The snow arrived not as a gentle surrender, but a forceful declaration. It wasn’t the kind of snow that whispered of winter’s beauty; it was the snow of forgotten promises. It clung to the edges of the lane, a sticky, insistent grey, and the first thing I did, of course, was to try and move it. But the movement wasn't a solution, it was a deepening. Each shove, each scrape, only seemed to draw more snow into the spaces already carved out by the wind.
There’s a peculiar quality to snow like this. It doesn’t lie. It doesn’t attempt to disguise its intent. It simply *is*. And the intention, I realized, wasn’t to cover the path, but to reveal. To reveal the layers beneath. The damp earth, the roots of the ancient beech tree that stood sentinel at the edge of the field, the faint, almost imperceptible tracks of something that had passed before – a fox, perhaps, or a badger, or something older, something that didn’t leave tracks but lingered in the silence.
I tried again, a larger, more determined shove. The snow reformed immediately, thickening around the edges, as if mocking my efforts. It felt…ritualistic. Not a practical task, but a confrontation. A confrontation with the inevitability of things. With the knowledge that some paths are meant to remain untrodden, that some questions are best left unanswered, some wounds best left unhealed.
The air itself felt different, heavier. Charged with a sense of…expectation. Not a joyful expectation, but a held breath, a gathering storm. And I understood then that the unshovelled path wasn’t a barrier, but a gateway. A gateway to something beyond the immediate, beyond the neatly ordered world of roads and houses and predictable weather. It was a reminder that the world, in its rawest form, is always in motion, always shifting, always demanding attention.
I stopped shoveling. I simply stood there, watching the snow fall, letting it settle around me, like a shroud. And in the silence, I heard a voice – not an audible voice, but a feeling, a knowing – that said, “There is no need to control. There is only to observe.” And for the first time, I understood the true meaning of being unshovelled.