Thin snow gently drifting around me as I run. The woods magic, transformed by the whiteness. Open. Bright.
The ground is full of animal tracks, making the deer and rabbits seem very real, like ghosts standing just out of sight, still present in the distinctive history they left. Rabbits with their big back legs and little forelegs. Deer tracks, in groups of four. Tiny muntjac prints, thin holes in the shallow snow.
Their routes criss cross the human paths, and I'm tempted to follow them, the boundary between path and wood hidden softened blurred by the covering of snow. I jog joyfully between the trees, following the deer on routes that I would normally eschew because of the undergrowth, but the snow has opened up the woods to me, made me braver by hiding the difficulties.
A bullfinch flies across the path, rich red and black and white. I want to stalk him and get close, but every step is a squeaky crunch, and he stays three bushes away as I follow him.
The conifers look beautiful, transformed, boughs bowing under the weight of snow, monochrome and majestic. My usual path through a thicket blocked but branches pushed low by the weight. I follow the deer round the obstacle.
I spook a small herd of Roe Deer, and they bound away through the trees.
It is ages since I have felt so close to nature, so much a part of it. Off the main paths there are no human tracks, just me and the ghosts of animals, not long past.
As I leave the wood a single deer stands in a clearing 50 yards away, watching me with an air of curiosity until I slip away, leaving him to his snowy woods.
No comments:
Post a Comment