White snow the colour of a bird’s egg, a pure evening hue of pale blue. Parallel strips of cloud, positioned at random intervals, like lines of cocaine on a glass table, the shade of a twilight sky. Crunch crunch along the escarpment, a bridge of snow suspended above the green valley, lithe and undulating below. We walk close to the edge and feel the space stretching out below and around us, the estuary to the south and the mountains in the west, their details clear in coats of snow white. Crunch crunch towards the setting sun. The rocky crests meander round scrubby trees, and then, a black outline bounds down the slope among the outcrops of stone. Between clumps of woodland a roe deer dashes, small and brief against the snowy dusk, exposed on the plateau for barely a minute, then down the pavement face to the valley bottom and the safety of the trees.
Copyright © Jack Threlfall Hartley 2019
