Pleasures of… Winter

Today we launch a new regular bonus member feature for 2026, published exclusively for Steady members. It will come in addition to our Book of the Month author interviews.

It’s a resurrection of sorts — a seasonal reimagining of the Pleasures feature (Abre numa nova janela) we ran on the main site until 2019. Once a quarter, we’ll invite a different writer to share their most favourite and pleasurable moments of Spring, Summer, Autumn or Winter. For the first time ever, these pieces will each come with a specially commissioned illustration from our good friend Adam Higton.

We couldn’t be more thrilled that the very first writer to take this on is longtime site contributor and friend of the River Amy Liptrot. Read on for the joys of clear night skies, rosy cheeks, cold air in the lungs and ice smashed with sticks.

It took some persuasion to get the boys into their cold weather gear and outside. In the woods, I call them to be careful of sliding on ice but they’re already charging ahead. Only a few people have been along the snow-covered forest road and alongside their footprints are the tracks of an array of other animals: deer, squirrels, different sizes of bird and dogs (“fox?” ventures the eight-year-old). The snow has revealed the richness of animal life in our local spot: the beasts who make their moves when we are out of sight.

When we get to the pond where I intend to swim, it is frozen solid. This provides a perfect job for the kids. They find a couple of sticks — or “boffers” as the five-year-old calls them — and begin smashing at the ice. I help by sitting on the edge and pushing the ice away with my boots. We manage to clear a bathtub-size plunge hole. I strip down to my swimsuit, pull on my neoprene boots and gloves. The boys are unperturbed, they have grown up with me doing this around them.