After quiet days of snowdrops and blackthorn blossom, winter had turned on its heel and roared back in to give us the most snowfall on a March day for more than 40 years. Lower down the hill, among the trees, there was shelter, where snow from the milk-white sky was piling on the birches, their branches flexing wearily, and also among young oaks that had kept their leaves, their bronze a patch of colour in an otherwise monochrome world.
Not much was on the move. A crow, settled in the upper branches of a rowan, fluffed itself as I passed before settling again. A robin burst from its snow hole and alighted on a grey gritstone wall spattered with white. A fox’s neat prints zippered away into the blanketed understory. But mostly, all was silent, except for each breath inside my jacket’s hood.
