If I could get away with sleeping through January, I would. I envy the hedgehogs tucked up in their hibernacula; the bats in their secret winter places; the dormice in their cleverly woven, sealed nests; the ladybirds nestled in window frames. Hibernation seems like a very good idea. It doesn’t help that it’s that cold, flat sort of winter day, easy to turn away from. My partner fancies a walk, but I’m not keen.
“We could play the robin game?” he tempts. The robin game is simple: go for a walk then see how long it takes for a robin to find you and put on a show. Not just a glimpse, but a full, brash encounter. It’s a good time of year to play: in winter, our resident robins are joined by swells of their Scandinavian relatives, all of them bold and curious and unafraid of humans, their genetic memory whispering that big mammals often excavate worms. They first followed the snuffling boars of UK forests; now they follow gardeners, walkers, us.
Outside, the world is mostly brown and that tepid, sickly kind of winter green, frost still clinging to spots untouched by the low sun. We turn off down the muddy footpath by the industrial estate, the edges heaped with the mulch of last autumn’s leaves. I sit in my wheelchair, half asleep, grumpy‑badger-like, my partner’s breath steaming over my head as he pushes.
It doesn’t take long. Robin song finds us like a half-remembered dream. “Look! There!” my partner points and I squint up into the sycamore, trying to follow the shadowy flickers, until the need to search becomes redundant and the robin settles on the fence right ahead of us.
Wide, wide awake, warm fire on his breast, sunshine in his voice. He flits around us, posing for my camera as I laugh. There is something sacred in a wild creature choosing to come close, even if it is “just” a robin. It wakes you up to your own aliveness, your own body suddenly a little more real, more here. I feel the cold more cleanly, my arms in their thick coat, the fuzz of warmth under my fleece hat.
And something of the robin’s fire goes into me, I think, for I continue on as something animate again, feeling more hopeful, too.
• 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
