Beautiful but cruel
Bleary eyed from working at my computer I went up the road to our glen late this afternoon, just as the sun was dropping over the horizon in a riot of colour.
Even before I got out of the front gate I knew we were in for another cold night. It wasn’t just cold it was frigid. The hairs in my nostrils immediately froze as I breathed in the cold air and when I took my gloves off to take a photograph of our ice-encrusted house my fingers went numb.
Plunging my bare hands deep into my trouser pockets I wandered up the road to the open glen, where a couple of local crofters were still battling away with their digger, clearing the road so they can get feed up to their sheep. I was just in time to enjoy the Alpenglow of the dying sun. The sky ranged from orange to navy blue in colour and the hue of the orange cast itself on the hillside and trees giving an ethereal, Arctic look to the landscape. I don’t think I’ve ever seen Glen Banchor look so savagely beautiful, so starkly magnificent.
I left the road and followed a narrow track through the snow down to the River Calder, a tributary of the Spey. I’ve lived here for over 20 years but this is the first time I’ve seen the Calder completely frozen, and snowed over. It was silent, in the grip of the cruel freeze, its tumultuous flow frozen in time by the ice. I tried to photograph it but it was just too cold to take my gloves off.
But it was good to stop for a few minutes for all was still and silent. I was overwhelmed by the sharp clarity of everything, drawn by the stark beauty of it all but I was also aware of the cruelty of the low temperatures and the cover of snow. This was what the travellers of old called the “the terror time,” when the cold became a silent killer, freezing their livestock to death. Curious how something so beautiful can be so savage.
I wandered home via the village, where a pall of smoke hung limp over the houses, the smell of burning wood in the air. Cars still looked to be abandoned on the main street, and snow is still piled up at every corner but the lights from the windows of the houses looked soft and welcoming. I put some food out for the birds and our red squirrels before going inside where a blast of warmth welcomed me home. Time to sit in front of the wood stove with a dram or two I think, and plan a hillwalk on snowshoes for tomorrow.
