Winter Trees

The trees have been almost as surprising as the colours in their winter beauty.

Leafless trees form clear distinct outlines against the sky, the mountains, the white snow and the brown fields. Loss of leaves reveals varied craggy shapes, twisted branches and filaments of twigs with buds already waiting - confident of the ever recurring cycles of nature. Should we tell the trees about Climate Change or perhaps if we listen they are telling us now !

The trees form a dominant presence and in many ways are emblematic for me of the winter landscape. Skeletons of trees dominate ridge lines, bare branches frame landscapes. In a forest without leaves the mossy trunks and lichen covered branches are the main features above the ground. The trees are powerful reminders of the regeneration process of winter as they stand dormant, but with tiny buds already swollen and prepared for warmer, sunnier times.

The bare branches make long lean shadows on the ground and individual trees form a screen through which glimpses of background can be discerned framed by brown and black twigs and branches. The shape of the tree, the colour of the trunk with its associated lichens and mosses are revealed for all the world to see - or for that part of the world that is prepared to brave the elements to see a world presented bare, cloaked by winter, occasionally by snow but always by the blanket of winter light - the result of a sun low in the sky, of cold moist air.

When the trees are covered in snow another type of beauty altogether appears - from a distance it is a white veil below which the shape and the colour of the trees can be seen. In the forest it is a magical world of white, branches hanging low with the weight, snow on every horizontal surface and piled up against the trunks, the trunks grey and black against the white, bursts of silver and white as a clump of snow falls and catches the sun.