Nature Diary: January, 2025

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2nd January

Cold is settled in after some mild weeks, there’s a sense of normalcy again. My legs require a hill to climb, and the day brings snow-fall, big wholesome flakes that steadily blanket the ground.

I think of Janus, the namesake for this arbitrary measurement of time. Here again. Looking forward, looking back, decisions for the next step. The Earth will spin irrespective of it all. There is no time to ponder too carefully. I feel quite aggrieved about that. Caught in a current of my own making when all I want is to linger, to sit with the questions a little longer. 

A steady plod through the snow, past the Dreggie and through the hazel grove. And there stand the two larches, one comforts the other in its sadness, full of silent empathy there is tenderness in their companionship. It pulls at something deep inside me. I can’t unsee it.

A brief wave to the fallen willow, and then the balls of witches’ broom in the above canopy catch my eye. There’s something oddly cellular about them, like they’re the result of some frantic, chaotic division—almost as though they were grown in a petri dish, each one a messy bundle of life multiplying in unexpected ways. And yet, despite their unrepressed behaviour, they are almost perfectly round, a delicate symmetry in the disorder. I like them. They have a strange beauty.

I continue stretching my legs upwards, seeking height, peeking at all of the sleeping parts of the world as I start to move somewhat unceremoniously. There is sound in my footsteps as iced mud cracks beneath my boots, and a quiet pant of hot breath as I travel quicker and more urgently. At the top of the hill, cold air burns into my lungs and my body exudes heat. I unwrap my scarf and look up. This is what I came for. I never tire of these particular pines. I can see them from home, spread sparsely but gigantic. Quiet anchors in the landscape, a sense they were always here, reminds me that not everything in life is as transitory as I thought.


4th January

It’s almost midday, and still the sun barely spills over the upper reaches of the pine at the edge of the heath. It is cold in their shade today, but the open space feels like a haven of warmth. Despite this, there is ice on the winter-stripped heather. I never tire of these micro moments that come with each season. Seemingly forgotten during months of bursting buds and flowers. But there it is again, skeletal and delicate, ragged and perhaps even tired. Flowers lost to the earth and ever so brittle in its shining moment. 

I spend too much time here, and my fingers start with that familiar chill, seeping to my bones. But, when the world glitters it would be unwise not to absorb it all.

Immediately into the wooded shade and snowflakes on spider silk have me gawping in stillness again. I cannot travel far in this place. Is it a curse to look too closely?


11th January

Waking this morning, the local weather station at the bottom of the road reads -18C. I guess it’s not so uncommon for this time of year although there is a feeling these days are becoming ever so much more fleeting.

There’s a distinct feeling walking out into such cold temperatures. My face tingles in a way that makes me think the blood in my surface-level capillaries is freezing. The moisture in the air clings to my eyebrows and lashes, frosting them in place. There is also a stillness. These days are usually quiet.

A short walk in a local park has me seeking warmth in colour. The soft rusts of grasses and dried flower heads are distinct against the bright white snows. Frosted green pine needles appear muted. The ducks huddle on the skating pond and their own warmth is the only clue of the waters below. The Kylintra flows despite it all, clinging to the edge of ice and a flash of blue cuts through the ground.

I’ve become increasingly enchanted by the movement of water around me. I think about how this water travels from the hill behind my home, past many lives and many people. People who are playing, paying bills, figuring it out, prioritising joy, living with pain, fury and sadness, elation, and somebody eating a peanut butter sandwich for lunch. And this water carries those stories to the sea, for them to return many, many moons later to fall from the sky somewhere else. It’s all so wild and fascinating to me.

Time entraps me here in this frozen place, and I hold a reverence for the silence. Even a breeze couldn’t move the grasses, every blade caught mid-sway. The stillness is absolute. The occasional distant call of a bird, almost lost in the vastness of it all. The world has slowed down, and I’ve slowed with it, almost as if it wants to keep me, after all.


30th January

Imbolc draws me out, and I’m happy to delve deeper into the woods. Flashes of sunlight filter through the entanglement of branches. There is snow on the ground but it’s melting in haste. The wet rusted pine bark glows, there’s something almost alchemical about it, a deep, warm red. The moment feels alive, charged with the quiet energy of a promised spring, a moment before the rush of growth begins, a gathering of energy under the soil and in the buds.

Everything sparks my curiosity. The small pines, a sign that the forest is ever evolving and resisting. The blur of light through watered eyes. All I see in nature is in motion, shifting between clarity and mystery. It makes every walk worth walking.

And then there is the bog. I sit by it for a long time. Usually only black and dark, the water is silver, just on the edge of ice. Snow shakes down from the pine needles above, in a half-and-half state of solid and liquid. Ice tempted away by the sun to fall into the abyss of a ripple. Quiet drips, bird song and squirrel chatter.

The universe hums a song so deep, it echoes in my bones, and I listen as if I were made of light itself.

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