Water Lobelis and dragonfly Water is an inspiration always and, after the driest six months since 1929, to hear and see the waterfalls of Sour Milk Gill was a joy. House martins flew low over the gill and at fell foot, water threaded through rushes and marsh pennywort and the waterlogged ground was lemon yellow with the star-burst flowers of bog asphodel. A bumble bee with pale yellow collar and a white tail settled on a star and gathered nectar and the horse flies were after my blood! Off the beaten track, a wonderful show of bog asphodel in its brief flowering.
The track ascended beside the stepped waterfalls of Sour Milk Gill, then above the crags was a sump - a waterlogged zone before the last climb to Easedale Tarn. Meandering water-tracks were bordered by the yellows of spearwort and bog asphodel, and the white seed heads and rosy leaf blades of common cotton-grass. My feet slowly sank into the silts and I pulled out my boots with a suck and a squelch. The banks of the gill were thick with butterwort, its star-shaped rosette of leaves secreting a greasy, buttery substance that traps midges.
The corrie lake of Easedale Tarn lies in a bowl, its moraines in a sea of bracken that rises up the fells until halted by rock. Water tumbled down by Belles Knott, off Tarn Crag and Slapestone Edge, lost momentum at the fell-foot and threaded and wound its way into the tarn through a habitat of rippling, colourful sphagnum mounds packed with carnivorous sundew which thrives on wet ground. Its red hairs glistened with dew drops of secreted sugars that attract insects, midges, and small invertebrates. When prey alights on a leaf, a touch of those trigger-hairs causes the others to bend and enclose the insect and in half an hour the leaf blade is clasped shut – like a scarlet drop of blood- and the sundew takes up the insect’s nitrogen and proteins. Sundew and the leaves of cotton- grass gave a lovely tinge of rose to the ground. At the western end of Easedale Tarn was a sheltered backwater with yellow and white water-lilies and closer to the shore were water lobelia and tiny fish. A heron flew off languidly. I headed toward the moraines and the sheltered inlet where David and I walked on ice in late December, and I gave up trying to balance on the slippery stones and waded in to look at the flowers of water lobelia. I reached the shore and a patch of bog pimpernel. What a floral treat!
Along Far Easedale Beck, I was watching moths and dragonflies when I came upon a little boy who sat contemplative beside the water. Then he washed his feet in the beck, boots and all, as I had done. Nelson was ‘having a sulk,’ so his mother said. A big name for a little lad to grow into. Perhaps a name like Nelson doesn’t suit a sulk - although the hero Achilles indulged in an epic sulk in ‘The Iliad’- and this three year old had walked some way and sat in the grass waiting for his mother to yield and carry him home.
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