• Winter’s tales Five writers inspired by nature

THIS SEASON OF WEATHER AND WONDER INSPIRES WRITERS TO STEP OUT FROM HOME, TO BREATHE DEEP, TO NOTICE AND TO SET IT DOWN IN MAGICAL PROSE FOR US TO SAVOUR

Ice BY JEAN SPRACKLAND

This journal records a year’s worth of meditative walking on the beach – the wild estuarial beaches of Ainsdale Sands between Blackpool and Liverpool that constantly turn up revelations: mermaid’s purses, lugworms, sea potatoes, messages in bottles, flotsam and jetsam, and winter ice, as seen through the eyes of poet Jean Sprackland.

The cold brings ‘sea smoke’ drifting over the water, reducing visibility to a few metres. The following day, it’s still well below zero. I set off to walk to the beach, closing the front door gently behind me to avoid breaking the portcullis of icicles hanging from the guttering above. This may be a fool’s errand: roads are impassable and the railway line is snowed over. No one else seems to be going anywhere. But I want to see what the shore is like in these extreme conditions. On an ordinary day, my route through the pinewoods and sand dunes takes a brisk half-hour. Close to dusk, after three hours’ wading through snow, I stagger out of the dunes and onto a Rothko canvas: one of his troubled late pieces, when he had all but abandoned colour. The bottom three-quarters is an uninterrupted block of white. Above, a streak of steel water. Then a broad strip of charred sky.

The world has collapsed to two dimensions. It’s entirely empty, even of seabirds; stripped of colour,

“I stagger out of the dunes and onto a Rothko canvas: one of his troubled late pieces”

movement and sound. I’m determined to reach the sea, but the snow is a foot deep and progress slow. I’m tired, and the cold is stifling. All I can hear is the creak of snow under my boots, and my splintery breath.

A heavy snowfall which sticks, even on a sandy beach, is an unusual event on the English coast. Ice is less rare. I have described in a poem the sheet ice which forms here, perhaps once in an average winter. It’s “one single sheet of sprung light”, extending over huge areas of sand, appearing to make tentative links between distant points, to act as connective tissue between the estuary and the pier 30 miles away. But ice is a surprisingly varied phenomenon, and the single sheet is just one of its manifestations. I’ve seen many others. A tideline made of frozen froth, stretching away into the indefinite distance, arranged in broad scallops and swags like a length of silk decorating a wedding marquee. Little heaps of ‘frazil ice’ in delicate shapes, like handfuls of sharp bones and feathers. Larger constructions like gleaming white bonfires ready to be lit. Sometimes you get a mass of tiny icebergs and floes, thawing gently in the sunshine and leaking back towards the sea. There are days, too, when the sand is sharply textured, each hollow holding a lens of ice, and each ridge smeared with frost; every line, every shadow drawn in keen detail

It’s always a thrill to see ice on the beach. But I’ve never seen anything quite like the legendary winter of 1963, when, as the locals still remember, the sea froze for a mile out from shore at Herne Bay in Kent.

Perhaps the day will come when I see the same thing here. But for now, the waves go on moving and the sea remains liquid.

From Strands: A Year of Discoveries on the Beach by Jean Sprackland (Vintage)

Swim BY RUTH FITZMAURICE

“Dreams and I float side by side in such seas. I stare at the horizon hungrily”

Ruth Fitzmaurice is married to Simon; they have five children under the age of ten, and a grumpy dog. They are also coping, day by day, night by night, with Simon’s illness, advanced Motor Neurone Disease. So she heads to the cove at Greystones, in Ireland’s County Wicklow, for solace and celebration, and plunges into the water, whatever the weather. Her book is an enraptured cry at life’s gifts and griefs.

During the depths of winter, a rubber hat is our only concession to the cold. I like to freeze my feet walking on cold stones before the plunge. People pay money to walk over pebbles in fancy health spas. Hobbling over sharp rocks towards the steps, I can see why. Call me masochistic but it feels amazing. I will learn these pre-swim rituals but there’s no getting used to this. I stand on those steps every time with raw fear. Your brain screams “NO!” It’s the first time every time. To dive you need to turn your brain off. Shut up, brain. Steer past your brain because something else is steering you. What the f**k am I doing? This makes no sense. That’s why it makes perfect sense. JUST DIVE.

Cold water hits you with a head-slam. Don’t fight the cold. Let go and let it seep in. But it’s so cold! Keep

treading water. This too shall pass. Ten seconds later you don’t feel the sting. Ten seconds later is pure freedom. Wind hits the sea surface and scatters salt spray on your face. Icy waves push and pull at bodies so relentlessly, they take your breath away. Seawater seeps into shocked mouths.

We climb out of the water back up the steps with numb, pink bodies. Hands grab the rusty railing to avoid a slip. Talking, talking, we just can’t stop talking and laughing. We are kings of the world. Bonded by sea, we’re laughing and sharing this feeling. Why isn’t everyone doing this? People stroll past on the footpath overhead. Down the path a few steps and you’re drinking in rock and sea and salt and wild. Join us! Dive in! We could happily become the worst kind of swimming evangelists. Let’s change the world one dive at a time. The shivering swimmers shine like diamonds. My lips have gone blue. Stay in the water too long and you don’t feel like coming back out. The cold seeps so deep into your bones that your brain begins to hear an ocean song calling you. Dreams and I float side by side in such seas. I stare at the horizon hungrily. My body feels the urge to keep relaxing and just drift away. A profound peace comes over me and I could become part of this wave forever. I wonder if this is what dying feels like. A gentle thought slips by, within close enough range for me to hear it. My children might need me. With wobbly limbs, I reluctantly climb out of the water. I am stumbling like a gangly foal.

What is this strange magic of the sea? I dive into a dancing, breathing ocean. The cold casts this spell of fearlessness that defies life and death. The only thing cold cannot defy is the seaweed. My mind wants to merge with the ocean, despite seaweed, fear, and maybe the odd jellyfish.

From I Found My Tribe by Ruth Fitzmaurice (Chatto & Windus)

Weather BY JOHN LEWIS-STEMPEL

Here is a story of the wild animals and plants that live in and under our ploughland, from labouring microbes to the patrolling kestrel above the corn. It is also the story of the weather that affects it, as seen through the eyes of John Lewis-Stempel who took on a field called Flinders and husbanded it in a natural, traditional way, restoring its fertility and wildlife.

At night comes Jack Frost, the elemental serial killer of farmland birds. For morning after morning, Flinders is encased in minus-three white iron. In frost the birds of open farmland have it bad. The tree creeper can still find food in bark and crevices in the wood, but what hope rooks and starlings? The frost renders the ground far too hard for them to pickaxe for worms and grubs, which comprise the mainstay of their diet; unlike the majority of the corvid clan, crows, ravens and the ubiquitous magpie, the rook does not scavenge for carrion.

I am getting rather fond of my rook neighbours, and put out extra mealworm on the bird table. Despite this,

“A fox is standing, breath panting white, ears pricked forward, calculating risk”