Winter To The Core

In the chilly month of February, the countryside is absolutely destitute of flowers. The bleak, monotony of landscape that surrounds us is slowly getting on our nerves and spirits. A sky lark outside the window warbles a sad, parting song during the day and at night, it takes a refuge among the branches in the leafless woods. The wood stove in the back room is lit and I sit on the chair with a book near the stove and listen to the choral music, one of my favourite albums, Dreams All Too Brief: English Partsongs performed by St. Martin's Chamber Choir, conducted by Timothy J. Krueger. 

One of my favourite winter warmers, the choral music - Dreams All Too Brief: English Partsongs performed by St. Martin's Chamber Choir , conducted by Timothy J. Krueger.

During the rainy days, one begins to feel like an invalid who has been debarred from the benefit of the outside world by not being able to leave his room. The mechanic pacing to and fro indoors, the draughts and stagnant chilliness become irksome and the discontented soul longs for the blue Mediterranean sea and the exotic smell of cinnamon that one remembers on a sunny day in Sari Lanka.   

There is a sense of indescribable stillness and a sense of incubation during the winter months. The wind from the sea is penetrating although the local villagers prefer to call it “bracing”. Some mental occupation such as quiet reading, writing, listening to the wireless and creative activities are required to keep one’s mind occupied and to make sure that one suffers less ennui in the colourless world of winter. Many who have not moral energy enough to live the confined, ascetic life in the countryside for the winter months, might neutralise their state of torpor by going out shopping, meeting friends for lunch in cafes or going to the gymnasiums.    

For my retail therapy, I prefer going to a farm shop near the outskirts of the peaked hills. This is where I purchase all my food, bread, meat and vegetables that would last me for a few weeks.

All the fruits and vegetables come straight from the farm. The colours of fruits and vegetables all tumbled together and the shelves are piled high with all the fresh produce which looks tender, sweet and succulent.....  

A quaint gypsy caravan parks outside of the farm shop

The smell of preserve, jam and marmalade is the best of winter...

There is something magical about the car journey going up from the wet, windswept lowlands to the frost-hardened roads among the dryness of the bare mountains in the highlands. The irregularities of hills are softened while they catch the sunbeams under the cobalt blue skies. The pine trees are heavy with the morning dews that hang on the branches like icicles. With a gliding motion, we pass through the pine forests on the mountain side in the car.

We notice the sudden change in the colour of the trees from a curious green to the shade of dark indigo. The journey is like sailing through alternate tracts of light blending all hues into iridescent colours. The air is dry and singularly soothing.  All is so silent, still and nothing happens to disturb the atmosphere except the sound of the stream and the drowsy tinkling of the bells at the necks of the Highland cattle.

The smell of freshly cut pine trees fills the air...The air is dry and singularly soothing.

 

 

On my way back home, I saw a man parachuting in the sky and his whole body was floating in the wind with ineffable lightness and grace. I remember a beautiful passage from a poem by Gerard Manley Hopkins when he describes a falcon, “The Windhover”, flying high up in the sky:

Of the rolling level underneath him steady air, and striding

 High there, how he rung upon the rein of a wimpling wing

In his ecstasy! then off, off forth on swing.

 ...the hurl and gliding

 Rebuffed the big wind.

 

The poem not only ends with the echoes of chivalric heroism but also the weighty reminder that the chance of falling from power is much greater than attaining the power.    

Brute beauty and valour and act, oh, air, pride, plume, here 

  Buckle! AND the fire that breaks from thee then, a billion        

Times told lovelier, more dangerous, O my chevalier! 

  No wonder of it: shéer plód makes plough down sillion 

Shine, and blue-bleak embers, ah my dear, 

  Fall, gall themselves, and gash gold-vermillion.

“The Windhover” (Gerard Manley Hopkins)

On the other side of the sky, the sun was departing (the sun sets around about 3 o’ clock in the afternoon this time of the year); in a matter of minutes the mountains were flushing with afterglow, suffusing their heathers and pine trees with pink and violet colours, the stationary flames of sunset. Then, the whole illumination faded like magic.