Wednesday February 1st. Ice Flowers and Silent Pines

Ice Flowers and Silent Pines

I saw them as soon as I opened the blind in the sloping attic bathroom window – like tiny white daisies, scattered across the pane in the night.  Frost flowers, delicate and transitory, edged the pane, framing the picture beyond.  A picture of grey green grass, dappled with icy diamonds; of trees, bare of leaves, their delicate twigs a fretwork against a sky of clear, duck-egg blue; of dark hills rimmed with black pines; of grey cottages, smoke rising ramrod straight from their stubby chimneys.  Just out of sight, I visualise the Cairngorm Mountains, huge pillows of white, appearing soft, belying their granite hearts.

Cairngorms under snow

It’s over 20 years since we bought our week in the winter days of Speyside.  We first came the year my father died.  We couldn’t face New Year without him – the family parties on Hogmanay in the tiny cottages on Loch Fyneside where we stayed, near to my parent’s house, to see the New Year in.  I can see them yet - the children spending all day preparing party pieces, the laughter as ridiculous sketches were rehearsed; bending down to dance the Dashing White Sergeant with wee partners, whirling little hands in Strip the Willow.  My sister and family came from Ireland each year to join us all.  Once I remember Douglas and Alison performing Highland and Irish dancing together in front of the log fire.  And then the New Year dinner – a scrum of sixteen adults and kids crushed around the table.  Broth, steak pie, trifle, black bun; my mother sipping her sherry, the one and only alcoholic drink of her year.

But when he was gone, we knew all that was all gone too, that we’d have to find other ways of doing family.  And we did.  But that first year after he went, we came here, to Abernethy, for the first time.  And we’ve been coming ever since, for 26 Januaries.

Rosie

Some years I have come alone, and worked to author reports or design research, breaking to walk through the forests of Scots pine, cathedral-like in silence; other years Bill and I have come together, reading by the fire as snow swirled past the wide glass doors, huge soft flakes covering the sloping grassy bank that leads down to the lochan, slate grey in the winter light.  Other Januaries have seen tiny babies curled in our arms – Ben at 12 days old, Molly at six weeks, Rosie at ten weeks.  Toddlers have splashed in the small swimming pool, children have tumbled giggling off sledges, groups of adults and kids have laughed uproariously at board games around the oval pine table.  One year we walked along the old railway track to Grantown, Molly high on Calum’s back.  Wide expanses of fields and rough grasses stretched out on either side, reaching from the silent birch woods on one side to the dark broad waters of the River Spey on the other, deep and deceivingly calm, only occasional whorls on the surface denoting the urgency which rushes it towards the distant sea.  

Walking to Grantown

The red squirrels flicker up wide trunks; roe deer, unexpected across the road ahead or silent at the edge of the trees near the lochan; rabbits whose burrows pock mark the grass; crows caw, the fluttering sheen of their black wings; at night the stars, unearthly bright; once, the northern lights – the heavenly dancers – silken skirts of red, green, gold, whisking across the velvet darkness in an ethereal waltz.    

This week has been a thread woven through the family’s life for decades.  It’s a recurring verse – a chorus - in the poem of our family life.