A different kind of Winter
December 2025
There’s a part of me that has always wanted to prove it could survive, that I could survive. I did lose that part once, it was so buried in sadness I couldn’t hear it, I couldn’t hear anything really that time. These days are different. I am alive and I am lucky. I could always rely on my body, be it lumpy, bumpy, pale or worn out, it never let me down, it carried me, moved me, allowed me to see, hear, and feel the world. It is still doing that, but in a more limited way, because it got broken. On October the 1st, I was crushed between my car, and a huge wooden pillar outside my home, my pelvis was broken in three places. My legs saved me, I did not fall, I stood as the weight of that car was forced on me. That was not a mental decision things happen too fast for that sometimes, it was instinct, gut, the body, and I am deeply grateful for it. Now I am healing, Autumn began and passed into winter, and I have had a similar view out of the kitchen window for a lot of that time.
I have seen ravens, call and gather, provoke the small dog, who lies asleep on my knee while I type. One day there were eight ravens on the front lawn. I have never seen that many before. I hobbled out once or twice to try and listen to what they were saying, they are the messengers, the wise ones, the tricksters, but I couldn’t understand them in the way I thought I should, so I wrote a poem, a childish poem, that spoke to the playfulness of those birds, to the playfulness in me. I read it out loud in a ridiculous voice, my son loved it, he is 9. ( I have posted this on the page in another section)
I have been Wintering, there’s something about pure cold, ice, snow, frozen landscapes that I am drawn to at this time of the year. I want to sail to Iceland, or Greenland, or Norway or Svalbard, to the edge of somewhere, somewhere cold and winter in peace, in cold, in darkness. This is imagined, I only know these places through books and stories, I burrow into and find comfort, much like a hole in the snow, it is but a temporary shelter, and I have no real notion of an arctic wind. I am drawn to the idea of the ‘realness’ of it all, to understand the environment and live with it not against it…maybe it’s that idea of survival again, the idea of preparation, of simple tasks that ensure survival, that make sense for the weather, the place, the landscapes, the people and the animals.
This is what I call my shepherd phase, where I wish I was strong and savy enough to withstand that, to mind and find sheep across rugged landscapes with a trusty dog and maybe an ole cranky ewe for company. It could be the solitude, it could be the clarity of purpose, it could be just a desire for a deep bond with my surroundings, or maybe I just love sheep. (I don’t. I prefer goats). I think about wool, and the effort of shearing, and cleaning, and spinning and knitting, and the pleasure of wearing it, the durability of it, the warmth of it, the story of it. There is a cost, I know this, but in the bigger picture it is far less of a cost than all of the synthetic fibres we have surrounded ourselves in. I have taken out my Grandfather’s cardigan again, and wrapped myself in it. I wasn’t particularly connected to him, my mother’s father, it was more his pleasance of presence, his ease with people and fields, the story of him. The cardigan is a little coarse and has a hole in one of the arms, and for all my talk, I cannot knit or sew, and have a habit of pulling wool so tightly, that everything is woven in tension and therefore cannot form.
I have always loved the sea it is movement. The sea makes its presence felt. It changes all the time, wild, calm, vast. I am not able to be in it, I have cried, I have felt lonely for it, but I know it is not the right world right now. For quite a while, I have needed to come down to earth, to land, to stay still, to rest. I have started to read about trees. As a child, my place of contentment was under a huge Sycamore tree making cakes of mud and clay and stones. I have forgotten how to do that, I have forgotten the feeling of ease that can happen when you stay by a tree, or stand in a forest, or by a hedgerow, without trying so hard, without taking a picture, without being so adult, so driven, so scheduled. I am learning more about Irish native trees, Hawthorn (Sceach Geal) and Hazel (Coll) and Ash (Fuinseog) brought here by birds and animals, across the land bridges from Britain and the rest of Europe when the ice started to melt over 12,000 years ago. I am not a tree, I am not quite so steadfast or quiet, I lose my cool, I am irrational and scatty, I like to walk, to run, to move, and I will do those things soon. Again I am lucky. But the trees will help, as will the hares, the foxes, the otters, the ravens, the deer, the hedgehogs, and all the stories, all the stories.
T
