It seems to be thawing now, here in North Yorkshire. At least, I think so. I can hear strange creaking noises on the roof as chunks of frozen snow begin to slide. Perhaps because of this, my dreams last night were full of things moving -  slipping and slithering and melting away.

After two weeks of snow and ice that we’ve had here, there will be many people who are relieved by the first signs of this thaw. But I can’t help feeling a little sad.

The Big Snow forced me to slow… right… down. In fact, several of the friends I’ve talked to over the last few days have experienced a similar change in rhythm.

And I notice, as I write this now, that I’ve talked to many more people over the last week or so than I have in a long time. Such lovely phone calls: ‘Hi, how are you? I’ve been meaning to get in touch.’ Or ‘We’re hibernating for the weekend and I just wondered how you’re getting on…’

Time. It seems as if there’s been more of it in these last few weeks. Time to spend inside the house, cooking, playing board games, writing, doodling, chatting. Noone has to be anywhere – because they can’t go anywhere.

It’s reminded me, once again, (and, oh, how I do need these sorts of reminders) of the importance of taking time to just be.

Shovelling snow the other day, I couldn’t help thinking again about where it all comes from. Isn’t it the oddest thing, this white precipitate that just falls out of the sky? These grains of ice that are just so soft… The metaphors are endless… I could go on for hours… In fact, in my notebook, I have.

I just can’t resist making patterns and relationships and meanings out of this strange and endlessly surprising stuff that yields so many possibilities when I slow down enough to really look at it, really experience it.

But yesterday there were the first small signs of thaw and I felt a restlessness, something shifting, an itching to move out into the world again. More metaphors.

And then, almost immediately, that little voice that says:

‘But I’m not ready. I don’t want to. I just want to stay here where it’s really warm and safe. Please.’

All that bla, bla stuff we do inside ourselves about slowing down – and what might happen,  getting back out there – and what might happen. Or not. Meanwhile, the air freezes. And thaws.

And yesterday, the lovely Valerie, a participant in my Word Sauce Online Programme sent me a poem that she has been making out of the snow. She told me that she’d been playing with the idea of being ’snowed in.’

Her poem speaks to me so deeply of the process of moving between inside and outside, this need to retreat, to go inside, to hibernate, to hide and -  at the same time – our desire to be out there in the world. I just had to ask Valerie’s permission to share her poem with you. Here it is:

‘I’ve been in a snow circled silence for a long time,
sound and time take on different characteristics
when you’re frozen, cut-off in so many ways.

From the crunch of new snow to the icy blue smoothness
of its walls, my ‘pretend’ igloo’ was complete.
It had taken years to make, you have to
tunnel down deep to get in –
even then there’s no guarantee
you’ll find me
unless I want to be found.
Icy nooks and crannies
cleansed of feelings beckon
with icicle fingers. Stay. Stay.

Or, I could use words
to dig my way out of this cold, safe world.
Slowly, putting one word in front
of an uncertain other, scrapping the slush away
until I find the ones I want.
Each one a step out, a step forward,
perhaps even my heart will thaw.’

Isn’t that beautiful. And powerful. It moves me deeply.

Thank you, Valerie, so very much for sharing your poem with us.