And so the snows came, different types at different times. Some the slushy, wet snow that quickly soaks into leather and chills you through and is there on the lawn one minute, melted the next; some of the dry, powdery squeaking snow that flies in your face as you kick through it with a childlike glee – my favourite kind. We treated it with both joy and reverence, as you must this almost-stranger that comes to you so quietly and often unannounced when strange weather patterns and the features of the landscape dictate that here, this time, this rain will fall as something altogether more magical. Today, you get a silent visitor. Like a distant uncle you only see on high days and holidays, his face familiar but changed, new tricks to share, new fun to have, things to learn, memories to hold.
And so we walked, we followed animal tracks through the woods and over fences. We forded frozen streams, we clung to trees and each other to avoid unwelcome trips to A&E, we drank piping hot chocolate from metal cups we carry clipped to our daypacks as our cheekbones and noses turned pink.
We climbed Dechmont Hill to watch as sun the climbed above Tinto in the south to shine down upon Glasgow, the so-close city we love that lockdown puts out of reach; its towerblocks and churches glowing in the early morning like the Emerald City of Oz.
I also wintered. I slept, I baked, I read, I finished one crochet blanket and immediately started another. I wrote poetry each day for a month and I experimented with form. I shaped memories, coloured them, gave them texture and song; I let them twist and drift and clamber and scramble around my head and some I rewrote, some I left. For now, at least. They sit there, in notebooks in scrawled handwriting and up on the mysterious cloud, tiny glimmering embers, waiting for spring.
The Hawthorn Path 
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