Miss Smilla's feeling for snow

I've been walking up the same road on and off for a few weeks. I love the way the snow remains in the lee of the sun.

Today there was the beginning of a biting wind and the snow had become frozen on the surface but was not quite strong enough to hold my weight. Lovely crunching sounds that changed with the snow depth, under the tree canopy where in places water had dripped and frozen from the trees or where the snow was underlain by a thick spread of chestnut leaves, which gave the crunchingness an echoey timbre. Towards the road surface the snow thinned out, puddled into ice and then was thick ice where it has been compacted by forestry vehicles.

People seem much friendlier above the snow line. We are all pulled together by our sense of adventure and daring, I dare say, when the sun drops behind the ridge and the wind catches in the high tree tops and all is silent but for the running of hidden torrents gambolling to the distant sea.

I remember little of the Miss Smilla book but it was an event and helped to put Scandi contemporary writing on the English-reading map. Or on mine at least.

There's an extra of the steely grey coppiced chestnut forest. I also saw what I would like to think were wild cat tracks.

The 'peak' in the photo is the highest point on the Pratomagno at 1548 metres (5,078ft). It forms the eastern bulwark of the Casentino valley which is bounded on the west and north by the Apennines with Mt Falterona at its head at 1654m.  I hadn't realised until today that Falterona is only 106m higher than the Pratomagno.