Bringer of seasonal changes that tear asunder the skies and let pour freezing and drenching rains, his is the thunderous voice that rocks us from our slumber, or howls at us in a mocking voice we have named the North Wind.

Like a white wolf whose stealthy approach we feel but cannot see, he lures us with the fleeting glimpses he grants us of his grace and majesty. A loping silhouette glimpsed in shadows. A flash of a white mane in a darkened wood, the promise of an encounter with a silent entity, an admired and envied predator, whose cobalt-blue eyes might meet our fascinated and terrified gaze.

Killer of colour and stealer of shadows, he casts upon the earth his own cold and indifferent gloom. Invisible though the spectre is to us, for our fellow creatures he is as obvious as a wound. They see him with their noses and their tongues, and feel his arrival on their skins. Some seek refuge in a long sleep or thicken their coats, while others spend the summer months hoarding food in expectation of his arrival. Then there are those finely tuned creatures too delicate to withstand his desperate measures. These exotic migrants leave before he chases them away.

But, like bewitched and besotted victims, to his shortcomings we are explorers in a whiteout. Our sight and other senses distorted, our heads and canvases depict him the way he wants us to see him: scenes in which pretty robins perch on the handles of snow-shovels standing upright in gardens in which grow holly bushes, their green leaves and crimson berries laden with snow. But none of these images convey the savage bitterness that bites into exposed fingers, worrying flesh until teeth penetrate bone.

And so with his stately robes he ensnares us. We awake, and through his frosty breath bear witness to the whitened…