Misty grey fields and forests. Icy winds with snow crumbs swirling around. Deer grazing in open fields, looking for sustenance under half-melted, re-frozen snowdrifts.
It's March but spring feels very far away and in the backseat of the car, I shiver in my puffer jacket and wriggle my freezing toes. I have dressed for a choir concert, not for a long, poorly heated car drive.
Then, incongruously, there is an icecream truck. It's sitting there at a rest stop, open for business. Icecream trucks are a thing of the summer.
We screech to a stop and four adults tumble out of the car to buy huge icecream cones. The wind coming across the fields swirls more snow around us, to prove that it's still winter.
We laugh at it, shiver, and stuff ourselves with summer hope.