Week 11, 12 and 13
“Just exactly how much beauty can one witness in one year?” This is the question I’ve been asking myself recently, I sometimes wonder if there is a maximum quantity a girl can behold, before ones head explodes or the body self-combusts? January 10th 2010 is my three-month anniversary at Highgreen and within that time I have witnessed an immense amount of beauty. 
This quantity astounds me, and for some reason when I think of these wonders, it makes my mind rerun the infamous dying scene in Blade Runner, when the android (played by Rutger Hauer) lists the things he has done before he dies in the rain. 
The landscape has dramatically changed, it started snowing here on December 11th, and basically it has not stopped…..and errrrrr….. it’s still snowing! The blanket of snow, actually let me rephrase that, the ten duvets of snow have transformed the landscape into a winter wonderland. Robert Macfarlane says of snow falling, ‘how does so much motion provoke so little sound’. It is extremely silent here anyhow and now I feel like the world is ensconced in a double silence. The silence here is stunning, the silence emphasizes every movement, the rustle of the trees, the individual bird songs and even the baby deer warily creeping along, all these sounds are beautifully sandwiched between pure white glistening snow and azure blue skies. 
I’m not sure the words ‘winter- wonderland’ really do this scenery justice. At times I feel like I am walking out into a continuous white space, which not only takes my breath away, but also throws my perception into different realms. At other times, I feel like I’m part of an exquisite BBC Natural History documentary, where the wind blows powdered snow along the surface, creating snow dunes and shimmering hazes of white and silver that shimmer like a white desert. 
I’ve also been on the most exhilarating, exciting and scary walk as dusk fell and a blizzard hovered on the horizon; as it became darker the world bizarrely became whiter as the blizzard caught up with me, and any small distinguishing markings of the road began to disappear, it felt like walking into a white canvas. 
The snow is pure white, fluffy, and powdery. I’ve never seen snow so white before and it is literally quite blinding; and the thousand diamonds that twinkle on its surface make me think that perhaps God might have a glitter habit after all. I am not sure that these photographs really show its wonder or its depth, so I thought I would take my ruler out for a walk, you know, just out of curiosity to measure the depth of the snow. The mere 29 inches measured is actually out of date …..let me repeat that…. 29 inches, now make sure your head has got this right…inches not centimetres!
I know it is far deeper in places but this was the safest measurement I could take without…well let’s just say ropes and pulleys. Its also interesting to note that this measurement was taken on the top road, yes road, above Highgreen. Unfortunately the 29inch photograph was rubbish so the 25inch one will have to suffice instead. 
The skies seems to be in glorious competition with the surface; most days are sunny, and as the sun falls the hills are drenched in lilacs, pinks and peachy hues that make my heart melt. I have witnessed a double sunset where the sky in deep reds and oranges reflected the sun as it dropped below the horizon, giving the illusion of two suns falling one after the other as you would expect in some science fiction novel. On New Years Eve I went sledging underneath the gaze of a beautiful full blue moon, after it partially eclipsed. And at the moment the clear night skies are quite literally…’out of this world’. 
All this beauty stimulating my senses also comes with a strange paradox. As I skip along in ‘winter wonderland’ I am extremely conscious of the precariousness of nature. All the farmers are desperately rescuing sheep in drifts of up to 4ft of snow, and the causality rate gets higher and higher. These are my neighbour’s livelihoods at stake, and it makes my heart bleed to recognise that nature has an incredible cruel side. The people around me are working so hard to protect their flocks. Most sheep are carrying lambs at the moment, so its not just the one you loose.
The farmers are all exhausted but their generosity and friendship still shines through and it is beautifully overwhelming and awe inspiring. All the livestock are hungry and you see sheep pawing at the snow in desperate attempts to find grass. The farmers are running out of crucial supplies such as hay etc and the lorries that sit with their orders can not get through the snow bound roads. 
On the estate of Highgreen are lots of Rhododendron bushes which hungry sheep try to eat, unfortunately it is highly poisonous to them and leaves them frothing at the mouth before they die. There is however a strange remedy, cold black stewed tea. I found myself on news year day with a throbbing head, sitting on the ground in a stunning tree lined snowy drive with a dying sheep, I wept as I poured black tea down its throat. Two days later I found out that the sheep had survived its ordeal. In a peculiar way it is the first time in my life I have ever felt guilty about what I do. 
On a lighter and happier note, I’ve had a fantastic Christmas and New Year festive period in one of the most beautiful places I ever have had the privilege to live in. Andy had an adventure getting here to spend Christmas with me. A farmer was meeting him at the local pub with suitable transport, and as Andy entered all eyes looked at him and all conversations ceased, he jollily announced “Must be that the stranger has arrived then”, and after many merry drinks with some locals, he finally arrived by tractor. 
The snow consistency is not good for snowman building, however I still have managed to build three. Steve came to film winter wonderland and shot several fantastic time-lapses, one of which was making a snowman. Because of the copper discs used for the eyes and the sunshine flitting in and out, it appears that my snowman winks! With a lot of snowy footage in his camera, it took in total three tractors (although one wouldn’t start) and a lot of snow shovelling to get Steve safely home. So apart from wishing everyone a happy new year, I also hope everyone is safe, warm and snugly amongst this strange white stuff! 
I’ll just finish with two quotes: Thomas Hardy writing about open spaces in Return of the Native “where the eye could reach nothing of the world outside the summits and shoulders of heathland which filled the whole circumference of its glance, and to know that everything around and underneath had been from prehistoric times as unaltered as the stars overhead, gave ballast to the mind adrift on change, and harassed by the irrepressible New’ and from Blade Runner…. “I’ve seen things you people wouldn’t believe, attack ships on fire off the shoulder of Orion, I watched c-beams glitter in the dark near the Tannhausen gate….all these moments will be lost in time…….like tears in the rain………………..time to die.” Weeks eleven, twelve and thirteen…..done!!!