Quietly pirouetting in on silvery-toed slippers of snow,
And we, we were children once again."
~Bill Morgan, Jr.
This is a tale, a muse about winter. About Irish winters, about winter in the hills of Donegal!
like a thing of wonder." (Susan Orlean)
We never really know what the season brings, but we'd like to know, and every talk when meeting people seems revolve around the weather. There all all those forecasters and would be knowers. Like this winter when we where warned of the severest winter to come to Irish shores for over 100 years! It was the talk of November, but nothing really happened. - And than one January morning after the children's disappointment of a snowless Christmas we wake up to a white miracle, a changed landscape, a beautiful untouched mystery of snowcapped trees and ways and lanes which seemingly were never touched by a foot or wheel.
"Never are voices so beautiful as on a winter’s evening, when dusk almost hides the body,and they seem to issue from nothingness with a note of intimacy seldom heard by day." ~Virginia Woolf, Night and Day
Winter walks are different: They sound, feel, smell different. They are enchanting with every crunch from our feet. There is a tangible silence in the air. We can't but wonder, wonder, wonder... There is something about this whiteness. A sense of purity, clarity which a summers day can never bring. And with the nearly endless possibility of walks we can choose from our doorstep we take a different route every day as long as the wonder lasts.
And I might add how much fun, too! Even the dogs who love to roll about in the snow, trying to catch snowballs and with remarkable joy race through some dog-waist-deep drifts.
And we humans have projects, too. Like looking after our feathery friends in the newly build bird feeder. This years project though was this one: Building an igloo. Which meant hard work for two days for something which wouldn't last.
Holding on to dear life
Speckling fields up high
But drip by drip has to submit
To stronger forces
Tingling rain
The last stubborn snow.
I cannot end without adding one last picture taken 2010 when we where snowbound for 6 long weeks. It's so hard to pick one out as they're are all so beautiful.- I love them all. But here we are: