It was icy cold on Thursday evening. The sky clear above the village, dark and full of stars. A skein of geese flew low overhead, honking. I could hear their wing beats they were so close. The moon was bright, waxing gibbous with Jupiter shining tight by its lower quarter. When the weather is like this it takes me back to a poem I learnt at school by William Shakespeare about winter:

When icicles hang by the wall 

And Dick the shepherd blows his nail 

And Tom bears logs into the hall, 

And milk comes frozen home in pail,

As a child I remember ice on the inside of my bedroom window, painted in frond patterns by Jack Frost. My cottage on the moor is quite old, so the National Park authorities won’t allow me to change the windows for historical reasons. When a freeze comes it’s just like going back to my childhood.

I’m cosy by the fire, so I don’t mind the cold outside and ice on the windows inside. My cottage is small so it’s easy to keep warm and the weather  at the moment is not at all like the next line in Shakespeare’s poem ‘When Blood is nipped and ways be foul,’. There have been clear skies and sunny days. The moor and fields bright with fresh white frosted snow.

A friend from London has come to visit me for a few days. They arrived at midnight having been delayed by traffic, but were keen for a frosty early morning walk. So, despite having had less than six hours sleep, we set off just before dawn and walked up the lane towards the moor as the sun rose.

The dawn colours were sublime. Soft blues, yellows, reds, oranges, pinks. Changing all the time as the sun rose, reflecting off the clouds. The ground was frozen and some parts of our walk were treacherous with sheets of ice where water had seeped out of the waterlogged moor after all the rain over Christmas.

I’m used to walking on my own and having my own musing thoughts. Having my friend with me was lovely, and I very much appreciated the company. But they’d brought their ‘London Energy’ with them and talked and talked about their job, the people they worked with, their career aspirations, their recent physiotherapist appointment and so on. 

About halfway through the walk, I was quite exhausted. Emotionally and verbally bombarded and drained. I felt rather selfish as my friend was just having a perfectly normal conversation with me. It’s just that we weren’t in the same ‘energetic space’. I kept quiet about it and later on in the walk my friend absorbed some of the dawn too and quietened down. Once we got home they settled down to work online and I did the same.

Do you have times when friends can be a bit exhausting when their energy levels are out of kilter with your own? I like being with them and very pleased they came to visit. Perhaps I just need to pluck up the courage to say “But but look at the dawn” (actually I did try this a couple of times without success!).

Rowan on the moor

A Moodscope member