My boy snoozes deeply in the chair next to the fire that crackles and pops at irregular intervals. The house is warm and the light is dim and cosy. A chequered table cloth can be made out in the light spilling over into the kitchen, and the pots, pans and cups show their outlines on the wooden shelves on the far wall.

Darkness is the forest, standing, forebodingly, at the shapely windows on each side of the house. Only the very tips of the bare branches can be seen from inside. The bodies of wood, somewhere out of reach. A lone wolf howls in the distance and his voice echoes, rebounding, menacingly, between the mountains, with only the stars for perspective. And the cold.

In the distance, smoke pours from a cottage chimney in a clearing; the only indication of other life. Our shared garden, vast, as it is, still shared.

The village sleeps with my boy. I am up with the wolves. The night is wide awake. I fall, slowly, into a state of deep relaxation. My eyes become heavy. The sight of my small rooms become distant. Meaningless. Unreal.

When the day returns, the spooks retreat and the trees show themselves, innocently, for all to see. Branch tips more like branch tips than their former devil claws. The wolves sleep, as the cottage, and my boy is up with the cockerel, ready for a day of exploration, roaming, breathing in.

A bowl of hot porridge, a steaming flask of garden petal tea, a pair of winter boots, and a long way to go.

"Come on, then."

I close the door behind me and set off into the white woodland to find something new.