Winter Walks

Savour this season of solitude and stillness, and take a mindful moment, says Yasmina Floyer

Mary Oliver's poem Snowy Night opens with the image of an owl filling the night air with its call. The fact that Oliver doesn't know the name of the owl is mentioned throughout, woven between imagery of her outstretched hands catching falling snow, the darkness of the trees, and the glittering landscape. The poem closes, 'I wish great welcome to the snow/whatever its severe and comfortless/and beautiful meaning'. In the poem, the beauty of winter is laid bare, yet it has taken me years of wishing away the season before finally finding a way to experience some of this wonder for myself.

The autumn equinox marks the point in the year when the light dissipates like mist, the darkness bleeding into the days like ink into paper. Previously, my thoughts had rapidly followed suit; I wore winter like a thick cloak that grew heavier as the season progressed. It wasn't just the cold that settled into my bones, but a deep sadness along with it, further complicated by traumatic grief experienced mid-December once I became a parent. Within my aching, cold hands that could never get warm, I carried winter's darkness.

For many years during these months, I turned to books for comfort. Which is how it came to be, last December, that I found myself reading Horatio Clare's memoir, The Light In The Dark (Elliot & Thompson Limited, £9.99). In it, Clare chronicles his experience of winter depression whilst depicting the natural world of British winter; its rhythms, its mythology, its magic. And through his lyrical prose, slowly, I began to see winter in all its shadow and light.