Golden light at sunrise Sunrise comes with a low, gleaming light that colours the trees where ravens call to each other in bass notes. The morning is still and rain holds off- wind and rain will see out the year. Daylight hours are short and the light changes dramatically through the morning.
Sunlight plays over the Langdale Pikes, contesting with shadowing cloud. The call of ducks reaches up to us from Cunswick Tarn.
To the north, Red Screes appears clad in snow. To the east, the Howgills.
Sunlight plays over the Langdale Pikes, contesting with shadowing cloud. The call of ducks reaches up to us from Cunswick Tarn.
To the north, Red Screes appears clad in snow. To the east, the Howgills.
Last winter, we found fieldfare feasting on hawthorn berries and up in the trees on the escarpment. So we go down Gamblesmire Lane in search of them. A buzzard is being mobbed by corvids but not a sign of fieldfare. From this ancient lane we look back on Cunswick Fell. In the foreground is a mystery crop of plants in pale gold. The woodland trees have a rosy glow that suggests birch. Dark yew grows on the cliff-face of the limestone escarpment and above is the open fell where we walked. On the horizon there a snow-capped fell and a whitewashed farmhouse shows as a point of light. Two swans show as tiny gleams of whiteness on Cunswick Tarn.
Last winter, I walked the green lanes below Cunswick Fell, ancient lanes between farmsteads. I thought upon these winter walks as I listened to a radio programme on Robert Frost's Stopping by woods on a snowy evening. Today is close to the shortest day and the rural setting of the poem is similar.
It's a well-known and much loved poem. For me, it's that point of stillness and tranquillity the speaker finds as he stops for a while to watch the woods fill up with snow, putting aside the purpose of his journey to lose himself in the silence and beauty of the scene. The poem is universal, could be any time, any place. Although to be afoot or on horseback and to travel at night is unusual these days. In our homes and when travelling, we are insulated against the elements and the natural world. We have lost that connectivity.
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