Cemeteries and Snow

Our local churchyard in the snow.  Nobody had been there since before Christmas, and any Christmas worshippers' footsteps had been long since buried.  With the roads in a few inches of snow and the snow deadening any sound, it felt as if the village was abandoned long ago, and was now a long way from inhabited lands; as if, stumbling out of the woods, we had found a place long forgotten.  

A Time of Deep Snow

The snow came a month ago, and hasn't left since.  Instead it has been topped up with fresh falls, and the day before yesterday it snowed from 6pm until 2pm the following day.  The snow has been feathery, powdery, light.  It falls silently, softly, with a hiss as it lands on dry grasses and dead leaves.  In the churchyard and the church car park and presumably the sheep fields behind the house (and the garden) it is eighteen inches deep, gently drifting, light as crystals, beautiful, pristine, impermanent.  I have never seen so much snow.

Kington this morning was an empty town of alleyways and quiet lanes and dirty slush; misty distances and heavy skies.  The road through the village is impassable in an ordinary car and we got a lift from Thomas the joiner. Even his Land Rover found it difficult.  

Some pictures recently from the summer in New Zealand; it seems a long time since we have seen green.  The landscape is monochrome, white fields and black trees and hedges, the skies grey and featureless.  

Midwinter Snowfall

If December, January and February are the winter months then mid-January is midwinter.  This awareness of season and time seem more marked for me since I started the seasonal journals.  

We are snowed in and have been for a day or so.  Schools closed, airports open occasionally, roads blocked, the usual problems with snow ploughs and grit. We can see the gritters every now and then on the far valley road, connecting New Radnor with Kinnerton.  

I will upload some photographs of the village in midwinter; a misty day, a day of icicles and haze and deep snow.  And the village silent, eerily empty, roads almost impassable.  Midwinter.