Another walk with John Clare is due. Winter is certainly smiling today. It’s a clear crisp morning. In the night the secret ministry of frost has been at work.

John Clare’s Winter

The bright January sun lights up our front garden with the colours of winter. I look out at this scene and dream of being out in a frosted country lane to walk, watch and listen with John Clare.

This track with its signpost seems to invite us to explore. The path is frozen hard, crisp leaves crunch under foot. The hedges are decked and dusted with frost, the subdued winter colours showing through.

Today it’s quiet. In January in Clare’s day there would have been the sound of woodsmen coppicing chestnut and hazel. A distant drift of smoke, a sign of charcoal burning, and the voices of cottagers collecting firewood from the woods.

With Clare we visit his Emmonsail Heath:

I love to see the old heath’s withered brake
Mingle its crimpled leaves with furze and ling,
While the old heron from the lonely lake
Starts slow and flaps his melancholy wing,
And oddling crow in idle motions swing
On the half rotten ashtree’s topmost twig,
Beside whose trunk the gipsy makes his bed.
Up flies the bouncing woodcock from the brig
Where a black quagmire quakes beneath the tread,
The fieldfares chatter in the whistling thorn
And for the awe round fields and closen rove,
And coy bumbarrels twenty in a drove
Flit down the hedgerows in the frozen plain
And hang on little twigs and start again.

Emmonsail Heath by John Clare

Sadly this famous poem was only published in 1908! How encouraged Clare might have been to know that today so many of us love his poetry.

Mid-Winter Spring

What would Clare have said about this artistic scene with its muted  palette of warm landscape colours, frosted grass and whisper-wizened grasses. I think he would have seen his Winter Spring here. Winter can be beautiful at times:

It is the foliage of the woods
That winters bring–the dress,
White Easter of the year in bud,
That makes the winter Spring.

From Clare’s poem ‘Winter Spring’

On our walk we meet the shepherd with his dog. We chat with the hedger cutting firewood to take home for the cottage fire. Over the newly trimmed hedge we see the ‘foddering boy’ feeding the cattle in the frozen fields.

On the heath are children skating on the lake, disturbing wintering snipe, and moorhens as they pass:

Skating along with curving springs
With arms spread out like herons wings
They race away for pleasures sake
A hunters speed along the lake

Back in the farm we meet the milkmaids returning from milking the cows and hear the thresher threshing corn in the barn.

It would’ve been such fun to walk with Clare, to learn from his wealth of knowledge about Northamptonshire village life in the early part of the 19th century. This was his life. He was very much part of this place.

Day’s End

As the hedger warms his frozen hands at the fire he:

‘tells in labour’s happy way
His story of the passing day
While as the warm blaze cracks and gleams
The supper reeks in savoury steams
Or kettle simmers merrily
And tinkling cups are set for tea.
Thus doth the winter’s dreary day
From morn to evening wear away.’

Listen in to this lovely reading from Clare’s ‘January’:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VoqTAAoG2Ho

What a treat it would be to watch a row of long-tailed tits collecting to roost on a hidden branch somewhere. I will be watching for these visitors again this January.

Wishing you a very Happy New Year, with plenty of good walks in 2025.

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