The Child's Book of the Seasons

by Arthur Ransome

At the beginning of the Winter the tits are very shy, but later on, if the window is open, they often alight on the window-sill and have a good look about the room when they have had their turn at the cocoanut and are waiting till the others have done to have a second peck.

I think all the Seasons are jolly in their own way, and perhaps it is a good thing that they are all so different. Do you remember the Autumn fairy story? Well the Seasons really are just like a family of sisters, and we should find them very dull if they were all exactly the same. After the snowstorms, when we go out together, things are quite different, and we are quite different. The Imp and the Elf wear red woolly caps instead of sunbonnet and straw hat. They wear thick, fluffy coats and piles of things underneath them, and thick furry gloves. Why, the Elf carries a muff just like any grown-up. And the ground has changed as much as they. It is all white with snow, so that it is difficult to believe that the hayfield where we played in Summer is really the same place. We put on our thickest boots, and they go crunch, crunch in the crisp snow. And we gather the snow in our hands and make snowballs and throw them at each other. And then we make a giant snowball, The Imp makes the biggest snowball he can in his hands and then puts it on the ground and rolls it about. Everywhere it rolls the snow clings to it, and it gets bigger and bigger till at last it is nearly as big as the Imp himself and it takes all three of us to roll it. We roll another and put it on the top of the first, and then a smaller one and put it on the top of that, and then we roll snow into long lumps for arms, and there we have our snow-man. We make eyes for him with little blobs of earth, and a nose and a mouth, and in his mouth we always put one of my pipes to make the poor fellow comfortable.

When we are tired of making snowballs and snow-men we go out of the garden and across the road and along the field paths to the wood, tramping through the shining snow. And we drag something behind us: can you guess what it is? Do you remember in the fairy stories about the people who lived near the forests? When the winter came they used to shiver and rub their cold hands and go to the forests for firewood. And as there were wolves in the forest they used to take a sledge so that they could carry the sticks quickly back again before the wolves could catch them. Well, when we go to the woods in winter we pretend that we are going to the forests for firewood and we drag the Imp's big wooden sledge behind us, and keep a bright look-out for wolves, though, of course, there are no wolves in England now. All the same it is very good fun to pretend that there are.

A jolly time we have on the way to the woods. The hedges are all bright with hips and haws, coral colour and scarlet, the fruits of the wild rose and the hawthorn. They glitter like crimson jewels in the white hedges, where the birds are eating them as fast as they can. The sunlight shimmers on the snow of the fields and the snow of the woods, and the broad white shining slopes of the distant hills. And, of course, all the way we watch carefully for the tracks of the wolves. We do not find them, but we find the tracks of birds that have gone hop, hop, hop, leaving each time the print of their feet in the snow, and the little paddy tracks of the rabbits, and the flap tracks made by the rooks' wings as they flag up from the ground.

For a long time the road is all up hill, but then we come to a deep slope down, when the Elf and the Imp sit on the sledge, and I give them a push off, and away they slide, quicker and quicker all the way to the bottom; and then, instead of going straight on to the wood, they drag the sledge up and go down again, and then once more, and then we all go down together and sometimes end in a heap on the snow.

When we leave the sliding hill we go up into the woods, and sometimes really do find the tracks of a big four-footed animal. The Imp and the Elf cry, "Wolf, wolf," but we know that really it is not a wolf, but a big red fox with a bushy tail, who has passed that way in the night, perhaps after stealing a chicken from the yard of one of the farms.

The woods are like fairy woods now, just as if the fairies had hung them with glittering jewels, for they are covered with snow and frost, and icicles, too, when the snow on the boughs has begun to melt and then been frozen again. We hear crunch, crash, crash, crunch, and then the woods are very still for a moment, and then we hear a great heavy crunch, and perhaps see a mass of caked snow tumble off a branch to the ground.

If it is near Chrismas time we do not bother about looking for sticks and dead branches. We walk straight along the edge of the wood to where three stout holly bushes grow close together. You cannot think how pretty they look, with their dark green leaves and red berries, and the white snow resting on the leaves, and you just cannot think how prickled we get in picking the branches of holly. But we think of Christmas fun, and do not mind the prickles much, while the Elf sings:

"Get the pale mistletoe,
And the red holly.
Hang them up,
Hang them up,
We will be jolly.
"Kiss under mistletoe,
Laugh under holly,
Hang them up,
Hang them up,
We will be jolly."