Out of the bus’s warmth and into cold bright sun, squinting. Beneath the soles of heavily padded boots, old snow cracked and crunched, and as I shuffled over to a metal railing, my eyes began to adjust.

I stood at the edge of a wasteland. Stretching out in front of me, as far as the horizon and then even further beyond, was an expanse of vast, endless white. A frozen, alien landscape so enormous that it dwarfed the mountains that surrounded it, and melted into the sky itself. I had the distinct impression that I had stepped off the bus and onto another planet entirely, colourless and unpeopled. Then, my squinting eyes were able to make out movement among the brightness. The landscape was graced by a scattering of tiny figures, turned a stark black out of contrast against the white. Figures here and there. Walking. Gliding. Being pulled by dogs.

I had to join them, to see it all for myself. Unconscious of my gaping mouth, I started down the bank towards the expanse, eyes moving from one wonder to the next. Every step seemed to bring something new - ice structures like thick panes of glass, then the jutting frozen shards making the surface uneven beneath my feet. Boats trapped by the winter. I stopped to stare at the latter. They had been tied up months ago and were now stuck fast, motionless. No slight swaying here, no gentle bobbing of stern upon the waves. Their silence and their stillness seemed odd - sad, somehow - as if they had once been living. Now they watched over the landscape with unseeing eyes, insects ensconced in amber.

Further out on the surface, my attention went to something at my feet, and my lungs seemed to constrict just a little. There, a few yards ahead, was a window in the snow. Though the white stuff carpeted the ground for miles, here it had been cleared, pushed to one side, revealing what it was I stood on. Uneasy, trembling slightly, I knelt down beside it and with gloved hands swept aside the last powdery remnants of snow.

There was no escaping it now. I knelt there, stared through the metre-thick pane of ice, and realised that it was the only thing separating me from...that darkness. It looked like the edge of the universe. First the cracks and scratches in the ice, the bright sunlight filtering through, and then... nothing. Cold. Dark. Empty. A moonless, starless night. Devoid of life, devoid of anything.

Under the blank gaze of the boats frozen in time, I stared into that abyss for a long, long moment before having to finally avert my eyes. Maybe it would have stared back had I stayed there just a minute more. But as I had been staring, I’d remembered what a friend had said about winter water.

“Listen. It’s alive.”

Alive. With effort, I manoeuvred myself around in my thick, cumbersome clothes and lay down flat on my back against the frozen surface. Feeling its strength and solidity through the layers, I turned my head to one side so that one ear - covered by my hat - could rest against the ice. And I listened.

Nothing at first, just my own breathing. Then, like some ancient echo still reverberating through time, a kind of song filtered through. The imperceptible movements of the ice were forming sounds, making their own music of sorts. Closing my eyes, I let it sing. The voice of winter rose and fell in odd, swooping moans, like the cries of distant whales trapped far below the surface. It sang of power and surety with scattered tapping and knocking, reminding those who listen that it had claimed the land every year since the Earth began, and was here once again. It sang of age and loss in its muffled, wailing tremor, and for a moment I could imagine ghosts drifting about the water beneath me. At times it took on a melody so ancient, so beyond human understanding that it frightened me.

When I pulled myself away from the surface, I was left with the impression that the song of winter was beautiful, and mournful, and terrifying. Down in those depths was the Earth as it had been many millennia ago, and I could not understand what it sang of.

A planet singing to a mayfly.

Back on the surface, people were skating in an oval rink by the ice sculptures, and children made angels in the snow.