All’s white with world in my patch

SNOW in towns is pretty awful stuff. It instantly turns brown and mushy, penetrating townie footwear and spraying up from the wheels of cars.

It’s responsible for late buses and is often accompanied by burst pipes and other nuisances.

Country snow is rather different. I drove the other day along a road that runs on an embankment through part of the Bog of Allen. The red bog had turned white and stretched out on both sides of me, a dazzling plain that looked like something out of a fantasy novel. Every twig on the birch trees along the road verge had a blue-white frosting of snowflakes that glittered in the brittle sunshine. It was beautiful. Infinitely more beautiful than even the best of those Christmas decorations that have started to infest the local shops.

In the mornings the dog and I would go out to do our daily chores: feed the hens, thaw their water, bring in logs for the fire. Each morning there was fresh snow and the temperature was well below zero. Every breath was like drinking a glass of iced water and each footstep cracked through the frozen crust and left a neat print in the softer snow beneath. It was exhilarating. Even the dog thought so.

Retracing our footsteps towards the warmth of the house we would find our prints flanked by other tracks left by creatures that had been out and about before us. A jackdaw had been hopping around in the hen run, searching for any left over food. A small mammal had crossed the yard. The dog thought it was a rat. I didn’t argue. I could only see the footprints, he could sniff them. Many small birds had alighted beside the pond, probably looking for water. But the pond is frozen.

We go into the house and heat a saucepan of water on the cooker. Putting it on the thick ice covering the pond so that it melts a hole is not just a matter of providing the birds with somewhere to get a drink. There are fish in the pond and if the ice continues to thicken they’ll end up frozen into it like ants in amber.

The snow in the countryside does have its negative aspects. The small roads never see grit or salt. The odd tractor carrying a bale of fodder to livestock and the occasional jeep making a trip to the shop for milk and the paper have compressed the snow into shiny white ice. It’s difficult to stand on, let alone drive on.

Between my house and the local village there is a geographical feature that is unusual in Co Kildare — a hill. It’s an esker ridge, not particularly high or particularly steep by most people’s standards but awesome to local eyes. The other afternoon three jeeps in succession failed to climb it, slithering sideways into the snowy verge. But there’s nothing like a bit of snow in the countryside for bringing out the community spirit and producing the good Samaritan.

A man at the bottom of the hill owns a small digger that runs on tracks. It was able to haul the jeeps out of the hedge and tow them to the top of the hill. This sort of thing can be a bit annoying when it happens but soon becomes a good-humoured story about a minor adventure.

As I write this, sitting by the fire with a laptop, I don’t know how long the snow is going to last or whether it’s eventually going to outlive its welcome and become annoying, like town snow. But right now I’m still enjoying it and hoping there’ll be a fresh dusting of whiteness tomorrow.

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