Winter Wonderland

Nothing beats a walk on a lovely, crisp, sunny winter day. Eanna Ní Lamhna suggests where to go and what to look out for.

It really feels good to be walking off the excesses of the festive season. But you should not look at it as getting a certain number of steps done for the day. Winter walks, no matter where you go or for how long, off r much, much more than this.

Take for example, a walk in an area where there are trees – a park, or a woodland or even along a quiet stretch of country road. There may indeed be neither flowers, nor berries nor even leaves on the deciduous trees, but their gaunt skeletal bare branches and solid trunks are beautiful when seen against a pale blue clear wintry sky. Often at this time of year – particularly early in the day – not long after sunrise which is nine o clock or thereabouts at this time of year, there is still some of the overnight frosts in evidence. The smaller twigs and extremities may very well be rimed in hoar frost on still windless mornings and these trees, so outlined, are magnificent to behold.

If there are small trickles of water in the ditches and banks alongside the roads on which you walk, these could be shimmering icicles glistening in the sunlight. Bright, sunny but very cold winter mornings are indeed a rarity and may even become more of a rarity as our world warms up. But at this time of year they can happen when winter high pressure extends over us from continental Europe. Well worth going out – well wrapped up of course. Even your local park, or road, will be utterly transformed.

On more moist, less cold days, woodlands are always worth exploring. The deciduous trees are bare, so the evergreens come into their own. Holly is a native broadleaved evergreen tree. In Neolithic times, when Ireland was covered in deciduous woodlands which appeared to be dead in the depths of winter, holly, with its shiny green leaves and abundant red berries, was the great symbol of hope. The sun god Lugh hadn’t deserted us after all despite the alarming shortening of the days. There were still some living plants – even in the depths of winter. No wonder it was collected and brought indoors, as homage to the sun god, when the days thankfully started to lengthen again after the winter solstice. We still do it to this day at Christmas time – even if it has now been given a Christian interpretation.

A walk along the seashore is always lovely – never more so than in the days following a storm. Sandy beaches will have calmed down. You will be no longer sandblasted with blowing sand and there could indeed be a treasure trove to examine as you walk along the beach. The tides around the winter solstice, particularly if they coincide with a full moon, can be very high indeed. The beachcomber treasure that can be found during a walk along the high tide mark on the first calm morning after a big storm, certainly makes for an exciting and interesting walk.

Flotsam and jetsam are the names given to what is washed up here. Flotsam refers to natural objects from the sea – some indeed from the depths of the sea – that are torn up by the gales and then washed up on the beach. Jellyfish, mermaids’ purses, the egg cases of rays and skates are all frequently found. There may even be broken ships timbers or other objects that have lain long enough at depth to be festooned with the wonderfully named goose barnacles. Their tiny eggs settle on these objects at depth where they are able to filter food from the surrounding water and grow and extend. When washed up on beaches long ago, people were puzzled by them and thought that they were the young of the wild black and white geese which only appeared in Ireland in winter.

There were never any nests or eggs of these birds (how were they to know long ago that barnacle geese migrated to Greenland in summer where they nested and reared young?). No, they were convinced that these were in fact the young stages of the barnacle goose, which of course meant that it was technically a fish and therefore could be eaten on the many days of fast and abstinence at those times, without breaking the rules and causing the diner to commit a sin.

Jetsam is the word given to those objects that end up in the ocean because they have been jettisoned overboard from ships and boats. Some may have accidently been lost like buoys from fishing nets or indeed lengths of fishing net itself. Sadly, sometimes there might be a seabird such as a gannet or a puffin caught up in these and drowned as a consequence. Much of the jetsam nowadays is made from plastic, which is light and floats and is quite indestructible.

It is not good to be seeing much of this. You will feel very virtuous indeed if you collect even some of it and bring it home for recycling, thus stopping it being carried back out to sea in the next inevitable storm.

But my favourite place to walk in the dry bright cold days of winter is in the uplands. Not on the cold snowy tops of the mountains (I am not completely mad), but on the many lovely walks that have been laid out on trails starting at woodland car parks. Nothing can beat the views obtained when the air is clear, and the faraway hills are blue, not green.

This is the courting time of the raven, the master of the upland skies. The male doesn’t waste his time trying to impress his lady love with melodious song, like the birds of the dawn chorus do later in the year. He knows very well that his harsh croaking would not win fair lady. No, what he does is use the huge wide skies as a background to show how superbly he can fly. To see a raven in full courting flight, tumbling down from heights at speed and righting himself before he is brained, and even flying upside-down to show his mastery of the skies, is truly a sight to behold.

If herself is favourably impressed, she will join him in this aerial display. Emboldened, he will pick up some food and pass it to her mid-air, the equivalent of the box of chocolates our human suitors offer on Valentine’s Day, but much more dramatic. Ravens are among the very first birds of the year to pair up and mate and this dramatic aerial courtship is vital to the whole proceedings.

So don’t pass up the opportunity of going for a winter walk. No matter where your nearest outdoor space is, there is always something magnificent to see if you open your eyes and ears and pay attention. A brisk walk, even for 40 or 50 minutes - unless it is absolutely lashing rain – is always worthwhile. Winter has its stark beauty. The low winter sunshine lights up objects not seen in such splendour at other times of the year.

It is not just in the chamber at Newgrange that the winter sun works its magic.

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