Huddersfield Chronicle (20/Apr/1895) - The Frost, the Snow, and the Wintry Woods

The following is a transcription of a historic newspaper article and may contain occasional errors. If the article was published prior to 1 June 1957, then the text is likely in the Public Domain.

THE FROST, THE SNOW, AND THE WINTRY WOODS.

(From Our Correspondent "Cid.")

Though the day is dying, the warm sun departing, the wind blowing cooler, and the glow of the snow becoming less pronounced, there is still a grand contrast between the blue shell of the sky and the pale undulating earth, each vieing in happy rivalry to win the appreciation and top the imagination of man. Now that the storm is over I can see mankind leaving their burrows fend resuming their out-door activity again. They are soon making tracks in the soft whiteness, while children, with the ready instinct of nature, snowball each other and their seniors in gay harmlessness, as children did and ever will do. Although I am in the midst of hilly solitude, I see life and activity in the near and far distances, the whistling of the trains sound in every direction, while the convoluting and inter-rolling and streaming steam is only distinguishable in the extensive valleys when the shades of trees, walls, and houses are immediately behind it, or it rises high into the clear air and the blue contrast emphasises it. As I see all this movement I know there will be its attendant harmony and strife amongst restless humanity. The wind has now ebbed to a sweet calm, and the smoke from ten thousand chimneys pillars the sky, and sends its stifling incense to heaven’s invisibility; while the combined belchings of the air-polluting unconsumedness hangs like a pall of death, and reminds me of the passage of Scripture which says: “And the smoke of their torment ascendeth up for ever and ever: and they have no rest day nor night.” The fowls of the air and earth are soon out and about. Pigeons flap in sweeping spirals almost out of sight; rooks see their food in the vast distance, and stride along the sky straight to it, cawing in their passage either to attract or lift man’s thoughts upwards, or to warn their fellows of their two-legged enemies below. The smaller feathered organisms rise their highest, take in the bearings and the beauty of the scene, drop to earth again, select some cosy corner in the wood in the hollow, and search out their hidden meals among the trees. The air becomes balmier as the sun throbs his unchecked warmth over the hill, down the dale, and athwart the sky, and the earth reflects her reciprocal sympathy in scarcely less brilliance, while the windows to right and left, at their proper angles, are fired to startling intensity as the earth moves or the sun sinks. The wooded heights and hollows soon begin to undrape themselves, and, as their soft covering is too tender to bear the warmth, so it is converted into dropping pearls, which fall to the ground and leave the boughs in their dark-brown nakedness. The clouds begin to rise once more and sail over and leave the hills in majestic stateliness, giving shade and hued-lightsomeness in panoramic movement. If they do not avoid the sun they are immediately pierced, melted, broken, scattered, and then painted and sculptured to marvellous shapeliness, rounded to mountainous elevations, or transformed into decreasing activity, until they vanish into vapoury invisibility. Anon they combine again, close their scattered ranks, and enviously attack the sun, frowningly approach him, and although their vanguard is repeatedly melted and vanquished, the main body and the rear-guard pass on and at last shut off his glory, and I begin to think another storm is advancing. As the wind, however, bore them to the grand attack it now carries them past the point aimed at, and though, like fire, a willing servant, it is now their imperious master, so it forces them upwards and onwards until the dome is covered and the sun regains his liberty, but instead of frowning at his temporary defeat he smiles benignantly at their futile instability, warms their frowns into responsive smiles, returns them good for evil, and purifies them into white-winged children of love. Crosland Moor is like one grand lake of snow that refuses to empty itself from its bankless heights into the valleys, and suggests a petrified white sea, placid to the eye, and in its immovability and unchanging fixedness overwhelming in its grandeur, taking captive the deepest feelings of the heart and holding spell-bound the soul by the unfathomable import of “The pale silence of the Lord.”

If by any means I can enter a wood I rarely pass one by, and especially that of Bradley, which I fondly call our eastern Mollicar. I, therefore, make tracks in that direction, and knee-deep have a fine time of it, I can assure you. What with the old and new snow, the drifts deceive me, and I am frequently up to the waist, and occasionally I measure myself on the snow, not quite so willingly as I did, when younger, with extended arms and legs imprint my form on the cool impressionableness. As I am out for a day’s snow treading I do not care so long as I keep my head above board. There is no possibility of finding or keeping a footpath, so I make for the fences in as straight a line as I can. When I reach the deep and uneven road that leads to Mirfield I, with some difficulty, climb the fence, and make a jump. I am once more taken in, literally this time, for my feet slide beneath the snow, and of course the rest of my body and belongings follow, except my hat and stick. If I had failed to reappear these evidences of the presence of a man would have marked the spot of my snowy grave and have probably induced the next comer to search for and may-be find their owner. I scramble from my snow-bath, and when I fully feel the resisting ground again, I find that, instead of being any the worse, I am the better for it. Surely this is a seasonable season enough not only for those whose language is mostly made up of innane references to the weather from January to December, but for the hardy Eskimo, or even the King of the North Pole, his wife, and the rest out there. To me the weather of all seasons is thankfully accepted as it comes, and I make the best of the worst, fully satisfied that the best will take care of itself and me. Even in this superabundance of winter I have no surfeit among this white glistening scenery and the sapphire shell that domes it. It is full of charms for anyone who has not lost his winter legs, nor let his appreciation die of inanition at his enervating fireside, because afraid of the wintry cold. There is a glorious uncertainty in knee-deep wading in a stream or in the snow, now on the almost bare ground with one leg, while the other sinks into the gutter. This may not suit some people who have let their legs resolve, from want of proper exercise, themselves into mere props for the body and all but useless for carrying it into the healthgiving and life-sustaining country, but to the stout-limbed there is an exhilaration in walking abroad over hills and down dales that gives one buoyancy, that warms the blood to exuberance, and that clarifies the brain and brushes from the mind the cobwebs of tethering and entangling despondency. There is here amid the white glamour on the knowls and in the shady nooks a landscape that varies as you move, and that is full of the tenderest wintry charms, charms that are not even surpassed by those of spring, summer, or autumn. If the waters are locked in the earth by the frost, and the music of the brooks is pent up, and perforce waiting the thaw’s warming influence to let loose their harmony, you know that the time must come when they will again have the fullest liberty, and sing in rippling unison to the music of the winds and birds, while the swaying trees beat the time in the grand orchestra. Yea, the bare, gaunt boughs will ere long, as time refuses to pause, have their nakedness hidden by tender tinted green and the translucent coloured leaves of spring. Then, as they ever did present their new birth in beauteous revelations, so will it be again; so will the charms of infancy come forth, renew their robes, embellish themselves with the richest and sweetest foliage, clothe themselves with the full promise of summer, and deck themselves with the fruition of autumn. Yea, though cold and bare, the monarchs of the woods, the forest giants, the straight and tender sapplings, the gnarled and stunted undergrowth, and myriad herbs and grasses of both wood and field, will have the germs of their now latent life preserved through this winter snow and frosty biting blast, and will live and gleam again, and sway once more in slender grace and fair comeliness, in full and supple force, and in sturdy increasing strength. The vegetation of the earth is not dead, it only sleeps, and its erstwhile active life is not obliterated, but only hybernates, and both will soon awake, shake off their lethargy, and in new robes and revived activity bless and fill the earth. Yes, after this sleep and quietude of winter there will return arboreal beauty and shaded gladsomeness. Bradley Wood is now extremely fine. There can be nothing prettier than the white lattice work of winter woodlands, when frost and snow have girt and trimmed the trees with exquisite tracery and shimmery network. Although the year has so far been grisly grey and at times saintly white the sky has refused to remain Cimmerian, and has put off its shades of vapour for a more convenient season. It has ref used to be gloomy in the daytime, while through the night it has let the stars fully display their sweetly peeping, coyly twinkling, and coruscating charms. The earth has also frequently laid bare her bosom to the platonic light and love of the moon, while white-eyed Jupiter and Mars’ red eye have kept clear and close communion with bright Orion and the clustering Pleiades. Indeed, the vault has been ineffably brilliant, and the earth has had the glorious advantage of having bright sunshine by day and transcendant starshine by night. Yea, the sky has gaily put off ghostly gloom in the daytime and mostly kept at bay the dark shades at eve, and refused them permission to claim the witchery of night as their own, but rather has it kept on its features the bright beam of hope, and left dismal broodings, dark fancies, sombre imaginings, and shrouded phantasms for man’s self-made wretchedness and suicidal woe. If man tries to fill the heavens with darkness and stifling fumes, the heavens refuse to be gloomy, and the sun refuses to be sepulchred or hid from view by his murky and polluted breath. Should, however, the day die in Stygian obliviousness, and the twilight be enshrouded ere it is born, the bright dawn returns, the day rises in glory, and cloudless noon-time reigns sun-crowned in dazzling splendour, shedding its radiant warmth and pulsing its golden light unstintedly on all alike. Though now long past noon the west is an ocean of delight, and as the clouds are all but gone and the frost is biting more keenly, when the ruler of the day departs the ruler of the night will rise, climb the sky, top the meridian, and slide down the silvered azure as dawn once more takes up the tale of light. Yea, in winter the beauteous shell of the firmament gives ease to man’s sight by day, and wins his full appreciation when, by night, it is gemmed with myriad eyes.

(To be continued.)