If you manage to get up very early in the morning and go out into the snow that fell, just before the full night began, you may see the tracks of animal traffic. These are untainted, as yet, by thaw or new snow. The passers by leave their signs. Here is a hare, two prints in front, with just a trace of hock or thigh. These first are the hind feet, passed under and through the fore legs, which print themselves behind. I follow them alongside and find scrapes where this hare has found tasty shoots. The hills are silent, no birdsong, no cursed dogs. I'm almost ashamed to sully the cleanliness. It's not that cold, just white, but the trees up the mountain have already shed their shawls and the thorn blossoms are like dirty handkerchiefs. I can hear the river clearly; the water sounds are exaggerated, framed by the muffled landscape.

Being a poor gardener one gets excited by very small things. And they are here, the tips of ruffled daffodils around the well. The snow lies like a skirt around each prima donna. In spite of the snow, the season is changing. Molehills are lumped in a diagonal across the field, like big brown mushrooms. I watch a greater spotted woodpecker shin up the bare trunk of a beech. 'Pchikk, pchikk!' Its call ecoes its French name: 'pic epeiche'. Its loopy flight gives it away before the sound.

In the house, ash from the fire fills a metal bucket and fills me with pleasure too. The simple and repetitive routines I indulge in, riddling the stove, collecting the wood and ash, are profoundly satisfying. Yesterday's despair has lessened. Nature might be waving at us frantically, her imperatives obvious, but, as James Lovelock says: enjoy life while you can; and that is why I am here, lucky, in this wild and abundant place.