Country diary: the biggest hare I’ve ever seen sat boldly on its arse

Bleaklow, Derbyshire: They hunker down, escaping the wind and wary of predators, waiting for the hour after dark to feed

Brilliant sunshine and a covering of snow had transformed Bleaklow into the Arctic, the sky azure overhead with hints of turquoise on the horizon, bruising to mauve as the day wore on. Approaching Barrow Stones, the moors a glittering sweep of blue-white, nothing stirred but the bitter wind that curled around my neck. The wind had sculpted extravagant shapes from the snow: translucent fins of ni(C)vi(C) or else, where it eddied, sinuous arcs and twists. Soft spindrift filled the groughs between peat hags fringed with icicles. The same wind, I reflected, has done much the same to Barrow Stones, albeit over millennia rather than days, scouring a crowd of abstract heads nodding in the sun.

The snow had recorded more than the wind's passage. From time to time we came across a busy intersection of animal tracks, a meandering series of triangles made by grouse, the delicate feet of mice and voles, like sutures, stitching the lightest trace of time through the snow's surface. There were the unmistakable prints of mountain hares, also known more prettily as blue hares, forepaws offset and hitting the ground behind the back legs. Different animals had shared the same path for a while before looping off individually in a new direction. Then the prints would disappear altogether until we encountered a new group. Mountain hares don't have extensive ranges.