WINTERING

For many people, it seems, winter is a problem, with its low light levels and plummeting temperatures. It’s something to be dreaded in advance and endured when it comes. Christmas and New Year excepted, this is a time to hunker down and withdraw, until it is finished with for another year.

I’ve taken the chapter heading from Katherine May’s poignant book on the subject. In Wintering, she acknowledges the challenges but also hints at a more positive aspect to the season; we should, she suggests, try to embrace it and use it to our advantage. Partly this is about enjoying the good things that it brings, but also it is about acceptance. If cold weather and short days are not your thing then that’s fine; take advantage of the chance to wind-down, rest and look forward to the better times to come.

I have sympathy for those who struggle, but I’ve always looked forward to winter. By the end of summer, I’ve grown weary of hot and humid weather with its induced lethargy, heat haze and sleepless nights. Even the woods and fields seem to have had enough. The leaves have lost that bright, fresh green from the early summer, and lush vegetation along the hedgerows is starting to die back and collapse to the ground. Autumn’s cooler, fresher days bring relief, not to mention an influx of migrant birds, an abundance of fungi, nuts and berries, and the magic of autumn colour as the leaves turn. Now I can begin to look forward to even colder days ahead and the kind of weather that only winter brings.

As with all seasons, there are different ways to delineate winter. Most people, I think, would see November as a winter month; the first month when we can expect proper winter weather and need the appropriate clothing to cope with it. Meteorologists, too, define the seasons using the weather, but take winter to be the year’s coldest three months: December, January and February.

The autumn equinox, with equal hours of light and dark, and the winter solstice in late December are significant dates. But there is another important day that I anticipate even more keenly. It is unpredictable, and despite its appeal it almost always catches me off guard. One morning, I’ll venture outside to open the henhouse and notice an unexpected, refreshing coolness in the air. Looking around, there it is, once again: a thin sheen of ice, coating the grass, or sometimes just the car. It may be so precarious and fragile that sight alone is not convincing: touch is required to dispel any doubts, and I’ve been fooled more than once by heavy dew on a cool (but not quite cool enough) autumn morning.

This year, the first frost, or rather my first frost was on 4 November. As is so often the case, it was a fleeting affair, available only to early risers and soon wiped away by the rising sun. It was the return of ice last present almost six months ago, following a late and damaging frost on 12 May, well after the first Swifts had returned for the summer. My diary mournfully notes the dead, browned-off potato plants in the vegetable plot, and that some of the young leaves on our local Beech trees had gone the same way. Frost in late spring is not welcome; we’ve had quite enough of it by then. But frost in the autumn is a thing of beauty; it’s a reacquaintance with an old friend. Much like the first warm sun of the year, shining on bare skin in March, the first frost of the winter offers a hint of what is to come. Spring sunshine is a prompt for heightened activity - a call for readiness for the longer days ahead.

I once connected my love of wintery weather with school, or rather with a day or two away from its unwanted routines and constraints. Snow brought with it the prospect of freedom. As a child, I’d avidly watch the weather forecast at the end of the news. If it was encouraging, I’d spend the evening peering through the curtains, looking hopefully up into the sky. Or I’d open them fully and put the outside light on so that any falling flakes would pass through its glow and be easy to see. On the rare evenings when it did actually snow, my obsession turned to whether or not it would settle, and whether it would be deep enough to keep the school bus safely in its depot. This didn’t happen often but when it did, there was cause for wild celebration. A day stretching ahead with the twin joys of not going to school and being able to explore a landscape utterly transformed. Lying snow is already less common than it was in my childhood. Predictions suggest that it may soon be largely a thing of the past in lowland Britain as climate change begins to take effect.

If snow is becoming scarce, ice offers the next best thing. The Met Office defines ‘ice days’ as those where the temperature remains at, or below, freezing for 24 hours. They too are now less frequent; a mild or average winter may see none at all in low-lying areas. For that reason, I’ve adopted my own, somewhat modified definition, which helps add a few more to the year: I’m content that it’s an ‘ice day’ if I can find sheltered spots where a few small pockets of ice cling on all day after an overnight frost.

A few days ago, I took the dog to the common on a promising sunny afternoon. The temperature had nudged up to around 3-4°C and the white, frosted landscape formed overnight had long gone. But in the hollows and along the north side of strips of woodland it was possible to find a few surviving traces.

The next day was colder still, barely creeping above freezing. And in the woods fringing the common I fulfilled an ambition.

After years of looking and hoping, there in front of me, resting on the leaf-litter, was a fallen branch with a white, furry coating. I picked it up and admired the tufts of ‘hair’ springing up, as if by magic, from within the rotting wood, each several centimetres long. A clump dropped to the ground coming to rest among the dead leaves as if it had been pulled from a passing Reindeer. This was hair ice, made up of thousands of impossibly thin, candyfloss­like strands. Its formation is dependent on the presence of a certain species of fungus within the dead wood, as well as air that is sufficiently moist and a temperature that holds close to freezing point for long enough. When all that comes together, tiny filaments of ice push out gradually from within the wood and hold their integrity as they coat the branch with fur. The required conditions are so particular that this effect is apparently mostly restricted to latitudes between 45 and 55 degrees north. When I got home, I worked out that the common sits just above 51 degrees north - close to the mid-point and the sweet spot for hair ice.

Why does cold weather and its associated phenomena hold such appeal now that I don’t have to fret about school? Is it because snow and ice still carry some of the magic they held in childhood and take me easily back to those days? Katherine May puts it like this in Wintering:

Snow vanquishes the mundane.

It is also, I think, down to an appreciation of seasonal variation and the novelty of change. Ice and snow are welcome simply because I forget what they look and feel like after a long, hot summer. I forget how transformative a layer of snow, or even a sharp frost, can be. I need to be reminded how snow softens both the shapes and sounds of the countryside, and the strange way that it throws light up from the ground and makes the birds passing overhead look otherworldly. I forget how invigorating the cold air feels as it bites at the fingertips and numbs bare skin.

I wonder if there is even more to it than that. The impact of serious exposure to cold is not to be underestimated, but when it is controlled, could it have a beneficial effect? There is increasing interest in the health benefits of cold-water immersion. Devotees swim briefly each day in the sea, or a suitable river or lake, and evidence suggests this has a measurable effect on wellbeing. A cold shower achieves much the same effect if you can bring yourself to step into one. And the Scandinavian obsession with sauna often involves a ritual dip in cold water or a roll in the snow to end each session.

Perhaps, then, a walk on a bitterly cold day can have similar benefits. It certainly seems that way to me, much as putting ice on an injury is thought to aid the healing process. I am refreshed coming back indoors after a walk in the cold in a way that feels different to an outing in milder conditions. Exposed flesh is glowing, even tingling if it’s very cold. And there is that strange twin pleasure of being glad to be back inside in front of the fire, but also happy to have been outside and felt the full force of winter. The short days help with this. If it’s dark outside I can assuage any guilt that I might otherwise have for spending too much time relaxing indoors.

It took a re-reading of Bill McKibben’s book The End of Nature to help reaffirm another small joy that cold weather brings. As long ago as 1990 he was lamenting the fact that no wild habitat could, any longer, be considered truly ‘natural’. Even in the most remote, untouched forest, the plants, trees and animals have been influenced by a warming climate for which humans alone are responsible. Day to day, we notice the effects of our meddling most clearly when it’s hot, readily believing that we are to blame as yet another temperature record is broken. It may not be very logical, but just as I now feel disconcerted by hot weather, I can’t help but draw a little comfort from the coldest days. They seem to offer hope that nature has retained at least some of its power and all is not yet lost. We are heating the planet to a dangerous extent, but when everything is white, and the ground is rock-solid underfoot, I can, more easily, push that thought to the back of my mind.

A few years ago, when we lived in the Fens, the overnight temperature on a bitter February night fell to a record -14°C. I let the dog out into the garden first thing and stood motionless in the porch for a few minutes in my dressing gown, soaking up the raw power of air on skin - a power that was all the more impressive for the stillness and silence that accompanied it.

I’ve come to realise that my most firmly engrained memories of wild landscapes involve severe weather and snow. I’ve always been drawn to cold places, including the far north of Scandinavia, and the high mountains of Europe and further afield. We visited Poland a few years ago specifically to enjoy a cold, snowy eastern European winter. Arriving on 22 January, timed, we hoped, for the very depths of winter, we were distraught as the plane came into land to see no trace of snow. From the airport, we drove east to the ancient forest of Bialowieza on the border with Belarus, passing through a dispiriting landscape of muted greens and browns.

A few days later, the snow arrived. We were told it was the first significant fall of the winter, just a few inches at first, but followed by unrelenting extreme cold and further snow on most days. It was so cold that at night we would hear rifle shots through the forest as the tree sap froze and expanded, cracking the wood itself. We would pause each evening at the hotel entrance, en route between bar and bedroom, to listen out for it. I have fond memories of the wildlife we saw: Wild Boar in the forest, a glimpse of Bison through the trees, Waxwings in the gardens and Sea Eagles circling over frozen lakes. But it’s the weather and its effects on the landscape that stand out most strongly when I think back to that trip.

These are all things to ponder in the dark, dying days of the year in late December. A brand-new year is just a few days away. From here on, light levels will gradually increase as the nights shorten and the sun rises higher in the sky each day. The birds will respond to increasing day-length and begin to sing, some of them before the month is out. With luck, the landscape will be transformed by a blanket of snow for at least a few days in the months ahead. And, if not, there will surely be some ‘ice days’ to enjoy. The light on clear, frosty days will be spectacular, with a low sun to highlight the texture of the countryside to full effect. The cold, if fully embraced, will have an invigorating appeal, making time spent outside a joy, and coming back indoors an equal pleasure.

Added to all this, the regenerative power of spring will be there waiting, just around the corner; there will be a few more signs each week - from the increasing birdsong to the earliest flowers pushing up through the soil - that it is on its way. As with all of life’s great pleasures, it is only possible to enjoy spring to the full because it is a reacquaintance after a period of absence. Even if you love spring and summer, and really do hate winter, it still serves its purpose. Winter (and wintering) has much to offer. But if you are unconvinced, it can at least be celebrated for the things it makes us wait for.