A Memory of Winter

Last night, I dreamt I had returned in time to inhabit the small body of the child I once was. In my semi-conscious state, I saw before me a dreamlike version of the magical wintery scene that I witnessed when I was 8-years old. The dream was so vivid that when I woke up it took me some time to reengage with the reality around me. 

In the real-life version of events, I remember that I was sent to bed early after a minor disagreement with my parents involving my stubborn refusal to eat dinner. The following morning, my brother and I had woken early to find that the world outside our house was covered in a thick blanket of snow. At that time, we were living in a small village in rural Oxfordshire and nature’s presence dominated our daily lives. We lived on a cul-de-sac surrounded by trees inhabited by many different species of wildlife. The snow in such a setting is distinctly different from how it looks in an urban context. I remember the sense of excitement I felt as I flung back my bedroom curtains and saw the branches outside my window hanging low with the weight of its heavy ivory mantle. At that early hour, the only imprints on its pristine surface were the footprints of birds and small mammals, and the temperature was still cold enough to prevent it from turning to slush. We were too excited to wait for our parents to get up, or to eat breakfast; we wanted to be outside feeling the icy air on our cheeks and having our first snowball fight of the season. 

 

I remember that we dressed as though the house were on fire, not bothering to wash faces or clean teeth, and crept downstairs so that our parents wouldn’t hear our feet on the wooden stairs. I was the first to haul on my winter wellies, and as soon as I had done so, I ran outside and pirouetted around the garden like a ballerina who’s mistaken her ballet shoes for walking boots. There was still a delicate, powdery veil of snow falling, and when I opened my mouth to let out a happy laugh, I felt its icy crystals dissolving on my tongue. My brother soon joined me, and for a while we roared around the garden pelting each other with hastily improvised snowballs. 

 

I can’t remember whose idea it was to go for a walk, but after we had tired of the garden we headed out in the direction of the local woods, conveniently situated down the hill from where we lived. As we trudged cheerfully down the hill, throwing snow at each other, I remember having the strange but exhilarating feeling that we were the only two people in the world. The snow had covered the entire village and there was nobody in sight. We were in high spirits and even the icy water seeping into the bottoms of our leaky boots could not dampen our childlike exuberance. In this state of happy companionship, chattering and laughing as we went, we crossed the main road at the bottom of the hill and passed through the big iron gates that led to the forest beyond them. 

 

I will remember the emotions I experienced as we stepped through those gates for the rest of my days. When I look back, it seems as though there were some sort of sharp demarcation in reality between the moment before we passed through the gates and the moment immediately after we passed through them. As though we had stepped into a parallel universe, where time moved at a slower pace. Like the children in Narnia who stumble across another world at the back of their ordinary looking wardrobe, it felt to us as though we had stepped out of our mundane, every-day reality into a magical universe. 

The scene before us as we entered the forest actually made me stop in my tracks, and the idle chatter between us immediately subsided. A single stag stood directly before us, his snow-covered hooves reflecting the bright light of that crisp and perfect winter morning. He remained immobile, as if frozen in time, and we too remained motionless – hardly daring to breath. He stood tall and proud before us, his magnificent antlers held high, his nose quivering in nervous anticipation. Immediately behind him, the forest spread out on all sides in its full and wondrous winter glory. Elms, ashes and oaks looked resplendent beneath a cloak of snow that draped its way around their trunks and encased their slender branches. Nothing stirred in the undergrowth; there was no movement and no sound, just a profound stillness and a deep silence that reminded me of being underwater. It felt as though the world around us had come to a halt in that single moment, and that we had become immobilised in a snapshot in time. Then, all of a sudden time unfroze and the stag leapt sideways into the undergrowth; his survival instincts finally kicking in. And just like that, the spell was broken. 

 

The sense of all-consuming awe and astonishment that my younger self experienced that day has stayed with me ever since. And although in real time those precious moments only lasted a matter of seconds, I experienced them as beyond time: in another realm where stillness, peace and beauty reign supreme.