I’m a hibernator. The season doesn’t get me down so much as simply insist that I sleep, but this year I’ve done even more than usual, having succumbed to a festive double whammy of influenza and respiratory syncytial virus (aka that cough, you know the one).
During convalescence, struggling to focus on reading or a screen, I found myself watching wall shadows for hours. In the bedroom, framed in the cross-hatches of our small-paned Georgian windows, I noticed strange, smouldering upright forms, which I eventually realised were the trunks of trees growing on the steep bank that rises opposite the house, their outlines fuzzied by a long focal length. At this time of year, the sun never makes it above them. Instead it scans them like a woody barcode, projecting daylong shadow plays which gradually traverse my walls, marking time. In the kitchen, the arboreal shadow-wraiths are joined by the more defined shades of ivy and scrambling roses growing just outside. And in my study they are illuminated by sudden flares of gold from gilded lettering on the spines of shelved books.
Light is never more magical than at this time of year. The gleams that slide along otherwise invisible strands of spider silk; the rich hues in droplets of thawed frost, suspended from twiggy growth, flicking idly through the visible spectrum as the drops tremble in the slightest breeze; the extended golden hour at the beginning and end of the day when light from a low sun is filtered through a longer transect of atmosphere.
I think of druids and medieval astronomers marking angles and alignments as celestial bodies swept over their heads. I think of Isaac Newton, with time on his hands in homebound plague years, proving that white light is composed of a spectrum of colours by using prisms to split and reforge a beam of sunlight through a hole in his bedroom shutter, and later sticking a bodkin in his eye to see how his perception of light and colour changed. I’m not that bored, fortunately. But I am reassured that, even in these sedentary days, nature and wonder come creeping indoors to find me.
• Under the Changing Skies: The Best of the Guardian’s Country Diary, 2018-2024 is published by Guardian Faber; order at guardianbookshop.com and get a 15% discount
