It’s late at night. The cold has come. Clouds of my breath drift across the lane, into the woods. I am on an icebound hill in the quiet and perfect dark. The night and cold clawing to get in under my layers. We are set for minus 8 tonight. Where I am is on its way to that as I work.
Earlier the council arrived. Smiles as bright as their high vis jackets. Tipped two piles of grit carefully from the flatbed. “You can put this down if it gets hairy. You will just need a few small sceach’s of salt spread along” he said. Climbed back into the lorry cab and was away to other business down the winding white lane. Ice and frost crunching under tyres as they left. “Don’t be stuck. Call if you need us” the driver shouted over his shoulder.
Some of the same council workers had come to cut us out when the trees blocked the roads in a storm. Left us the timber from our hedgerow cut up on the verge as firewood. “It will keep you warm” they said “it’s in easy handled pieces in your ditch”. They found my mother in law that same day and led her out through the path they had cleared. Trees down on most roads. A slick of ice. They took her on a looping long-cut they knew to be safe and clear. The flatbed ahead of her small Micra on winding winter roads. A type of kindness that smooths roughness from your world. From people fluent in goodness.
They had come three days before in the snow, before they dropped the piles of grit. We had need of leaving. Our thin green lane not gritted ever. Our 2 wheel drive pre traction control car not up to it. Where the hill falls to the farm road it faces North. Is closed in on both sides by forestry. It’s elevated. Frost clings here. Builds up to thick sheets of ice. One of the council worker was a local farmer. His own tractor skittered down the same hill earlier that day. We had found a 4by4 with trailer foundered on the hill that first day too. Idling, exhaust smoke drifting across the woods from halfway up the hill. The driver nervous. His trailer shifting, creaking, on the icy hill. Could not climb any further. Did not know if he could slide safely down. I know the hill. One side is treacherous. The other has some grip. His tyres slithering and sliding as he crept, skidded, slid and braked slowly down the hill with some help from us. A kindness he thanked us for.
The council workers knew we had need and came. That we had to leave the house. Gritted. Called to the house to tell us they had been. Made sure we knew the route they cleared. Came again the next morning and gritted again. Came then again when the weather turned once more and left grit in piles at the hill top and bottom. Bright smiles again and kindness with it.
It is the kindness. That you do not know is there until you have need of it. Like air – some kindnesses expand to fill the space available. That they remembered us when the weather turned once more and came uncalled and left us grit to spread was even more so. More kind.
I fired up the two wheel tractor and trundled down the lane with the tipper barrow attatched. A strobing headlamp on the steering column. Grain spade in the barrow. Ice and frost had gripped the lane in the few small hours I had spent rustling up dinner. Cleaning up after. Homework. Ice beginning to ripple thickly across the hill road. We have people coming home. They will have driven long. So here I am in the ice and the night. A single shrew threaded between the barrow and the salt as I shoveled in the grit, hurdled the fallen spade handle in a bound. The engine of the two wheel tractor thumping lethargically. A friendly kind of hum from it. Steady. Reliable. Not missing a beat.
Parked on the hill between the bordering woods, the hiss of thrown grit sliding down the frost sheeted hill, silence breaking as the engine rattled to a halt and sucked sound from the world. The belt of the stars in the thin darkness of the sky above. Dogs keening in the far distance. The scrape of the spade blade in the barrowbed. The half moon sinking beneath the far shoulder of a distant hill.
The work of the farm often draws me into the bright and quiet light of the day. But the quiet of the night, the silence, the velvet dark also sinks in when you work in it. When I have time and need to work quietly in it. In Spring night work is rushed. Panicked. Tense. Lambing goes well or badly. Weather turns or is well. Work I endure until it is done. Numb and dull with tiredness. A frayed time of work and worry. Winter night work is more commonly slow. Paced. Small bites taken from the certain and inevitable. Not the flood of worry and work that Soring nights bring. There’s a quietness and calm to the ice and snow when you have had the time to prepare for it. It happens at it’s own slow pace, and you happen at it’s slow pace too,
The two wheel tractor trundled here and there. Parked and was solid on the hill. Tipped small piles of grit. Which I spread by hand. I gritted a half kilometre of road in an hour. Firm footed in the dark. Spreading grit. The hiss of grit. The bite of a spade in sand and salt. The judder into silence of the tractor. The rattle of spade in the barrowbed. My work the the work of others kindnesses. Spread on the hill for all and sundry to pass safely through and further on. Kindness makes other kindnesses more possible. And with that I turn to home.
