COUNTRY LIFE
SNOW on the mountains can be seen for a great distance. Nearly twenty miles away from where I stood, I could pick out crags I knew, rock-faces and shoulders along a valley that marked a narrow road I had often taken in summer when going fishing. The blots of snow and ice made everything stand out, accentuated by new reflections, and as I watched I shivered at the thought of the cold wind that blew along that road, once the way to a farm that is now derelict. In the summer I had gone up there and stopped to listen to a cuckoo calling from a rowan tree. Ravens had crossed above me a little while before, and in the stream that trickled from pool to pool on its way down from the lake, a small trout rose lazilysat the sidesof a sunken rock. By May the snow will have drained; and the torrent will be gone from the stream. I expect to hear the curlew as it towers above the heather, and perhaps see a snake on the road.
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