^ Snow today at lunchtime was the perfect antidote to feeling like I'd been inside too much lately. It was utterly bracing. Within minutes of getting out of the car, my fingers were numb and I was fumbling with the camera and my phone until my fingers defrosted.

It could have been the hypothermia speaking, but it was quite pleasant up there - not utterly, completely freezing like the one time last year where the wind went through you like you were a cheese grater with extra holes drilled into it.

Apart from the luscious crunch of walking through snow, the colour, the way it blankets everything, turning the world into a winter wonderland, the feeling of flakes falling on your face and all of that sort of thing, it's amazing how it makes things either very, very silent or somehow amplifies echos. And there's that strange sort of almost hissing noise when the flakes are falling.

It's sort of eerie, in its own way, but lovely.

I wandered ahead of the people I was with and was staring into the dense bushland, thinking how quickly silence would just envelop you if you walked into it. How disorienting it would be, too. Rather Picnic at Hanging Rock or something. But of course, without the panpipes and future Nescafe ads.

*cue: "Della? Dellaaaa? DELLLLAAAAAA?!?!?!?"*

*ahem*

Anyway. I love the snow so very much.