The wind is starting to roar, rain is beginning to fall. A
quiet period in the weather is coming to an end. Heavy rain and high winds are
forecast for the next few days. Since the snow came two weeks ago there has
been a slow thaw, daytime temperatures a few degrees above freezing, night time
just a touch below. Mists have drifted through the glens, sometimes rising to
envelop the hillsides and leave the world mysterious and insubstantial.
Out in the woods and fields nature is mostly quiet. A
pheasant shrieks and crashes through bushes. High above a circling buzzard
mews. A flock of chaffinches flutters overhead. Startled, a grazing deer
pauses, looks up, then slips silently into the trees. The land is muted.
Underfoot the still frozen ground crunches. Ice remains on puddles. But over
the days the snow and frost retreats to shaded hollows, boulders, logs and
walls. The grass is still green and out in the meadows under a blue sky it
could be another season. But the thin, weak sun has no warmth and the air is
chill in the shade and every touch of breeze is cold. On the distant hills the
snow slowly fades though the tops remain white-capped.
The storm will change all this, the rain sweeping away the
last of the ice and thawing the ground, turning the crisp brown frosted soil
back to mud. Higher up there will be snow, replacing that which has gone. Maybe
some will drift down here. Maybe.
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