What to look for in winter

This is a season that few could genuinely love, yet as the leaves and flowers abandon us, the structure of the countryside is starkly revealed. John Wright takes the time to revel in form over flamboyance

- John Wright

UNSURPRISINGLY, there are very few cheerful poems about winter, with Shelley’s ‘The cold earth slept below,/Above the cold sky shone’ rather setting the tone and reflecting our own sentiments towards this unforgiving season. Many profess a love of winter, but such declarations are always suspect—indicative, perhaps, of a determined fortitude. Few would wish to live in Thomas Hardy’s poetic fancy of The Farm Woman’s Winter where ‘…seasons all were summers’, but most would nevertheless welcome winters that were a good deal shorter. There is, after all, only so much cold, dark, wet, muddy and dead we can take.

Yet as such a wish is unlikely ever to be granted to our satisfaction, what is there that might cheer us? Well, let us remember that nearly every living thing that was here in summer will still be here in winter. What we see during these long, cold months are those things that transform, those that persist, those that sleep, those that awaken and those that are revealed.

The greatest winter revelation is the very structure of our countryside. Bare of leaves, deciduous woodlands and hedgerows display an unadorned beauty, one that appeals to an admiration of form over mere flamboyance; ‘Winter trees against the sky’, as noted in Shirley Hughes’s masterly children’s book Colours. At last, we can see how the trees are truly formed and the intricacies of how a hedge was laid and how well it fares.

Trees bereft of their leaves will also reveal hidden treasures, such as squirrel dreys and witches’ brooms. The latter, presumably named for a crash-landed witch, is most often caused by a fungal parasite (