a very long time ago i was walking alone along a path just south of the english town of stowe-on-the-wold. i had just spent the night staying in the town and was beginning my day with a short three-mile jaunt that would take me across some fields, through some woodland and then back into the town.
the morning was quite cold - it was early october - and a frost had settled over the branches and leaves and it was on that day that i came across a site that i have treasured in my memory ever since. a bush dotted with crimson berries, each of which was encircled with a perfect white ring of frost that caught the morning sun like a halo.
to describe the moment as magical would barely contain the wonder.
earlier this year i went for a walk through some nearby woods and when i emerged from the woods i noticed that some bushes, similarly berry covered had a dusting of frost on them as well. this is one of the pictures i took of that day. to accompany the picture i would like to share with you a mary webb poem entitled “hawthorn berry”.
A hawthorn berry
How sweet a thought,
How strange a deed,
To house such glory in a seed--
A berry, shining rufously,
Like scarlet coral in the sea!
A berry, rounder than a ring,
So round, it harbours everything;
So red, that all the blood of men
Could never paint it so again.
And, as I hold it in my hand,
A fragrance steals across the land:
Rich, on the wintry heaven, I see
A white, immortal hawthorn-tree.
mary webb from “spring of joy”
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