The morning offers only a hint—a quiet promise—of what lies ahead: the first frost of the season.
The land has been washed clean and repainted in shades of winter. Every blade of grass is white at the tip, like a field of tiny quills dipped in moonlight. The trees shimmer as my torchlight passes over them, their branches catching the frost and scattering it in delicate glints, as if dusted with ground glass. We walk through the darkness with only the faintest blue glow rising behind the hills, the sky still black, but softening at the edges.
The cold air seizes the warmth from my breath the moment it leaves me, turning it into a ghostly mist that drifts away into the stillness. It feels as though the morning is gently unmaking me, one exhalation at a time.
The frozen grass crunches beneath my boots, each step a crisp punctuation mark in the silence. I leave a trail behind me across the meadow—a brief record of my passing, etched into the frost until the sun comes to erase it. The whole world feels fragile, suspended, as though one loud sound might shatter the quiet beauty of it.
I wear an extra fleece beneath my down jacket, the familiar weight of it warm against my skin. Gloves, hood, and the careful shaping of my breath inside the cold air work together to keep winter’s bite at bay.
And yet, despite the cutting chill, there is a brightness to the morning that fills me with certainty: today will be bright and beautiful. I can already imagine the frost melting under a sky of sharp blue, the pale gold of the sun spreading slowly across the land.
Above us, a flock of crows circles, their wings whispering through the frozen air before they settle among the bare branches of a tall sycamore. Their caws echo out, a rough and thoughtful song that seems strangely resonant in the stillness.
It strikes me—as it often does—that I only ever see crows gather like this during the colder months. Perhaps the long nights pull them closer together, teaching them the quiet comfort of community. Safety in shared warmth. A lesson the wild offers freely, if one knows how to listen.
Carys moves ahead with confidence now, her fears soothed by the passing of the fireworks. She has claimed the darkness back for herself. The white tip of her tail glows in the beam of my torch, swaying gently like a shepherd’s lantern. It guides me forward—a little beacon of loyalty, trust, and familiar love.
From the forest around us, birdsong trickles into the air, clear and bright. For a moment, it feels like spring has stepped quietly into winter’s territory, offering a memory of warmth and promise. The frost at my feet says otherwise, but the birds sing on, hopeful and unbothered.
As we turn toward home, a deep blue light spreads across the sky, pushing back the darkness a shade at a time. It is the colour of dawn before dawn—not quite day, not quite night—the hour where the world seems to inhale and hold its breath. A slow, luminous beginning.
As the light slowly washes over the land, I’m reminded of how quietly the world can change—how winter arrives not with fanfare, but with a single frosted morning, a breath turned to mist, a field made white. These early hours, walking in silence with only Carys at my side, feel like a small secret shared between us and the waking earth.
And perhaps that is the quiet gift of mornings like this: they remind us that beauty is not always bold or bright. Sometimes it is subtle, trembling, almost shy—found in the hush of frost beneath our boots, in the soft courage of birdsong, in the faithful glow of a dog’s tail guiding the way home.
Winter is coming, yes. But so too is a different kind of light. And we walk toward it, together.