The 'Beast' is dead
14th April 2018
5th April 2018
The ‘Beast’ is dead.
“Birch, oak, rowan, ash
chinese-whispering the change”.
(A Wood Coming Into Leaf - Alice Oswald)
Like the constant cranking of a motorbike, or the endless pull on the starter cord of a stubborn lawnmower, Spring has spluttered and crunched into life. Even now, after a few days of warming sun - ‘she’ remains unforthcoming and reticent. Only the very subtlest of signs reveals she may be advancing.
This winter has been a much harder than many past. Early in November the snows first covered the hills and have remained, in varying depths and coverage, right through to the beginning of April. Then, just when we thought winter had got bored, or run out of steam, ‘he’ came back again, with a renewed energy and a seeminging sense of vengeance. This is ‘my time’ he said.
On a rare sunny day in February I recall hearing the uplifting trills of a Skylark. I was not to hear those beautiful melodies again for another two months as winter curtailed the birds enthusiasm and smothered its voice with another blanket of snow.
This was, as the Met Office described as an ‘artic outbreak’ and became known as the ‘Beast from the East’. A serious cold weather system emanating from the frozen, harsh lands of Siberia. This was more like the winters of old, remembered in black and white footage, showing snow drifts, abandoned cars, and harsh, blizzard scoured hillsides. Spring, dressed in her floral garment, seemed a long way off and she was probably covered in a thick coat, sat by an open fire.
However, even though the wind still carries a chill, the sun has returned, pushing back the armies of winter. Spring is here, just!
A recent visit to the bare, rounded hills of the Howgills allowed me to encounter Skylarks once again. They were now back, ascending over the bare, grassy fell tops, trilling with renewed vigour. Outside of my place of work I heard my first Chiff Chaff making its eponymous call from the tops of a small Norwegian Spruce, whilst being accompanied by a Song Thrush; an improvisation of beat and melody.
The sun is the common denominator. When in a shaded area, out of the north east wind, the warmth is considerable. It starts to penetrate into the bones. In these warm oasis there are insects swarming over wall and gatepost. The emergence of these entomological colonies are important as they bring the birds back and so the chain of life extends.
In one week a regular walk was transformed from one season to another. One day there was silence, no overt signs of life all bordered by snow and ice patches. A week later a cocophany (a tad exaggeration, but the contrast was considerable) of bird song and a path lined by Daffs, Coltsfoot and Celendine.
The seasons ‘motorbike’ was now running and soon the whispers will change to fanfares and symphonies. Also, it will not be long before I will have to do the job I hate most, mow the lawn, swapping one beast for another ;-) .
A Wood Coming Into Leaf (Alice Oswald)
“From the first to the second
Warily, from the tip to the palm
Third leaf (the blackthorn done)
From the fourth to the fifth and
(Larix, Castanea, Fraxinus, Tilia)
Thaw taps, groping in stumps,
frost like an adder easing away
The sixth to the seventh (plum conceive
a knobble in a stone within a blossom)
Ushers the next by the thumbs to the next...
A thirty-first, a thirty-second
A greenwood through a blackwood
passes (like the moon's halves
meet and go behind themselves)
And you and I, quarter-alight, our boots in shadow
Birch, oak, rowan, ash
chinese-whispering the change”.
The ‘Beast’ is dead.
“Birch, oak, rowan, ash
chinese-whispering the change”.
(A Wood Coming Into Leaf - Alice Oswald)
Like the constant cranking of a motorbike, or the endless pull on the starter cord of a stubborn lawnmower, Spring has spluttered and crunched into life. Even now, after a few days of warming sun - ‘she’ remains unforthcoming and reticent. Only the very subtlest of signs reveals she may be advancing.
This winter has been a much harder than many past. Early in November the snows first covered the hills and have remained, in varying depths and coverage, right through to the beginning of April. Then, just when we thought winter had got bored, or run out of steam, ‘he’ came back again, with a renewed energy and a seeminging sense of vengeance. This is ‘my time’ he said.
On a rare sunny day in February I recall hearing the uplifting trills of a Skylark. I was not to hear those beautiful melodies again for another two months as winter curtailed the birds enthusiasm and smothered its voice with another blanket of snow.
This was, as the Met Office described as an ‘artic outbreak’ and became known as the ‘Beast from the East’. A serious cold weather system emanating from the frozen, harsh lands of Siberia. This was more like the winters of old, remembered in black and white footage, showing snow drifts, abandoned cars, and harsh, blizzard scoured hillsides. Spring, dressed in her floral garment, seemed a long way off and she was probably covered in a thick coat, sat by an open fire.
However, even though the wind still carries a chill, the sun has returned, pushing back the armies of winter. Spring is here, just!
A recent visit to the bare, rounded hills of the Howgills allowed me to encounter Skylarks once again. They were now back, ascending over the bare, grassy fell tops, trilling with renewed vigour. Outside of my place of work I heard my first Chiff Chaff making its eponymous call from the tops of a small Norwegian Spruce, whilst being accompanied by a Song Thrush; an improvisation of beat and melody.
The sun is the common denominator. When in a shaded area, out of the north east wind, the warmth is considerable. It starts to penetrate into the bones. In these warm oasis there are insects swarming over wall and gatepost. The emergence of these entomological colonies are important as they bring the birds back and so the chain of life extends.
In one week a regular walk was transformed from one season to another. One day there was silence, no overt signs of life all bordered by snow and ice patches. A week later a cocophany (a tad exaggeration, but the contrast was considerable) of bird song and a path lined by Daffs, Coltsfoot and Celendine.
The seasons ‘motorbike’ was now running and soon the whispers will change to fanfares and symphonies. Also, it will not be long before I will have to do the job I hate most, mow the lawn, swapping one beast for another ;-) .
A Wood Coming Into Leaf (Alice Oswald)
“From the first to the second
Warily, from the tip to the palm
Third leaf (the blackthorn done)
From the fourth to the fifth and
(Larix, Castanea, Fraxinus, Tilia)
Thaw taps, groping in stumps,
frost like an adder easing away
The sixth to the seventh (plum conceive
a knobble in a stone within a blossom)
Ushers the next by the thumbs to the next...
A thirty-first, a thirty-second
A greenwood through a blackwood
passes (like the moon's halves
meet and go behind themselves)
And you and I, quarter-alight, our boots in shadow
Birch, oak, rowan, ash
chinese-whispering the change”.