Winter at Pooh Corner

‘“It’s a remarkable thing,” he said. “It is my house, and I built The Forest in winter can be bleak. Without snow,
the landscape can look brown and dull; the grass
it where I said I did, so the wind must have blown it here. And and bracken are dead; the characteristic breeding
the wind blew it right over the wood, and blew it down here, birds of summer – stonechats on top of gorse, tree
pipits parachuting down onto trees at the end of
and here it is as good as ever. In fact, better in places.”’ their song-flight, night-jars ‘churring’ at dusk –
have departed. With snow the soft contours of the
Illustration and passage from: The House At Pooh Corner
Text © A.A.Milne, line illustrations © the Estate of E.H.Shepard, colouring © 1970 E.H.Shepard and Egmont UK Limited.
Forest – so difficult to photograph well – become
even softer. The crowds of other seasons are no
more and loneliness is easy to find on the Forest’s
open spaces. Buildings, however, are scarce and
hard to see, Eeyore’s house even more so! But on
the 1st of April a couple of years ago, a local
newspaper did report a sighting of a small bear …