Distressed Damsels

A new look landscape wearing its dazzling white coat resting on the hedgerows and boughs contrasting against a vivid blue sky. Layers of beautiful crisp white snow a foot thick, frozen solid each night to -16C, tyre tracks gauged into the heaped icy deposits. The front wheels hit the potholes and the back wheel slid out of control. A scary moment and I was stuck fast but it could have been worse, I could have been on my way to the bottom of a fifty foot drop to the North Tyne on the right hand side of this narrow, single track. The second time in two days my car had become firmly rooted in snow and ice. The second time in two days I had spun my wheels enough to wear off the tread, the shovel in my boot not able to penetrate the two inches of solidly packed ice lying under the snow with any amount of persuasion. I was blocking the lane, no one would get in or out unless I could move my car and I saw Shelley coming towards me and I ran forwards waving my arms. Too late, she was too far down the track to turn around in the deep snow. She tried to pass me in a futile attempt not to get stuck herself and sank into the grass verge, the vehicle now in four wheel drive digging deeper into the saturated earth and now leaning frighteningly to the right. She too pulled the shovel from the boot in yet another fruitless attempt to free her car. Resorting to telephoning for help, for the second time in two days, the bright red Manitou appeared at the end of the lane driven by our rescuer in a high vis jacket. He was the only one owning a tow rope and attached it to the front of my car. The Manitou slid and skidded and eventually gathered enough momentum to pull me out of the tracks and out to the main road. Davey returned for Shelley and pulled her out of the verge.
I left my car at the roadside and decided not to be so lazy and walk the lanes for a while and enjoyed it. My very next walk I saw a doe and young buck roe deer looking for food in the fore field, they saw me and walked nervously across the drive and into the woods watching me as they went. I may not have noticed them had I been in my metal box. The cold air on my face was bracing and so refreshing but no amount of tread on my boots made walking safe. It was precarious and I watched the snowy surface tentatively as I walked noticing the arrow like tread of the pheasant pointing like arrows in all directions, the long hind of the rabbit and the long claws of the squirrel disappearing at the base of a tree trunk.
Slowing down the pace of life just a little has such huge benefits, I promised myself to do it all year long.