Lake District life of a photographer searching the Distant Hills

Wild Strawberries

28th June 2017

“Are wild strawberries really wild? Will they scratch an adult, will they snap at a child? Should you pet them, or let them run free where they roam? Could they ever relax in a steam-heated home? Can they be trained to not growl at the guests? Will a litterbox work or would they make a mess? Can we make them a Cowberry, herding the cows, or maybe a Muleberry pulling the plows, or maybe a Huntberry chasing the grouse, or maybe a Watchberry guarding the house, and though they may curl up at your feet oh so sweetly can you ever feel that you trust them completely? Or should we make a pet out of something less scary, like the Domestic Prune or the Imported Cherry, Anyhow, you've been warned and I will not be blamed if your Wild Strawberries cannot be tamed.”
― Shel Silverstein, Where the Sidewalk Ends

Wild Strawberries have now come into their own and fill the foothills and lower slopes of the mountains. These intense red berries, filled with both a sweetness and sharp tartness, have not been cultivated, not idealised, but exist in their own humble, overlooked way.

Their understated, delicate but unrestrained nature mirrors the wild, beautiful land in which they exist. A place with its own purpose, full of special, very rare ecosystems, in an environment where the hand of man is light (or, at least more considered).

And it is here, where the wild strawberries cling onto the hillsides, between scree and steepsided mountain, a dividing line, a terminator is discerned. It is here, standing on the fringe, between the arts of man and the wild landscape, the contrast between the wild and cultivated is most clearly detected! It is here we see how precious and vulnerable this landscape truly is.

It is at this point, between the self willed and the refined, that we start to understand the need to better appreciate these places for simply what they are and not for how they might contribute to our commercial or aesthetic needs. On this margin there is an opportunity to see the whole picture and understand the consequences of our activities on the landscape. Poised on the boundary where the contrast between our short term desires and values are set against the unbounded nature of a wild, uncultivated world sits in distinct, sharp contrast.

Yes gain joy from the aesthetic beauty from these grand landscapes, find inner peace in the stillness, marvel at the diversity of life that survives beyond the tarmac and concrete of our ecosystem. Yes, be excited and gain energy from the adventure of exploring, be empowered from the sheer joy of movement crossing or climbing these places, but also find a deeper understanding of the place beyond your own direct experience.

Become harmonious to the environment you inhabit and make your behaviour be in accord with the fragile, precious and infinitesimal complexity of your landscape.

Make what you do, climbing, riding, walking, running, camping not be a hard, unbending ‘shape’ superimposed onto this soft, sensitive place. Don't make it conform and submit to the will of ‘you’, but let the land and all it contains, be free..............don't cultivate it , keep it rare and like the strawberries that are now revealing themselves across the hillsides, make it remain wild.

15th June 17

Lilliput Lakeland

“Undoubtedly, philosophers are in the right when they tell us that nothing is great or little otherwise than by comparison.”
― Jonathan Swift, Gulliver's Travels

Although not a landscape that gives rise too, or channels a modern day parody of national politics (as many argue Jonathan swifts ‘Gulivers Travels’ was reflecting) my ‘Lilliput Lakeland’ is, however, most definitely a miniature land, scaled perfectly and set in juxtaposition to its neighbouring and predominant Lakeland mountains.

This delicate and overlooked area is an almost perfect reflection of the larger hills that stare across the valley. Here the skyline is as equally serrated, but only lower in physical stature. Here the hills are also punctuated by streams and crevasses, but less obvious as they are off the well beaten track.

This miniature world has a Stickle Pike and a Stickle Tarn, even a Raven Crag, but doesn't have the eroded trails and is frequented by few people. Today, for example, I met not one person during my 5 hour outing. This, by contrast, would be practically impossible if I visited the more famous Stickle Tarn (regardless of the time of the year).

What there is, in this scaled down landscape is a rugged area bursting with crags, buttresses and boulders, set in a pristine environment filled with wildlife. Here peace and quiet can be easily found and it is an area where there is little conflicting use of the land by walkers, farmers, mountain bikers and event organisers. Here, overlooked, almost as a dream, or distant memory is a landscape, existing untouched, like it has for centuries.



Each rock is adorned with a white tailed, Wheatear, each shrub and bracken stem providing the perch for chattering Stonechats. All the while Redstarts and Mistlethrush share the space between tree and stone wall, flying low to avoid attention, whilst Blue Tits and Gold Finches make raids on the insects that cover the many quilts of Fern that are now covering the lowers slopes. Overhead, the ‘cronk’ of Raven and the cry of Buzzards fill the hills with the drone notes of a traditional air.

I see more life here in one hour than I ever see in a whole day's excursion across the way, in the neighbouring Central Lakes. I also find a greater contact with my surroundings as there is a space, socially and mental, that allows an interaction between the non human and self. Here the gentle flowing beck is not only a thing to be crossed, but also a thing to be admired for its clarity, shape and form, understood for the flora and fauna its supports and for its music, contributing to the symphony of the landscape.

This ‘Lilliput Lakeland’ is an area where I can develop a harmony and sense of place that is far larger than the sum of its parts.

“All there is to thinking is seeing something noticeable which makes you see something you weren't noticing which makes you see something that isn't even visible.”
― Norman Maclean, A River Runs Through It and Other Stories

Everything here is miniature in comparison, but there is an indirect proportionality between the height, ruggedness, physical landscape severity to the peace, harmony and living complexity found here in Lilliput Lakeland.

“I winked at my own littleness, as people do at their own faults.”
― Jonathan Swift, Gulliver's Travels

4th June

Guilt

The world is full of anger and anguish, pain and suffering. There is far too much happening in our human world for my simple mind to fully understand, and far too much strain being placed on my natural, liberal emotions and sensibility. The human race is hurting and therefore (seemingly) destined to keep hurting itself.

As the awful fallout from another terorist atrocity is felt, I am keenly aware how far away I am from the typical target areas and so far away from the poor, desperate victims. This fills me with a profound sense of guilt, but also with an equal amount of relief that only, inevitabley, feeds my guilt further.

The hills that surround me, the quiet estuary that flows through my landscape, it's wildlife, peace and sense of natural order and balance all seem so far away from the alien and harrowing daily news reports. Here, with views towards the mountains rising up from the Duddon Sands, the world is calm, reconciled and uncomplicated. There is only the most simplistic, most natural needs and desires expressed. A Shakespeare sonnet rather than a tragedy.

Here, if you need god, you see his design in everything around you and you can be content. If you do not, you easily detect the artistry and complexity of nature. You identify the power gained from observing the abstract beauty of the world as it directs, inspires and informs human thought, creativity and action. THe landscape both reveals god and human as one, not distant to, not subservient, responsible or required, just embraced.

At this time, looking over the gentle waters of the Duddon, towards the rocky turrets of Consiton Old Man and Scafell, the vanities and distractions of recent events seem too remote and alien. The distant hills and their serene setting are in direct contrast to the 'understanding' that have directed the worst things of the human character. The disconnect from us, me, the world and my landscape is uncomfortable and I shrink.

Today I will head into the hills as a tribute to those who suffered, but also, I have to admit, to escape.

"The best of men is only a man at best"

KIt Williams (Masquerade)

10th May

Delayed arrivals

"O, wind, if winter comes, can spring be far behind?"

Percy Bysshe Shelley

Despite my early excitement, it seems Spring got delayed.

The weather conditions in the U.K. have been dominated by high pressure. Lengthening, dry days and bright sunshine, with only a few overcast, drizzly days, whilst Northern and Eastern Europe had experienced something quite different. The usual warmer continent having been gripped by a period of extended cold winter air. Even Spain and Greece were experiencing snow conditions.

The consequence of this wintery weather, I suspect, has meant the delay of a number of our migrating birds. Therefore, by the end of April many key spring visitors were still absent.

Looking back at my previous entries I notice that swallows and cuckoo have normally arrived by at least mid April. The Swallows having reached the Lakes by 11th and the Cuckoo by 21st April. This year, however, it has taken until the last week of April to see Swallows, followed unusually close by Swifts and then, at last, by the 10th May, the first Cuckoo to be heard.

As if trying to make up for lost time there is a flurry of activity and very much like the visitor lounge at a major airport, there is much toing and frowing as new arrivals appear each day. Today, I have seen my first Grey Wagtails and Sand Martins' of the year. These are now making home next to the earlier incomers - the Wheatears, Skylarks and Stonechats.

Meanwhile the hedgerows and meadows are filling with a pallete of wildflowers. Dog Violets giving way to Speedwells, Wood Anemone bowing to Wild Garlic and Daffodils conceding to Cowslips.

Though things started with a blip, the delay has been worth it as now the world is filled with life and variety.

"Nothing is so beautiful as Spring— When weeds, in wheels, shoot long and lovely and lush"

Gerald Manley Hopkins

Mother of Consideration

Making long and winding progress across the landscape are numerous ancient tracks and lanes. Sometimes they are almost hidden by the eroding effects of time, whilst in other instances they are clear and obvious. In these cases, and in a manner that seems obtuse, the tracks are overlooked as they are hidden in plain sight, their original purpose supplanted, obscured as they are now have a modern day use. The numerous Roman Roads that cross our land are a testimony to this, but also the many greenways, drovers roads that journey from north to south; east to west and the sunken lanes of the south east, that burrow through caverns of over hanging deciduous trees.

In each instance you have to wonder about their original purpose - where were they going, why were they constructed and who used them. As you reflect you then consider the shear effort and energy expended to create these tracks. Most were formed with the most rudimentary of tools. Many can be found in very wild, inhospitable locations (and this seems especially so when, high up on a Moor, or mountain and the weather is poor).

What was the motivation - What was the economic/personal/spiritual, even political need that gave the inertia breaking incentive for their creation and what thought for the effort and energy used?

Be you an assumed god, king, landed gentleman, owner of a small holding, farme, or workhand - what was the pay off from all that effort to the eventual reward achieved?

For the 'builders' remuneration, in what ever form it was received, would have been low, but the effort and energy must have been amazingly high. When you consider the miles and miles of quarried, laid and composed tracks and lanes, the tons of stone moved, shaped and positioned, their length and the engineering guile required, these routes must have an equivalence to the pyramids!

These are lanes that cut through the high moorlands, mountains, downs and coastal edges. They pierce through valleys, mountain ranges and steer, faultlessly around bog, river, lake and estuary.

Maybe we have to consider some other pressure, or motivation that might be more subtle and have a different value framework. As despite how significant the human effort, the amount of energy and resources to produce these routes, perhaps their creation is a product of a simpler life (certainly in terms of societal expectations of today). In these physically hard times, where the art of survival was more pronounced, combined with a more obvious connection to the land, the community and the environment, necessity was not only the mother of invention, but also its raison d'être and driving force. I am not sure today's spreadsheet has a column that includes this 'mother' of consideration.

9th March 17

Devouring the landscape

The way I approach travels, across the landscape, is probably obsessive as I deliberately seek to find new ways and seek out new things of interest that are far off any route represented in a guide book or on a map.

I have written before that I feel the cartographers art can, inadvertently, exert a constraint on the traveller as we too easily just follow the marked paths and permissive ways blazoned on the map.

I suggested:

"......I am keen to find new ways over and around the landscape. I am not keen to follow (or be followed) by a line of people, all heading in a predictable way, along over used and overly defined routes. These 'regular' paths are like railway lines, so predictable, offering the same views so offering a repeated intellectual perspective and is experientially confined".

Quoting my self does sounds vain, but I was again reminded of my thinking on this matter when friends were discussing (in reverential terms) the virtues of printed lines on maps and descriptions made in a guide book. I felt their planning missed the point and the maps and books were becoming a constraint, especially as the proposed routes would have to be slavishly followed.

I fear the over reliance of maps and guide books can too often lead the reader "by the nose" resulting in the traveller gaining only a limited experience of their journey and a smaller understanding of the land they passed through. The books and maps, though it is "not their intention, have become the dominant noise. The received wisdom. The hegemony of where to go and we do not question".



In contrast (perhaps) it is my desire (a peculiar driven inner need perhaps) to find new ways and discover old, long forgotten things on the way. I often stray off the path, make my way by following lines of interest, linking features to traverse across a hill, or search a woodland after bursting through the undergrowth.

Often I will come across curiosities that challenge my investigative and interpretative skills. These might be man made objects, geological features or evidence of long forgotten ways of life. So often, these 'things' are far off the beaten trail as to be probably long forgotten, but represent a different landscape than the one I pass through in the present time. Like pulling down the film set in the 'Truman Show' , a new mental picture of the land can develop in front of you.

This revelation might reveal the hidden, long forgotten dwellings of coppicers, or charcoal makers. The remains of their arboreal abode have now become enveloped and absorbed by the advance of a battalions of trees and now entangled in branches and twigs and covered in the mulch of a hundred years of rotting leaves.

However, the tell tale small mounds of earth, stone pits are still to be seen, even though they are now guarded by sentinels of hazel and birch.

Here, in the tangle of shrubs, prickling thorns, protesting wrens and scurrying squirrels the long forgotten art of the coppicer is now hidden amongst the lines and lines of sprouting trees. They now sit as 'upturned umbrellas,' bent and now seemingly discarded - a Roald Dahl landscape set within the deep folds of a small, faerie like valley.

Off the main track, in a mile square of untouched and unnoticed limestone plateau, a ravens nest sits distinctly, but surprisingly. It comprises of such contrasting material, including grasses and barbed wire and are all sat upon a plinth of limestone. Standing high up on the side of a Dales hill, accompanied by the cronk of circling Ravens overhead, the scene has an atmosphere of a gothic book. The nest, sat on its limestone obelisk, makes a mocking statue to the endeavours of man.

Then hidden, but still noticeable is a subtle but definite line in the rock that winds up the steep, northern slope of Grey Friar. This high Lakeland Fell, that rises out of the valley basin of Wrynose, has few recognised ways over and around its bulk, however there is evidence of man's passing from many centuries ago. In this case it is a cutting that is clearly the art of man, and it is almost invisible as it passes the remains of a delabidated building.

What the purpose of this track and where it eventually took its creators is unclear. The rocky 'path' winds up the hillside, but is now covered in grasses and moss and soon peters out into a bog. The effort, energy and craft is clear as you follow the route. The track steals access from every contour on its ascent and the stone reinforcement, holding the track against the Fell Side, subtly reveals the art of its creators.

Then step off the path again, leave the coded lines of access and human construction behind and you discovers a collapsed stone building. It is rubble now, going back into the earth, but once a hot spot of human endeavour and daily existence.

The location, deep within a mountain valley, soothed by the melody of a tumbling stream, has become a quiet, lonely spot and it seems impossible to imagine how any human could have made an existence here. However, the earth stills contains an energy of that past time. From the rubble, you notice lines of stone work, under thick layers of wet moss there is the hidden lines of walls and mined slates that provide a misty image of the past. As you step forward a stone clinks on stone, an echo from the past, as the sound bounces and reverberates around the surrounding hills. This is a calling bell as there is a sense of being surrounded by the dwellers of the past, all engaging in their daily activity of life.

I pass through this landscape, looking to the right and left rather than ahead. I am constantly drawn away from my destiny as some crease in the hill, an ill defined ridge or gap in the trees will beckon.

I no longer have a desire to pass along the ways many have tread before, just because this route has become an 'iconic' journey of human endeavour, as it is constrained by the concept of its origins. The inherent values and ultimate physical and spiritual destination are all too often already subliminally imprinted and coded within the text of the guide book and the lines on a map. These are modern constructions applied (within the same human framework) to practical, efficient and pragmatic ways, given a renewed understanding, but still a linear, one dimensional way of travelling and understanding the landscape, set within this new construct.

Furthermore, and on a more practical level, I also know I will be overtaking or have hoards of people pounding towards me. The purpose of their journey 'stylised' by the original concept of the route (though I appreciate we all bring our own need and meaning to that journey).

I want space, peace and a stillness that allows me to merge into the surrounding landscape with out being distracted by the human endeavour that too often just passes without looking, appreciating or trying to understand the land beyond the immediate view, or the repeated thinking of the maker of the line on the map we follow.

Pre determined start and end (?) - break free of destiny and devour the landscape! ;-)

5th March 17

Howgills Ascending

"He rises and begins to round,
He drops the silver chain of sound,
Of many links without a break,
In chirrup, whistle, slur and shake.

For singing till his heaven fills,
'Tis love of earth that he instils,
And ever winging up and up,
Our valley is his golden cup
And he the wine which overflows
to lift us with him as he goes.

Till lost on his aerial rings
In light, and then the fancy sings".

The air was still and languorous, but an implacable sun bathed the landscape in a pale, golden glow. High up on the Howgills, hidden within the grasslands of these steep sided hills was the emissaries of spring. New arrivals, bringing with them their ambassadorial gifts in the form of song.

These totems, when heard and after much peering into the Monet blue skies are eventually pinpointed. They appear as Thuribles as they rise and hover in the ultramarine firmament and burst into a fanfare of crossing melodies. And it is through their song they diffuse the essence of the new season across the moors and mountains. This is a tune that bounces and echoes off each ridge and buttress, a singer's air that acclaims the coming of warmer, longer days, filled with life and energy.

Today I saw my first Skylarks of the year and my reasons 'to be here' was re-affirmed. I was very happy indeed!



"Dear thoughts are in my mind
And my soul soars enchanted,
As I hear the sweet lark sing
In the clear air of the day.
For a tender beaming smile
To my hope has been granted,
And tomorrow she shall hear
All my fond heart would say.

I shall tell her all my love,
All my soul's adoration,
And I think she will hear
And will not say me nay.
It is this that gives my soul
All its joyous elation,
As I hear the sweet lark sing
In the clear air of the day."

Overlooked Duddon Sands

31st January 2017

The quiet and stunning Sands of the Duddon Estuary is an overlooked part of the UK.

Held within the cupped hands of Black Combe and Bank House Moor, this fine thread of water tumbles out of the mountain valley to slowly expand on its journey westward towards the Irish Sea. However, these seeming calm waters started their journey from the very highest mountains of England, where the nature and behaviour of the river was a lot wilder and fickle.

Born in the very heart of the Lake District, the River Duddon tumbles down through steep mountain architecture and as the water crashes and falls the surroundings and character changes. High up, in the tight confines of the mountainous Duddon Valley, the water tumbles and bursts through volcanic gorges and crevasses. Here the temprement of the Duddon is of keenness combined with a sense of frivolous abandon. It is capricious and any subtle weather changes can create unpredictable effects.

Like the contrasting personalities of Dr Jekyl and Mr Hyde the effects of weather can reveal two different rivers. A storm will encourage the rise of the Duddon's inner monster, as it crashes aggressively onwards, forcing anything or anyone out of its way. Then, if a prolonged dry period is experienced, the once proud Beck is cowtailed and becomes meek and insular. So easily it is a spit, a simper, and on occasions a mere trickle.

However, despite the vagaries of the weather 'up' the valley, further west the waters flow they start to regroup, collect and enlarge. This is now a slow, more tempered and more wise Duddon as it has, like traveling to new countries, been enveloped by new geology and new inhabitants. The Duddon has traveled to new environments and in so doing developed a milder demeanour.

Through all the tumult, twisting and crashing the Duddon has matured, where a more seasoned personality is revealed. It is also now that the waters enter the estuary and encounters the sands.

The Sands of the Estaury tame the waters of the Duddon. They embrace and curl gently into the river, soothing and calming to create a more serene, tranquil environment. Here the Sands help create a quietness that diffuses over the landscape. These rusty brown sands, stained by the iron content that leaches through their grains, slowly and gently, but with a pervading pressure, teas the Duddon onward towards its destiny.

The journey has been transforming and transcendental on many levels. Where once the Duddon was accompanied by the song of Long Tail Tits and Grey Wagtails, with Buzzards and Peregrines swirling above enveloping crags, now there are Curlews, Oyster Catchers and Turnstones in amongst the dunes and seaweed. These new companions are not catching airborn insects or hunting small mammals, but now flipping over weeds and pecking the sands looking for invertebrates. The waters formed and changed by different actions and different cultures along its route.




The scene is ordered, gentle and peaceful. On the horizon Black Combe looks on with a parental eye. There is little interruption to the reverie and few come here to share or experience the very natural peace and beauty that exists, though we too can experience this 'journey'. .......The quiet and stunning Sands of the Duddon Estuary is overlooked.



* The authorities are planning to erect massive electricity pylons along the edge, and eventually across the mouth of the estuary. It is clear this will ruin the aesthetic beauty of the Sands, but may also have a negative impact on the diverse wildlife that lives in and around the dunes and waters edges. It seems the Duddon Estaury is overlooked no more!

A new (ish) way of showing some of my pics.......I can easily understand the music choice might not be to everyone's taste (sorry)! In my defence it is a sound that has been with me for over 40 years and is something that so often plays out in my head when walking the hills. The music reflects my feeling of traveling to a border, an edge, where time and human norms are left far behind. I step out of "reality" to enter into the 'golden void' (though I appreciate this interpretation might not be the original meaning hoped for by the songwriters ;-)

Click link below for YouTube presentation (with note to the caveat outlined above)

https://youtu.be/ca-wx8EMtd4

1st Jan 2017

A live(ly) winter

Even though it is winter and world has all the appearance of being lifeless and still, there is actually lots of life in the cold, grey landscape, and increasingly so now the winter solstice has passed.

If more attention is give to the landscape and if I skew my normal view of the world by allowing my mind to ignore the din of human activity, and pay attention to subtle hints in the landscape, a tumultuous world of wildlife starts to come into focus.

This means attention has to be given to the wet bog, or the crisp snow as the footprints of passing deer, badger or fox are revealed. An alertness to almost imperceptible activity heard from the bare, leafless trees, or scanning the the distant horizon reveals the self focused activities of wildlife searching for food in amongst the branches of trees or at edges of fields. Increasingly, as each winter day passes, you become aware of the 'frenzy' of wildlife all around.

In the last few days I have experienced the spirit lifting joy of buzzards floating above the cold, stark mountains of the Lake District. Their outstretched wings form an iconic cross-shaped pose against the metalled sky. Their adornment of warm brown feathers and white markings stand out in contrast against the drab, winter setting, that provides a warmth to the soul at the very least.
From my cold, rocky stance, watching the ariel display of these great birds, I feel an overwhelming sense of harmony with all things. The Buzzards appear like ancient elders, overseeing the landscape and its occupants. With each rise and fall of the mountain breeze, they perform a series of beautiful and graceful moves they demonstrate their affinity with their environment and pass judgement on you with their lamenting cry.

The Buzzards are dancers on a stage, who's a scenic backdrop is the stark hills and frozen streams. In this wild, winter landscape the buzzards perform a choreographed dance that (in its perfection) tells the story of the universe through the grace of their movements and the realisation that this is all acting in the right place, at the right time. There is a sense of grace and perfection mapped out in their balletic flight.

If you are heading into hinterland of the mountains then tread carefully when acrossi g the boggy, desolate moorland as you will very likely disturb Snipe. These timid, ever alert birds have moved inland for winter and hide in the waterlogged bog and moss of the high ground. Get too close and they are off, faster than the Tornado jets that still fly across our national parks on clear days. The Snipe's flight more exciting and less incongruous.

Then there is the pair of herons, fools in a winter play, staring foolishly at a pool in a flooded field. Their wait will be long and fruitless, whilst the fish in the nearby stream enjoy the schadenfreude.

Though hidden, it is wonderful to consider the many insects that are now underground in larvae or egg form, waiting for spring. They may not be obvious, as they have buried themselves away to avoid the worst of the winter conditions but their activity is energetic.

Then there are the new buds on many a tree, but especially the hazel, ash and beach. Every year I remark that 'they' (the buds) are early. Perhaps they are, but they do appear in winter. These are emissaries of the warmer times to come and remind us of the thick leafy canopies of summer.

In amongst the trees is a raiding party of Long Tail Tits and Gold Crests scrumping berries and insects from hoary, hawthorn. They are busy, too busy to pay any heed to me as they move from branch to branch, tree to tree. There is a sense of excitement and urgency in their actions as they need to feed to stay warm and they also need to beat their rivals for each berry. This is bird Olympics.

The winter days are short, so as the skies darken the owls hoot and screech, filling the winter landscape with the eerie backdrop that is reminiscent of the opening scenes of a Hammer House horror fiilm. In this setting Fox skulk at the edges of the wood, causing alarm amongst the pheasants who scrub around the edges of woodlands. As the fox (or myself) comes too close these beautiful, but ungainly birds launch inelegantly, clattering and croaking, just about lifting above their skyline of branch and rock. Ultimately they crash land into some far off scrub, expressing, with garbled calls, their disgruntled irritation.

Squirrels, like someone who has lost their keys, pick and scrape through the undergrowth. This time of year they seem less wary and more focused on finding their treasure. However, get too close, or stare too long and they are gone, up the nearest tree.

The winter landscape is pulsating with life, but it is all much more focused on surviving and perhaps this is why winter is such a beautiful and powerful season, inspiring many a writer and artist, it is a season when we can actually touch our own existence, the thin membrane between what it means to be alive and not. We see the other side, be it subconsciously, but as the cold pinches our noes and stings our toes, winter remind us to push back the inevitable and delight in the now.

The Clutter Problem

“Perhaps it’s that you can’t go back in time, but you can return to the scenes of a love, of a crime, of happiness, and of a fatal decision; the places are what remain, are what you can possess, are what is immortal. They become the tangible landscape of memory, the places that made you, and in some way you too become them. They are what you can possess and in the end what possesses you.”

Rebecca Solnit (A Field Guide to Getting Lost)

How do we interpret and therefore understand the landscape?

The 'Clutter Problem' described as part of the 'X-Ray Vision Hypothesis' argued humans have evolved with eyes located on the front of our heads to enable out early ancestors to see food, or noegotaite an easy route through the dense arboreal landscape.

How this works, describes theoretical neurobiologist Mark Changizi, is "when you hold up your finger vertically and fixate your eyes on something far beyond it, you perceive two copies of your finger, and both copies of your finger appear transparent." Therefore, with our eyes placed as they are, we can see beyond the woodland clutter.

However, this is an all too simplistic and purely biological viewpoint on our interpretation of the landscape. We develop a multilayered, complex map of our landscape and an even more diverse and multi faceted imagining of our world. Our cumulative interpretation, physical, mental - reasoned, believed, start to transform 'us' and 'us' it - entwined in experience, dreams, hopes and memory. Or, as Rebeca Solnit more effectively describes; "They are what you can possess and in the end what possesses you.”

"It is true there are places which stir the mind to think that a story must be told about them. But there are also, I believe, places which have their story stored already, and want to tell this to us, through whatever powers they can; through our legends and lore, through our rumors, and our rites. By its whispering fields and its murmuring waters, by the wailing of its winds and the groaning of its stones, by what it chants in darkness and the songs it sings in light, each place must reach out to us, to tell us, tell us what it holds.”

Mark Valentine (The Axholme Toll)

Despite the obvious physical design, we are not just a faceward viewing animal, as we understand the world in a 360 degree, multidimensional, multisensory way.
Not only do we decode our immediate landscape in 'wrap around' manner (sensing the ground below, the sky above and sublimely absorbing what we passed and left behind) we also understand the world through a combination of our senses and memory. We smell, we feel the environment but we also remember the past, recall previous visits and therefore craft and shape ideas that immediately form our present and futures.

In fact, I believe if we only looked forward (in the biological sense) we would only understand a narrow perspective of our world. We would still believe to be living on a flat, disc world, at the centre of a small universe that rotated around us. Our minds would be limited in our interpretations, only able to determine the anthrocentic view that 'it' had all been designed for our purpose. We would only see our fingers held in front of our eyes.

When I am standing on some lonely hill, the landscape stretching away to a distant horizon, with layers, I see more than the oncoming tide of rolling hills. I sense the use of the land past and present, I detect all manner of wildlife busy. Busy surviving, growing, propagating. I cannot help sense the overal melody and be absorbed into the dance 'of things'.

Just maybe, if we truly are a 360 degree/multimemory/multisensory perceptive animal, we may collectively become to understand our true place in the universe and eventually gain a greater appreciation of the complexity of our environment and how life is not shaped in our image, to serve and be placed here for our advantage, but to realise that our fellow world companions are here's for their own, completely separate reasons.

We not only see the immediate landscape through the means of a primal, survival trickery, but as place filled with complex layers of wills, needs, patterns and perceptions. We see beyond the clutter.

"Only when people know will they care.
Only when they care will they act.
Only when they act can the world change."

Dr. Jane Goodall

6th Dec 16

Empty and hollow landscapes

If the conditions didn't make it clear enough then the Met office, as of the 1st December, announced it was 'officially' winter. This means it is the time of year where the sun makes a reluctant appearance above the horizon and, after what is too short a time, slips all too enthusiastically back to its hiding hole below 'our' edge of the earth.

There is an increasing and pervading sense that everything has stopped. The landscape is quiet, not only from the sounds of wildlife, but also from the discordant din of humans. It feels as if the landscape has emptied.

This feeling was further emphasised during a recent trip into the Yorkshire Dales. These rugged, steep sided valleys are fully held in the grip of winter, whilst the valleys, roads and hillsides are devoid of any obvious movement. The little life there is is encountered rarely and where it's is met, it is because the animal is desperately searching for food.

On this trip I came upon an occasional Robin protecting his hawthorn bush. A shrub that held a treasure as it was laden with ripe, scarlet berries. Then of course there was the ubiquitous 'statuesque' sheep, that pepper every hill. However, their movements were limited as they made selective searches for energy rich grasses (the few blades that had made the most of the limited sunlight).

Other than these few symbols of life, the world holds a deep emptiness. All is profoundly still.

At this time of year these wild landscapes reveal the true character of the season. Peering over the deep, almost secret valley of Dentdale, I see snow capped Fells and frozen pools, nestled under dark, cold buttresses. It seems I am looking into the very heart of winter and there is an intense stillness and solitude touches the soul.

I ascended the steep slopes of Gragareth, where nothing can be seen to move in the valley, except the chimney smoke from farm houses. These slender wisps rise as guidepost, leading their inhabitants to a warm and homely welcome.

Walking across the lonely and lofty ridges, I meet no one and I know how unlikely this will be at this time of year. The days are too short, the local folk are tucked away in their abodes or working in barns. Every now and then they will quickly pop out to check on their beasts, add feed, but then hurry back to the warmth of a shed, house or barn. It is too cold and winter wants their heat.

All is still, and cold and all too soon the light is fading again. It is getting colder.

On my excursions across these hills (which over several days also included Whernside, Gragareth and Barbon) I meet not one person. However, after a day traversing the lofty ridge that separates Barbondale and the Lune Valley I come upon a small group of potholers. Their day, like mine has been dark, but theirs filled with the noise of their fellow adventurers, the crashing of falling water, the echo of footsteps around hollow rock walls. It then occurred to me, during these cold and dark days, this particular empty and hollow landscape had more people below ground than above.

As the end of a year nears, it seems Winter turns the world upside down. What is usually up is now down.........Perhaps winter is just the reset button.

11th November

Autumn Mist - Enter The Twilight Zone

Autumn is the season of mist and fog, where the world is changed and distorted. The familiar is now tangibly different as all sense of size, space and location are questioned.

The season brings a fundamental change in weather phenomena. As night temperatures plunge cold air rolls down into the valleys forming a dense cloud of suspended water droplets that, on touch, both freeze and drench at the same time. Across the high moorlands the watery air forms and condenses around every blade of grass and slowly rises as a shimmering curtain of haze. The scene is that of a gothic movie where the mist rises in filaments and drifts across the landscape.

Traveling over the high mountain passes you look onto the valleys below and experience autumn in its most profound. Over every lake a thick nebula of mist forms, shrouding the immediate world in a grey, monochrome murk. Like a visitation of alien craft, these dense watery clouds hover over the water, shrouding the enclosed valleys, making them secretive, seemingly inaccessible spaces.

In each instance the colourful world is cut off, and left outside. You are now contained within a bubble, an alternate reality and, like Alice passing through Wonderland, all sense of size, distance and shape have been changed. You have now entered the world of the 1960 sci-fi series - the twilight zone.

"You're traveling through another dimension, a dimension not only of sight and sound but of mind. A journey into a wondrous land whose boundaries are that of imagination. That's the signpost up ahead - your next stop, the Twilight Zone!"

The mist is is not just a monochrome layer, stealing away the dimension of depth, but a twisting, shape - changing medium. Held within the silvery substrate there are a contrasting mixture of swirling imagery and profound stillness. Your senses have a limited variation of information to absorb so you are easily confused and disorientated. Your eyes and ears have few references to anchor on to, so the world becomes disconnected and unhinged.

In this sensory desert, you are absorbed into your own 'personal wilderness'. Set adrift in a flat ill defined world, where the lack of varying information confuses all ideas of time and place - you could be anywhere and at anytime.

The world is now a stone coloured impressionist painting. Small rocks can seem like huge crags, steep drops seem like cavernous holes that fall forever. Shades shimmer and glide through the murk, curving, twisting; changing shape and form, eventually emerging from the grey shroud, transforming the giant into a walker, a man eating beast into a sheep, an ancient, foreboding fortress into a summit cairn - all a shape shifter.

Recently I spent a day walking the hills of Dent. A beautiful, winding valley tucked between the hills of the Yorkshire Dales and the Howgills. On this particular day it was a dark, brooding valley, shrouded in a watery haze of mist. The day was cold, grey and wet, but slightly warmed by the occasional, welcome glimmer of a pale sun that struggled to shine through the murk.

In these opaque, silvered mists, the call of Black Grouse is mechanical, maniacal and piercing. The noise of the wind, or a tumbling beck are all distorted by the lack of depth - where the origin for these sounds, be they bird or the elements, are unfixed. They swirl around you within the 'clag'.

You are on your own and your understanding of the world is just the few feet in front that opens up as you step forward, and closes permenantly behind you as you pass through.

Then, in complete contrast, after toiling through dense, wet, disorientating mist you suddenly break through into a world of bright blue skies. Again, like Alice, you have entered a world turned upside down. Bright skies, warmth above and cold, wet below.

This time you have entered Xanadu, found the lost portal into a utopian land that floats on top of the clouds.

Unfortunately you are not a permenent citizen. You already know you will have to once again plunge back into the cloud, passing through the shadowy dwelling of wraiths and ghouls to hopefully find the sanctuary of the valley floor.

Autumn is a wonderfullymagical time of year, where the inevitable mists create a landscape where the imagination can escape. Absorbed in the mist, in your own 'gold fish bowl' of reality helps the mind to wander further afield. Each journey, this time of year, will bring new and different experiences that test and tease, but also reaveal more in their shroudedness than they do in plain sight.

“I wonder if I've been changed in the night. Let me think. Was I the same when I got up this morning? I almost think I can remember feeling a little different. But if I'm not the one same, the next question is 'Who in the world am I?' Ah, that's the great puzzle!”
― Lewis Carroll, Alice in Wonderland

Under An Old Oak (The flame of the universe)

Ethereal.
Re-awoken, under, age-old oak,
Its solicitous arms
Trace the purpose and design
Within its sagely embrace.

Betwixt fear and reverence,
Sheltering me from the mortal rain.

There is a Power;
Fecund, growing and amplifiying.

The leaves holding the sun,
As I stare into the heart of the world.
Pulsating.
Colour coursing through each vein.

I stood on the root of the universe,
The world turning above......
Blazing.

“The fleeting hour of life of those who love the hills is quickly spent, but the hills are eternal. Always there will be the lonely ridge, the dancing beck, the silent forest; always there will be the exhilaration of the summits. These are for the seeking, and those who seek and find while there is still time will be blessed both in mind and body.”

AW Wainwright

Why do I spend so much of my free time walking? I know many of my close friends are bemused with my seeming obsession with the outdoors and walking.

The answer is not obvious as it involves walking away whilst simultaneously attempting to walk towards something; escaping to relocate, or as Rebecca Solnit suggests:

“To lose yourself: a voluptuous surrender, lost in your arms, lost to the world, utterly immersed in what is present so that its surroundings fade away…….to be lost is to be fully present, and to be fully present is to be capable of being in uncertainty and mystery.”

I find walking through wild and beautiful landscapes both cathartic and emotionally stimulating. I walk up a mountain as a boy and come down a man! Well, maybe not quite, but each journey I am changed (be it only subtly, but there is a cumulative effect).

Through her poetry, American poet Mary Oliver, details the influence and power of travel. Her poetry identifies how passing through, whilst being immersed in the natural world, can have a profound effect on 'self'– a journey offers an experience that seems beyond the ordinary or common. It is transcendental.

Nothing new here, I hear you say. Many, from Henry Thoreau to John Lister-Kaye, have identified that it is the journey not the arrival that is important. It is the process and not the product.

As I head out into the landscape I walk towards a place of mental stillness . I leave behind the trappings of everyday life and filter out the noise and distractions of work, family and friends. I enter the ‘hills’, surrounded by crags, streams and serrated ridges, where there is only the sound of the wind and a space forms that is filled with just my thoughts.

The process of walking and the effect of the surroundings allow my thoughts to flow outside of me and towards other realities, possibilities and time. All the clutter that seems to make life complicated is metaphorically left, down in the car.

Like the size of the car, the significance of life’s difficulties become smaller with every step.

I have discovered, from the journeys I make into wild landscapes, that I begin to have an intellectual engagement with the landscape I pass through. I begin to develop an insight of‘it’ and myself, whilst more fully understanding my part in the overall pattern. The 'journey' has both a healing and intellectual dimension.

However, the power of this process seems overlooked as it is given so little weight in our cultural and societal narrative. Despite the artistic responses of writers and poets, the potential of personal journeys into the wild has not been collateralised into our cultural vocabulary. This is maybe why so many friends are mystified with my passion – it is an alien concept that seemingly has very little value beyond the physical effects.

Very much like traditional activities, such as popular sports, the narrative is always about the health benefits. It is rarely about the inherent beauty that is an integral character of the activity, or about the joy of movement that is experienced in the participation of a journey. The transcendental value and the expansive power to the mind is overlooked, as the focus is on the physical.

I believe the 'power' of expeditions (however modest) into the wild, beautiful and natural landscapes; where you are surrounded by the creations of nature (as opposed to Man), where the design is not that of the human mind, but that of the world - not only strengthens us mentally and physically, but also helps to develop a greater respect and sympathy of the world we share with others.

That's why I walk a lot ;-)

The Journey

One day you finally knew
what you had to do, and began,
though the voices around you
kept shouting
their bad advice--
though the whole house
began to tremble
and you felt the old tug
at your ankles.
"Mend my life!"
each voice cried.
But you didn't stop.
You knew what you had to do,
though the wind pried
with its stiff fingers
at the very foundations,
though their melancholy
was terrible.
It was already late
enough, and a wild night,
and the road full of fallen
branches and stones.
But little by little,
as you left their voices behind,
the stars began to burn
through the sheets of clouds,
and there was a new voice
which you slowly
recognized as your own,
that kept you company
as you strode deeper and deeper
into the world,
determined to do
the only thing you could do--
determined to save
the only life you could save.

Mary Oliver

Into the mystical mythic

It was time to get seasonal! Therefore, with the aim of better experiencing the characteristics of autumn, I was heading for the wild, rugged West Coast of Scotland. The Mull of Kintyre to be exact, as going further north, into this bare, rugged landscape I would find the season to be more advanced. Once here I could immerse myself into the season's mystical quality.

The Kintyre is a low lying peninsula that thrusts out, like a 'finger of the paternal right hand' towards Northern Ireland and it is easy to imagine how these two coastlines were once connected. The sea in this area is turbulent and treacherous as it forms a barrier between the Irish Sea and the wild Atlantic and is full of strong tides and desperate whirlpools.

It is due to the position of the peninsula that the sea is funnelled, twisted and directed into a wild flow that pours between the land and Isle of Jura and out into the main ocean. All this turmoil captures localised weather systems which can be blown across the waters to instantly wet all that linger too long.



Whilst on terra firma the landscape is seen to be a continuous wave of small craggy hills, pine forests and deep broadleaf woodlands, rolling into each other. These sylvan enclaves are the natural habitat of Red Deer, Pine Martins and Red Squirrels, whilst the craggy coastline provides habitat for Seals and Otters. Above, in the wind blown skies, are circling Gulls, flitting Owls, and hovering Buzzards, and even, if you are lucky, the (to me) mythical Golden Eagle.

Even getting to the Peninsula is stunning as my journey is along a beautiful route through the Arrochar Alps. These high mountains form a barrier that appears to block off the west coast from the central mainland of Scotland. Steep sided and full of crags, with strange shaped rocks that thrust up through the surface of the mountain. The route to the Kintyre has echoes of Coleridge's expedition to Xanadu - the journey passes through walls of rock, ‘down to a sunless sea’.

On my arrival to the Kintyre it was clear my initial premise was correct. Autumn was in full swing, with leafs changing colour and forming a carpet over the woodland floor. There was a thin, autumnal mist over the Loch, clinging to the edges of the hills like the smoke from a restless dragon. Autumn in Kintyre appeared to be at least two weeks ahead of the Lake District.

The following days were spent wandering lonely, wild tracks of land over moorland, mountain or coastal fringes. I only met two people the whole week(on the summit of Ben Donich. So lonely were these paths that the Red Deer I regularly came upon looked on with more curiosity than concern.

High up on the summit of Beinn an Lochain, a tall Corbett on the western fringe of the Arrochar Alps, I was met with true autumnal conditions. I climbed up through a thick, misty - cloud inversion to emerge into a world of rocky peaks, set in a sea of cloud. This phenomenon demonstrated how conditions were becoming more ‘seasonal’ as the inversion is formed by the valleys holding onto the colder temperatures that occur over night, whilst the higher altitudes warm by the rising sun. The temperature, non-instinctively, increases as you gain height.



The whole vista could have been a backdrop to a Peter Jackson film, with thin wisps of mist splitting away from the sea of cloud, to float across far off distant hills, dark and silhouetted against a foreboding sky. It just needed a mythical creature to be encircling the far off peaks, to complete the scene.

My last day of walking was alongside the coast near Ardnackaig, with the turbulent Sound of Jura as my companion. It was a wild day as there were occasional heavy squalls blown across the Sound, forcing me to reach for waterproofs and hunker down behind rocks for shelter.

The landscape is raw, with little impact from man to soften the edges. Even where there is an obvious influence of humans, such as the Forestry that covers much of this part of the coastal area, the landscape retains a wild characteristic. On many occasions I came upon Red Deer, including two large Stags that were now bearing lofty crowns of pointed Antlers. Their presence, along with the thick heather, boot sucking bog and thick, entangling bramble demonstrated the weakness of mans attempt to tame this area. The land has an almost impenetrable wildness.

Today there was more of a chill in the air and the Silver Birch was casting off leaves of golden yellows and brown across my path. Today summer was starting to feel like a foreign country and the sense of season more palpable.

On my way to the top of Castle Dounie, an Iron Age hill fort, I was made aware of a host of birds circling high above. Initially I noticed a large number of Gulls whose shrieks and calls pierced the air. Then I noticed, in amongst the Gulls two Ravens diving at a huge bird. A golden brown bird, with wings held out wide and seeming un-phased about all the commotion going on around it.

The bird was not a Buzzard, I was certain. It was too big and Buzzards often immediately ‘back off’ when being mobbed by Ravens. This bird was not so easily threatened and with a subtle beat of its wings the Ravens, veered away as they seemed the more intimidated from the confrontation.

The Gulls, who were also not venturing too close seemed be like an escort, clearing the way for this great bird as it made its journey along the coast. As they circled the great bird glided along on the wind in a regal manner.

I was in an ancient landscape, with the famous Gulf of Corryvreckan and its whirlpool just off the coast, an old Iron Age Fort above, the Isle of Mull and the coast of Antrim far out on the horizons. I could have travelled back in time to an ancient land - a moment of warring tribes, druidic ceremony and mythical creatures – mythical and mystical as the Golden Eagle is to me, having never seen one….but, in this season in this place, just maybe?!

31st August

On the cusp

The end of August is a strange and divergent time of year. It is clearly summer as the temperatures are still warm, but you can sense a change in the air (and it seems so can every other living thing).

The sounds from the woods and hedges is now muted. Regardless of the many flocks of small birds flitting from tree tops, or balancing, circus like, on telephone lines, They do so (ironically) with the minimum of chatter. It is as if they now have less need to proclaim and make fanfare like they did when Spring was young and their lives were full off more seeming urgencies.

At the beginning of August summer gained maturity and with this gathered age the landscape became washed in a monochrome glaze of green vegetation. But, as the month ends the flowers are receding - going 'over' to seed and fruit and there is a predominant feeling of ending.

There is, at this time of year, an almost imperceptible sense of change; a feeling that can oniy be detected at the 'edges,' where a little colour bleeds into the scene.

The Rowan Trees, that pepper the lower valley edges are one of the first indicators. These, guardians of the mountains, sentinels by stream and crag, are now adorned with blood red berries, whilst a their Hazel lieutenants are full of Cob Nuts, hanging like gypsy earrings.

The fronds of the surrounding bracken, that blanket the lower slopes, are the litmus test of season change. Very subtlety the ends of the green, feathery leaves are being drained of their verdant vibrancy, and as the plant shrinks into the undergrowth, each leaf becomes flame coloured at the tips.

On more celestial determinates It's is noticably getting darker earlier and their is a chill in the air when the sun slips past the horizon. The vicisstudinal effect of the change of season is marked out via my view across the wide Duddon Estuary to Black Combe.

This dominating, whale backed mountain is a seasonal touch stone. Due to its position, perched over the flat, golden sands of the Duddon Estuary, Black Combe acts as a seasonal marker, set upon on a huge, golden sand - sun dial. As the year flows forward the position of the sun changes in relation to the profile of this dark Fell.

Changing from month to month, the sun's journey starts by initially sitting on Black Combes' southern shoulder. Then the sun, as Spring gives way to Summer, parades high above Black Combe's head, before briefly touching his northern edge to descend back again to the west by the heart of winter. The sun performs a dance that maps out the seasons, whilst it's dark, somber partner broods on, looking over the shifting, golden sands of Duddon.

"eternity flows in a mountain beck…
He knew, beneath mutation of year and season,
Flood and drought, frost and fire and thunder,
The frothy blossom on the rowan and the reddening of the berries,
The silt, the sand, the slagbanks and the shingle,
And the wild catastrophes of the breaking mountains,
There stands the base and root of the living rock,
Thirty thousand feet of solid Cumberland".

Norman Nicholson

As September arrives we enter what is described as meteorological Autumn. This is more than just an arbitrary date for the weathermen, as it represents, in a very tangible way, a change in the season. Today we stand on the cusp of this transition.

6th August

Is this love or confusion?

"Bumble, bumble across the mountainside
B,B,B, bumble bumble mountains far and wide
To hell with conservation, there's a motorway to ride
Because everyone's coming home to Langdale" (unknown)

It is the start of the summer vacation period and in some ways the beginnings of what is pejoratively described as the 'Silly Season'.

The pubs and Tea rooms fill, roads are stacked up with cars, caravans that are bursting at the rivets an column of motorbikes menacingly parade through towns and villages. The Lakes is being loved just too much!!!!

From the the time of Wordsworth, the Lakes has been a popular destination and rightfully so, but there are times, I fear, the reason people come here is being lost as the main honey spots become nothing more than, non tangible - pleasure experiences.

What do I mean by this?

It is where the Lakes is the place to visit to experience things that are not directly associated to the nature and landscape architecture that has made it so famous. Visitors bring their children to a superstores to shop (and where there is a 'Fairyland' - Santas Grotto for a summer audience) or slide down a zip wire to get in touch with their inner primate. All the while consuming copious quantities of snacks, spurious named Cumbrian traditional delicacies and shopping as if it was an Olympic sport. In short, the Lakes becomes an open air shopping mall, with customer interactive, activities.

I do not understand this, and though I cannot help be slightly judgemental, my main gripe is the impact on the environment. All around, due to the increased numbers of people, suddenly there is more litter. The quiet places are filled with picnic makers, every stream and lake has a family 'established' like a royal party, with hampers, camp seats, fires, towels and swim cosies hanging from tree/bushes and music penetrating the Lakeland air.

What is happening to wild life? How many nests disturbed, fragile places eroded, rare, beautiful flowers trodden into the earth? How many more green, wonderfully rare and beautiful spaces are being 'eyed-up' to be turned into a revenue making space?

The lakes is very a wonderful and beautiful place, but at times I fear Banksy should have established his dystopian 'Dismal Land' in the Lakes at August. The contrast between the beauty of the landscape and our activities within it are stark.

26th July

Sleep

"........after all, we are only gliding smoothly on the surface. The eye is not a miner, not a diver, not a seeker after buried treasure. It floats us smoothly down a stream; resting, pausing, the brain sleeps perhaps as it looks." Virginia Woolf

I find nothing more enjoyable than sleeping on the side of a mountain! It doesn't matter what time of year or weather conditions, as long as I can find somewhere sheltered.

For me, finding a quiet spot, a warm, dry rock as my support and my rucksack as a pillow, in a tucked away location, far from the noise and bustle of everyday life, is one of my most cherished and most sought after experiences.

The view is not important, it is a sense of place, it's wildness and deep sense of peace and solitude that matters. And once I find somewhere out of the wind, that is warm and comforting, then soon I find that the arms of Morpheus are reaching out to hold me in his soporific embrace.

In these wild and rugged environments I experience a contrast between the peacefulness that overcomes me to the wildness of the surrounding landscape. A contrast that helps deepen the sense of inner quiet that inevitably slowly spreads through me.

Whilst the character and power of my micro environment takes control, all too soon the sounds of 'the hill' are merging with my somnolent dreamings. The sound of the mountains, the wind, the 'cronking' Ravens overhead, mixes with the deepening sense of my own self.

It is at times like this it is clear 'we' are not tethered to just one mind as our imaginings journey into a thousand places as travellers with a thousand identities. The quiet places of the mountains become the stage for thinking and echo the many characters and thoughts we conjure. There is space here to let the brain breath and be free.

My thoughts merge with the ambient noises of the mountain. I too am flying with the Raven, whilst sensing and learning more about myself, but I am also imagining like a god. I am seeing, with an improved clarity, what I might be if a course was taken, a choice or decision. If only my resolve will last the journey back down into the valley.

"any moment, the sleeping army may stir itself and wake in us a thousand violins and trumpets in response; the army of human beings may rouse itself and assert all its oddities and sufferings and sordidities. Let us dally a little longer, be content still with surfaces only........" Virginia Woolf

12th June 2016

Distant Hills

(Purpose and definition, held within dreams)

Mind bends to Distant Hills.
Standing stern and bold.
Silhouettes salute,
From every horizon.

From our allotted seat,
Hill and Church pass by.
Anonymous spires pierce,
Into our subconscious.

Moments flashing past,
Providing interest
We reach and grab to,
The land that slips away.

(Veiled purposes
And definitions
Captured within subconscious).

These are the landmarks,
Fixed destinations
Realised of ambitions.

Along lines our journey,
Constantly 'pulling,'
Urging, compelling,
Away from the tracks.
Reluctantly and without debate.

Friends and companions,
In transition, for a while,
Share perspectives.

And they, for this shared time,
See and sense what you see,
Before their own gravity pulls,
Towards stations and final destinations.

From our carriage seat
We look over a land
We can never visit, like
The locked Garden of Eden.
And peering, for a moment,
The sun touches us
From behind the wall.

So, along this journey
We look to every horizon,
Peer deeper into every cleft,
And look to the monuments
That proclaims from every hill,

We look to find......A realm no longer available to us.