soles, old trunks crumble. Something about these laid down leviathans: walking
on them is like trespassing, is like treading in an elephants' graveyard. They
hold some kind of sentience, these old trunks, even as they crumble, since they
are always part of the earth, they lose less for changing function.
The wind lifts
itself into a howl. I think I hear an animal cry, but I am mistaken. It is the
low groan of a wavering tree. Snowfall thickens: fractals of ice catch on my
coat, and the trees sing.
Comments
Happy to bring smiles Jacqueline- shivery again today! :-)