This Christmas, celebrate the dawn and see new light

Dawn is the best time to set out for a walk: that glorious period when the world is emerging from the night, and the sun streaks the sky with pink, before casting long shadows that prise open the day.

Alfred Wainwright, the great chronicler of Lakeland hills, said the early morning was when “the air is freshest ... the earth sweetest”. Birds, he went on, “are happiest in the morning, and most lively then. They dart across the path ... They chatter and chirrup and sing in unending chorus, blithely contended and gay, and so very glad to be alive.”

Even in the depths of winter, it is good to get moving as daybreak comes, however tempting it might be to draw the duvet back over your chin and slumber on. At Christmas, when there are so many things to occupy us, or to indulge in, you can have the land to yourself.

Our first Christmas in the Chilterns had been a strange affair. We had been joined by parents and cooked our first goose; all had gone smoothly and beloved traditions had been observed. But hanging over the festivities was the very recent failure of our first round of IVF, which initially had promised so much. Nothing could compensate for that sadness.

My wife returned to work on the 27th and departed for her train in the dark. There had been a hard frost and the house was thoroughly cold, even when the heating came on. I didn’t want to stay there alone.

By the time I’d washed and dressed, and wolfed down some toast, the darkness was beginning to recede. Outside it was bitter: the frost had been nipping for days and had taken a fast hold now. Within a few hours it would sparkle under clear skies like a glitter-festooned Christmas card.

Wainwright’s happy birds would have been more plentiful in other seasons, but even so, the occasional robin and blackbird sang heartily at the prospect of the sunrise, and blue tits twittered from hedgerow to treetop. They were indeed glad to be alive, and their enthusiasm was infectious.

Pitying the few commuters who were turning into the station, I sallied on past the ruins of Berkhamsted Castle – built during the Norman conquest and besieged during the reign of King John – then out into open countryside.

Horses shivered under heavy coats in fields surrounding a nearby farm, and a little further on a stunted oak stood alone in a narrow valley, encrusted with icy jewels. Just here, I plunged into a wood, where barren branches hung so still in the breezeless air it was as if they had been frozen stiff.

Birds continued to sing out from time to time, and once I was mightily alarmed by the barking of a roe deer, who I saw fleeing through the trees, bearing northeast. Otherwise, as mid-morning approached, silence reigned.

Eventually, I swung out of the wood again, planning to cross through farmland on my way back home. As I did so, I saw at last the world in all its glory, lit now by a sun beaming brightly, if a little weakly – almost milky, as it sometimes is when the winter is at its coldest.

The path descended through a field where more horses were paddocked, each one obscured by a cloud created by their own breath. A high hedge to one side was thick with brambles and I noted it down as a place for blackberrying in the autumn. Directly ahead another small wood lay in a dip, its treetops iced but ablaze as the sun’s rays fell upon them.

The shadow which had thrown itself like a blanket over our Christmas plans would lift, I knew. Not yet perhaps, but it would not muffle us forever, nor shroud us in perpetual darkness.

So, this Christmas, celebrate the happy morn – and get out into it to experience new light.