Ahead of me at the far end of the path, just where it drops into the next valley, the wind has corralled a drift of dry leaves between the hedgerows. It fills the space behind the gate almost ankle deep, so that opening it sweeps a quadrant clear to mark my passage. The air is still and cold, the grass fringed with lines of frost, distant sounds seem unusually close at hand. Ivy weaves across the bank below the beech wood, bright green against the dead brash of the woodland floor, with early light reflecting from the glossy cuticles of the leaves. I pause and look eastwards along the valley of the Afon Rheidol. A few sheep look up from the pasture before realising I’m not carrying anything remotely edible – certainly not a rattling bag of grass nuts – and return to their stolid routine. A thin mist hangs between the trees that mark the course of the river, fading into the veil of haze which softens the distant hills. The sun has finally climbed above the horizon, but is still low in the sky – and a single red kite beats across the hillside in its search for breakfast. At the end of each pass the kite makes a sharp right-hand turn, the sun lighting up the russet of its underside as it wheels around. After the recent storms I’m relieved to see an old friend has survived. An ancient tree, split by time and weather into multiple trunks, and with an almost fractal crown, stands resolutely at the end of the hedgerow. Sheltered from the north and west by the steep hillside, only a scattering of twigs have fallen since I was last here, so the outline of the tree against the light retains its barely balanced complexity. I wander on down the lane under the bare chestnut trees, looking across at the field where gorse has begun to invade the lightly grazed pasture. Even at the turning of the year the gorse is, as usual, in flower – a scattering of yellow gently lit by the milky sunshine.