The land that came in from the cold

Winter is my favourite season.

As the days get shorter and the temperature drops, nature becomes more subtle. But as the cold air prickles your skin and makes your eyes water, the outside world also seems more immediate.

Trees shed their leaves so we can see their elegant structures, pocked with numerous buds and scars. Buds protect fragile tissues, full of the promise of spring growth whilst the scars are remnants of previous year's buds, memories of the past. I still remember receiving my first pair of glasses and staring amazed at the branching leafless arms above. For the first time in years I saw their delicacy and complexity, silhouetted clearly against the skies. This rediscovery was like opening a cupboard to find a cherished but forgotten treasure.

Image courtesy of Wikimedia commons

This years unseasonable warmth has brought none of the frosts that make some of nature's delicate structures more obvious and beautiful. There are no frozen spider webs, in their filigree beauty. Their fine strands and simple structure offer surprising strength, holding many times their own weight in ice. 

This year snow has not covered the world in a frozen blanket, obscuring what grows below and revealing what moves above. Instead, York has been surrounded by a patchwork of flooded fields, so a fortnight ago, I headed north to see snow.

As I reached Durham, I realised that I was too late, the early morning signs of the wild were covered by the coarse boot marks of other explorers, or otherwise lost to a slight thaw. There was no sense of discovery, no delicate blackbird footprints, no chance to guess at the marks of mammals. Instead there was just a shabby, half-thawed white and brown, an opportunity missed.

Image courtesy of NASA

Yesterday, as I travelled south for Christmas, I was  astounded to see daffodils flowering and lawns that have carried on growing, long past when they should have stopped. Is this the same country where recently an ice covered satellite photo etched itself on the public conciousness? The climate is making weather less predictable. Of course neither the warm flooded Decembers, nor the frozen isles are normal, so perhaps we will have to find a new normal in the changes. 

Wareham woods

As I stride across managed woodland, the low sun still casts long cold shadows, drawing a pencilstroke landscape, beneath a pastel sky. I remember that January is usually colder than December, so perhaps there is still time for change and the winter I love. There is still time for cold.

Tilia The Dancing Lady

Oh Tilia, oh Tilia, say, have you met Tilia?
Tilia The Dancing Lady

It was a late summer barbecue, a few days after I'd moved into my new Cambridge flat. My fellow residents and I sat in a circle under the shade of the horse chestnuts and sycamores, that tower over our communal gardens. Though the ground was dry, we sat on a mismatched collection of chairs, brought out from the surrounding flats.

We partook of that stuttered dialogue that occurs between the unfamiliar, when people dip their toes into conversation tentatively, withdrawing if it becomes too uncomfortable. The discussion flitted between those topics to which conversations default in the home counties.

'Do you think the sunshine will last?'

'Yes, I think it'll hold for a while, but that cloud over there does look worrying.'

Gazes returned from the heavens to match those of their companions, but they soon darted down towards the ground, nervous of the prospect of sharing eye contact with the unfamiliar. It was then I noticed that beneath my feet, the lawn was covered with brown, desiccated leaves and the earth itself seemed bereft of almost all moisture.

The pull through a plant of water is subtle, yet astonishingly powerful; I remember David Attenborough remarking that evaporation can pull nearly half a tonne of water through a sycamore, every hour.

So it didn't surprise me that my feet rested on dry ground, but what did surprise me was the lime seed between my feet. Even though the alkaline soil leaves Cambridge liberally peppered with limes, the tree is absent from the streets surrounding my flat.

Tilia Cordata fruits, image from Wikimedia commons

The fruits of the lime tree hang down from a slender and curved bract, that causes the fruit to flick, spin and catch the wind as it falls. It's a haphazard dance that is intended to carry the seed far from it's parent. That I have yet to find the parent tree demonstrates that the little linden can glide far across the dancefloor, and our lady Tilia's pirouettes leave me just as dazzled as any ballerina's.