Week fourteen
“Our perception of land is no more stable than our perception of landscape. At first sight, it seems that land is solid sand over which the mirage of landscape plays, yet it turns out that land too has own evanescence….”Place” is a restlessly changeable phenomenon” Fraser Harrison 
We have had snow for five weeks now…..quite a long time I think you’ll agree, and just as I was reaching my limit of ‘snow endurance’, this weeks walking highlighted another kind of perspective. ‘Winter wonderland with its blue skies and sparkles had turned into grey skies and occasionally sleety rain. 
I kept expecting a Dickensian character to come stumbling through this bleak landscape every time I turned a corner. Considering the magnitude of the surrounding bleakness, I think it is a miracle that I even endeavoured to go outside, let alone walk. However I am really pleased that I did push myself to continue with my daily walks. 
As Werner Herzog observed– “it is only when you walk that the world truly reveals itself to you”. My world had turned monochrome. Dark grey skies juxtaposed deathly white snow, black fence posts and trees menacingly took their stance against acres of surrounding white. It feels like wandering through a series of black and white photographs, no colour apart from a lone girl wearing a red coat and pink wellies. On one particular day, everything that was naturally dark looked like it had been drawn with graphite,
particularly the dry stonewalls, how fabulous to find myself walking in a huge drawing. To my surprise I have found I rather enjoy the bleakness and am strangely cheered by its stark beauty. 
It has forced me to look differently and more closely at this new available magnificence, such as the subtleties of different snow that changes daily or the marvellous ‘Zen’ grasses peeking above their white blankets. 
Went for an early morning walk where the sky was thick with ‘white’ fog and no horizon visible just an endless sea of snow ahead of me, a totally dreamlike experience being completely surrounded by white. The top road had parallel walls of snow running six foot high either side of it, where the snowplough had left its trademark. It resembled a giant’s toboggan run rather than a road. 
The poor signpost battling to keep its head above the snow is a good indication of the conditions. It was the most surreal walk so far. 
The icicles have been… well…truly magnificent, both in size, grandeur and beauty; they have been dripping off roofs, drainpipes and every nook and cranny possible to an icicles existence. Wisteria climbing plants now look like chandeliers of cascading glass and my back door became a hazardous limbering exercise if I wanted to exit that way. 
As the temperature has been up and down, the precarious life span of an icicle has also been up and down. Unfortunately the icicles were removed so that the rather longs spears of ice did not have a chance to …errrr… well kill anyone if they fell. Apparently in some countries death by icicles is not an uncommon occurrence!! I do regret not trying to remove them myself so that I could have created an ‘icicle sculpture’, however for practical reasons they were quickly smashed down. 
As it has been impossible to drive anywhere unless you have a four by four or a tractor, I have been rather reliant on my neighbours for stocks of food, in fact without the help of a my Polish neighbours I would be eating my bird food supplies! It has never occurred to me before just how precious an onion is, until my supply of them was nearing the end. For the past couple of weeks my onion stress levels has been rather high, as I have no idea how to cook a dinner without them, thankfully I’m stocked up again. 
Gayle came to visit me just after New Year and witnessed the delights of winter wonderland before the stark changes; we had a lovely time together, with lots of giggles and onion rationing. She helped me in the studio constructing newspaper paper bricks, an idea I am developing about reconstructing tumbled down historic sites with today’s history contained in them. Gayle also secretly left something very special for my birthday, which was yesterday. I have now successfully reached the tender age of 46. There is a ‘secret’ swing in some woods near to my home that I was instructed to visit on the morning of my birthday, in my black and white world I skipped along in excitement to see what had been left. When I reached the swing, I looked for ages on the ground seeking my mysterious gift. I could not find it anywhere, and just as I was thinking that perhaps some animal had sneaked off with something intended for me, I looked up into the tree next to the swing, there, to my utter delight, was a world of colour. 
Gayle had tied individually handmade flowers to the branches of the tree, each flower was knitted in beautiful colours, I stood there and cried at its beauty in this monochrome landscape, the timing could not have been any more poignant, and the sentiment so beautifully conceived and constructed. 
Although tears streamed down my face as I left the woods, my heart left with the knowledge of what beautiful friends I have and what a beautiful unique birthday present I had received. Week fourteen……done!