Spring Forward

Oh it’s been a particularly long winter.  My relationship with the coldest season has begrudgingly soured, due to the unwelcome development of yet another autoimmune disease, this one highly reactive to cold and wet weather.  Not particularly helpful when you live in the Welsh wilderness! I used to think there was nothing better on a snow day than to be wrapped up and trudging through the beautiful powdery white, but now I only watch from the window, worrying whether there’s enough wood to keep us warm through the blizzard, or if I’ve stockpiled enough painkillers in case the roads close.

But I might get in to all that in another post.  This one is a hopeful post, a little jump for glee that things are finally changing.

Dependably, as it does every year at this time, the weather has warmed and ever so gently, life is blooming from branches and sprouting from the earth. Some feel that we have an hour stolen from us at this time of the year, but to me setting the clocks forward brings anticipation that I might finally leave behind the long cold nights of winter and re-claim a part of myself that I have missed.

Yesterday I took my first walk in the woods for a long long time, and it felt wonderful.  I climbed as high as the path would take me, miles into the woods, further than I’ve ever explored before. I didn’t see a single other person. All I could here was birdsong, lambs playing and buzzards calling to each other.

I’m really lucky that I live in the countryside, where there is an abundance of woodland and coast to walk, but for me it’s a real treat to get lost someplace so remote that you can forget that there are any other humans on the planet.  Where the sounds of traffic and machinery don’t intrude on the soft creaking of the trees.

I was nervous to visit the woods as our go-to dog walking trail has been all but decimated by storm Emma who had littered the path with fallen trees and debris so bad we gave up climbing over after the fourth blockage.  But happily I found the woods largely unscathed, although late snow has taken it’s toll, and I didn’t come across any foragables on my walk. Maybe I wasn’t looking too closely, I was too caught up in breathing in the green. But I am going to head over to some of my favourite foraging spots before long, and soon cleavers and nettles and ramsons will become a familiar kitchen staple again.

This year’s call to nature has been less of a spring and more a whisper from a long awaited friend.  But I have gladly answered it, and hope that it won’t be too long now until the shoes come off and my soul/soles earthed to the warm soil once more.