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I walk in a stillness burgeoning with life.

A stripped bare landscape that invites me into its heart.

Once invisible tracks form and weave through bare mulch earth, revealing scattered green shoots in their depths.

The trees are proudly bare and poised – tiny buds on their branches the gentle, unhurried harbingers.

A faint mist hovers on the mountain horizon, holding its breath, teetering patiently on the brink…

This is the juxtaposition, an entwining of time.

In this place, threadbare bronzes of autumn cling next to new forming buds.

Russet leaf mulch warms the roots of brilliant snowdrops as the first daffodils dance bravely in chill winds.

Yellow catkins and luminescent mosses gild sword-like branches.

Clusters of black and red berries neighbour tiny new-formed petals, and the pungent scents of gently warming greenery fill the air.

In this place, I could rest.

I tread gently through the waking landscape. Budding daffodils and lemony primroses are undeterred by the winter rains. Naked trees strike out boldly from temporary pools, reflecting sunlight into slowly warming skies.

As I walk, I feel the change in the light through the branches. Empowered by the lengthening days, it illuminates now with subtle confidence, reaching further into forest depths, a balm to hidden life.

At evenings approach, a pale but insistent thread weaves the sky in shades of orange silver, the horizon slowly waking.

Amidst bare trunks, birds flit busily, bright coloured wing tips emerging from grey silhouettes. Their joyful songs infuse the senses, a melodic herald of the warming earth.

No other season change evokes this feeling.

An infinitely peaceful, quieted world, that thrums with fierce hope and expectation.

Arriving gently and secretly, through winter’s benign retirement, the simplicity of spring’s beauty is startling.

The close of winter offers a bold open landscape, a tribute to nature’s evolution. The first burst of spring absorbs its hidden power, ploughing ribbons of colour and life through our land.

In later seasons, the world speeds up. Sensation, sight, colour, sound, is abundant, not thoughtfully harvested.

As nature blooms into full glory, the world becomes bigger, louder, faster. Restless sometimes, with an energy that fizzes and overflows.

But here, in the gently humming cusp between long nights and green shoots, I reach an otherworldly peace.

A precious, fleeting moment of soft and simple promise.

It is a place where worlds entwine and dreams dwell.

Where the first buds, the first shoots, the first breaths of warmer air, are the most intoxicating.

Where a gentle, fertile excitement catches us in it’s grasp, sweeping our senses wildly, enticing visceral hope, and more daring dreams for the year ahead.

Here, I could stay awhile.

See also 5 ways walking the winter landscape will inspire and uplift you…