After quiet days of snowdrops and blackthorn blossom, winter had turned on its heel and roared back in to give us the most snowfall on a March day for more than 40 years. Lower down the hill, among the trees, there was shelter, where snow from the milk-white sky was piling on the birches, their branches flexing wearily, and also among young oaks that had kept their leaves, their bronze a patch of colour in an otherwise monochrome world.
Not much was on the move. A crow, settled in the upper branches of a rowan, fluffed itself as I passed before settling again. A robin burst from its snow hole and alighted on a grey gritstone wall spattered with white. A fox’s neat prints zippered away into the blanketed understory. But mostly, all was silent, except for each breath inside my jacket’s hood.
That all changed as I left the woods and was caught by the strong wind raging across the moor above. The air temperature had been just below freezing, but with this wind it now felt much colder, at 1,200ft above sea level. I dropped my shoulder into its strength and turned my face slightly to escape the driven flakes of snow. Finding the way suddenly became difficult, the sky above merging with the snowy pasture I struggled across, the air full of flakes: a whiteout. The place I thought I knew was gone, a newly made blank on my map.
Then, deep in the mist, I saw the silhouette of a familiar sycamore and waded across to it. The windward trunk had been blasted white, so I laid my cold hands on the colder bark of the leeward side. It felt like iron, immovable and stern. How many times had I walked, or run, or cycled past this tree, and barely registered it? Yet there it was, charted in my subconscious, like the memory of a friend, something I didn’t know I needed until I did. And with its protection I could now pick out the rule-straight wall that would lead me safely home.
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