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Snow.
All the Yuletide/Xmas ads are on tv now..and right fine and pretty they look, don`t they?
Sparkling, coloured lights...jolly fat Santas with beaming children and snow!
Elves and presents and all sorts of glowing, cosy, twee and fairytale images.

So...how real is that then eh?

Not putting a downer on the season..I LOVE this time of year! But if I could choose one thing from all the media-driven imagery that is designed to tug on our heart strings and make us spend more out of perceived guilt or the desire to please...
it would be snow.
I remember growing up with the white stuff every single year. I can`t remember a year we didn`t have snow. And I`m talking HEAPS of the stuff....feet deep of it, being blocked in (living outside Brora and off the beaten track we spent a lot of winter time off school)..my mam sending us out to play in it, well wrapped up but out for hours we`d be..can you imagine the outcry from social services nowadays?
Headlines..."Child abuse as parents force children to spend time in subzero temperatures and order them to have fun!"

For, we did....we built snowmen and snow creatures and had snowball fights and built our own versions of igloos, and felt our feet freeze and go numb as our boots filled with snow for we walked into the deep stuff...we walked in wild places where only the red deer trod and left their hoof prints in pristine white landscapes and where, as a child, I remember one especially magical moment when, in the hush of a space among firs that only comes with a thick blanket of snow, I sat under one tree daydreaming...yes...sat in snow. bundled up in scarves (plural) and gloves, three pairs of socks and a duffel coat..remember them?....
and I watched an owl swoop down and capture a pigeon and when it vanished with only the smallest whisper of a wingbeat, I walked to the space where it had been and around the tiny group of pigeon feathers, was the perfect and beautiful imprint in the snow of the owls wings...for no claw had touched the ground...
a predatory dance of great beauty it was. And even my childs heart knew it.
And I have seen that sight only twice since then. They`re gifts, I know it, wouldn`t you see them that way?

When I was young, my dad woke myself and my sister up in the middle of one night and told us to go look out the window of our crofthouse.
It had snowed deeply. And there, under full and bright moonlight, only feet away from our windows, was a group of red deer, breath misting the night air, ears pricked, walking the small field between house and burn.
Deer under moonlight are silver-gilded creatures, eerie and otherworldy. Is it any wonder our ancestors gave them special powers?

These, then, are the kind of winters I would have back. Not the money to buy ever increasingly expensive presents (though no doubt the recipients would love that!) nor even the glitz of the lights strung across streets and in shops from October...

But the magic of snow under moonlight and the hushed quiet of it when it`s freshly fallen, and just the special sight of a world made new and fresh under a blanket of glittering white.

So I want snow. Ok?