Winter In Wales

 It is easier to write about snow in Wales when your back is being warmed up fat slabs of sunshine and you only have to turn slightly to look at a tall oak preening in its new foliage. It has forgotten its own starvation right through the long winter when it knew stoicism was its only hope; my own memories of that emptiness too are getting hazier and romance is applying gloss all over again.

For somebody who has grown up in winters that never dipped beyond 15 degrees Celsius, to live through a season that pays such powerful obeisance to the power of white is to comprehend fully why the sun inspires such unbound joy in these colder parts of the world. And why snow doesn’t.

For the tropical soul though, snow is imbued with all the maudlin poetry of the hopeless romantic. You hear its first strains on clear nights; they are gentle swishing sounds and feel much like how it does when you brush your cheek against mom’s oldest and softest cotton saree. They don’t shout for you and yet your feet run to the window. Outside, in a landscape lit with the deepest indigo of twilight, shimmery white stars fall to the earth and vanish at her touch. In a matter of two hours, what were earlier square unimaginative buildings painted slate-grey transform into a vision in starkest white. It makes belief in a higher power remarkably easy. It also makes you empathise with the Impressionists’ fascination with snow.

It shows you what those artists understood instinctively — a snowflake is all the marvel and grandeur of nature tightly stuffed into half a millimetre. By carrying such beauty so lightly, it gives us clues about how we perhaps should take ourselves.

This lightness, alas, is ephemeral. Nothing about snow, much like life itself, is lasting. Neither its purity, nor its contemplative beauty much less its docility. As winter deepens, and the light ebbs away and the trees begin to resemble angry scratches on a child’s hand, snow perceptibly gathers power. Before it arrives in its strengthened form, there is a heightened sense of darkness. The earth looks parched and dull, the trees bare and the sky grey. You wake up to darkness and you sleep in darkness and spring seems like a distant dream.

It is the kind of winter that drips coldness on to your heart and has the power to obscure the very imagination of sunshine. Snow almost seems like a benediction but you quickly realise it is anything but. It first drifts across the landscape but rapidly thickens. And then it settles down. It clots on windows, squats on dustbins and freezes on footpaths. It increasingly begins to look like a corpulent beast that is unconcerned about the ugly lumps of fat all over its body.

Once it has settled down in this fashion, it makes life unbelievably tardy. Everything, it seems, is dictated by this smug beast. To step out of the house is to put on layers and layers of clothing, not to mention gloves, scarves and hats — enough tediousness to put even the most earnest soul off the idea of taking long walks. Not only do such everyday activities like driving, walking and shopping become unwanted adventures, the feeling of being snowed in heightens your emotions and dramatizes everything you hear and see. A mere sad song appears to be full of pathos; a friend’s casual teasing takes on hues of bitter sarcasm and solitude frighteningly begins to resemble loneliness. You begin to fathom the terror and fear that stares out of Turner’s landscapes overrun by snow. Somewhere in the deep recesses of your mind, you also register why often in art and literature snow has always been more about evil and misery than about joy and romance.

Curiously, as snow dies, as it must, it renders its surroundings bleaker than ever. As it begins to melt, it becomes muddier and dirtier and all the more dangerous. Its icy sheen is a mirage designed to make you lose your grip; its long thaw is a time of numbing chills and indeed feels like the foul-smelling last gasp of a dying beast.

And then as suddenly, it’s gone. It’s like waking up from a dream. The buildings are slate-grey again and the footpath and dustbins are no longer white. But there is a patch of blue above. And the first brave snowdrop flowers. You are now convinced that sunshine will come. And so, you fall in love with snow all over again.

Note: All pictures were taken by the author when she had time to take her nose out of her books.

Rashmi Vasudeva is a journalist  and applied for a scholarship offered by the European Commission to do a Masters in ‘Journalism and Media within Globalisation: The European Perspective’. She won the scholarship, one among 18 people worldwide to do so.  She is currently in the final year of the course, specialising in ‘War and Conflict Reporting’ at the Swansea University in the UK.  She loves to write on food, culture and travel. More about her on www.rashmi-vasudeva.com