Narnian Vision

After a snowfall we who relish the experience of walking among festoons of white drapery will make first for the woods and preferably sheltered parts. This feast for the eyes is rare in some winters but not this one. Even so, this morning outdid the efforts of recent weeks by some margin. It’s due to the stickiness of snow and the way that conditions allow it to cling and build up along the twigs giving an impression of thick clothing gathering round you.

C. S.Lewis’s Narnian books were essential reading for several generations of children. The first of these had a girl entering a large wardrobe in an old house, working her way towards the back through various coats and suddenly coming out the other side into a magic land where winter trees were suitably snow covered. The woods near Blacka’s car park have been compared with Narnia for this reason by numerous people independently. 

Squeezing through the overhanging rhododendron you came to a new land quite different to that you had come from. And following a snowfall this illusion was complete.  Much of the experience was there this morning with thick untrodden snow and an almost suffocating whiteness.

One can’t refer to this effect without mentioning that the atmospheric  wardrobe entrance is no more because SWT’s work programme has so attacked the rhododendron that it is no more. I’ve not the appetite this morning to lambast SWT however much they deserve it, so let’s just hope the shrubs grow back to where we expect them to be (and that the managers take an extended sabbatical).