I walked the back way into work this morning. It was all blue skies and frosty ground. The river’s running high. I was walking counter to the current, but even so I could feel its wild beauty pulling at me, urging me to stay with it. To keep walking, past my turn off for work, across the fields until I reached the country pub, inviting in its squat stone-built solidity, and then up to the beech wood on the hill where the badgers lie sleeping. There my ears would receive the sounds of the wind and the woodland birds, my eyes would rest on the shapes of wintry trees, the sunlight sparkling on the rimy grass, and the far horizon beckoning me.