Monday 20 December 2010

Winter Sunshine

Sunday 19/12/10

It's impossible to be depressed on a bright winters day like this, the snow twinkling with diamond glints in the sunshine and the air so fresh and cold it makes your nose throb. Everywhere looks so light and bright and we are so close to the winter solstice and soon the days will be lengthening. The beautiful patterns everywhere can almost induce sensory overload. Stark silhouettes of bare trees against an impossibly blue sky with rooks wheeling and cawing above them. The low sun highlights every lump and bump  in the glittering snow covered fields and the trees and sheep cast long shadows. Twigs and grasses become feathered with ice crystals. Flocks of Fieldfares work their way along a hawthorn hedge sitting in the topmost branches to digest and everywhere there are tracks revealing how hectic for our wildlife is the everyday business of survival.