NATURE: A winter’s dawn at Lough Carra

First light. The air is still, the only sound that of late leaves falling softly through a maze of branches, through twigs and twiglets, to the woodland floor.
The ground is crisp with just an edge of frost, the sky open, broad, fringed with gold though not yet blue above. We see a million miles and more, to the stars and beyond, though each time I look more are paled from view.
Our planet, our home, is unique. Nowhere else in the entire discernible universe, to our knowledge, can sentient beings scuff their boots through drifts of air-dried leaves or gulp lungs full of precious air. It is fine to be alive.
Thoughts run like a river, trickling in their beginning, springing from folds in the fertile soil of imagination, or appearing as an upwelling amid hills we have yet to explore. Together they blend and meld, lending form and motion to the days ahead. As the flow quickens, obstacles must be negotiated. Water will not move a mountain, but will find a way around while softly, gently, eating into even rock.
So too the thoughts that spring from heart and mind. We find, somewhere, a confluence where ideas merge to gain weight, then a cataract, tumultuous and rapid, from which we shrink. The stream becomes a river. Before it enters the ocean it is serene. Without the river the ocean would still exist, though shrivelling and stagnant, less compelling by far.
It is at this wakening hour that goals and aspirations put forth shoots and, if nurtured, take on a life of their own. Where would we be without daybreak? Where the river with no spring or man with no goal?
The lough holds a large raft of fowl. I see among them black and white tufted duck, numbers of which have converged to give their corner a checkerboard appearance. While some will be resident birds, others have flown in from afar. Winter brings many challenges. The willingness to put differences aside allows our ducks to meet these together. They share territory. They share resources, and wit. When the days begin to lengthen and better times arrive their mood will change, but for now they are one.
I was so absorbed in watching the duck at their ablutions I failed to discern the proper dawn. This moment, for which I had hauled myself out of bed, for which I had foregone breakfast, had proven itself fleet. There had been no lingering half light as of late spring or summer, no dramatic unveiling of the day, nor any chorused fanfare as we might expect from the army of birds that now appeared in the hedgerow behind me.
It was hardly that a switch was thrown, more a curtain drawn slowly back. There was no flourish, nor showy display, it just grew light from the east so gradually that I didn’t even notice. Such is the depth of winter, if mild mornings such as this could rightly be termed such.
Climate change does not mean we shall no longer enjoy the occasional cold embrace of Arctic wind. It is bigger than that, larger, stronger, more formidable than any changes which might reach this small country. Being beyond human experience the consequences are yet unmeasured, even immeasurable. The light rime that glistened roadsides this morning is our first taste of cold – I hope it will not be our last.
I walked home through the fen, lost in a sea of contemplation. It is impossible to grasp the full extent of what we are doing to our beautiful home. We would like it to stop, of course, but are unwilling to change.
Beneath my feet, before and behind, lie the remains of last year’s forest of orchids. They had once more proven ephemeral, but I knew that must happen. Rest must come before regrowth.
The few stems that remain upright are black and tattered. Yet they have at their tops angular seed pods, most of which have long been split. The seeds within would have been dry, near dustlike, and when they spilled they rode the wind – not far, perhaps, but far enough to start anew.
Along the way I found bright red berries on wall cotoneaster, which grows low and spreading in these parts. When the cold comes the thrushes will devour them. For now redwing and fieldfare remain mostly in upland areas, saving the best for last.