Reflections on Rydal Water Floodlight on Lord Crag and Nab Scar, fiery grasses and bracken, a glow of gold through the hanging wood. Shielded by fells, Rydale lies in shadow and a deep frost. Tomorrow is the first day of winter, of meteorological winter, and it’s below freezing. Below Loughrigg Fell the woodland canopy billows like ice-clouds. Slender branches are filmed with rime-ice, like antler velvet. Sunlight in a sky of blue, the morning calm and still. The flaming heights, the hanging wood and the frost-pastures below the Coffin Route are mirrored in Rydale Water.
Rydale Water, so Dorothy Wordsworth calls the vale where she and her brother William walked when they made their home at Dove Cottage over two hundred years ago. The sun is not long risen as we walk the southern shore and there is solitude. As the morning advances there is more traffic on the road following the northern shore, more walkers. Someone falls ill along the Coffin Route and the mountain rescue are out in force with a helicopter landing in a pasture by Pelter Bridge. A 21st century response to a medical crisis. I remember the tragedy that befell the Green family of Blind Tarn Cottage, Easdale in March 1808 when the couple were lost in a snowstorm and the search was undertaken by local shepherds who knew the fells.
Rime-ice whitens the top-of a wall, of a ruined barn by White Moss. Look north toward Nab Scar to a dry stone wall that soars over scree and scar to Lord Crag. I love the lonely hanging wood. The Coffin Route below, a walker’s route over the high fell but surely no one ventures into the rough and tumble wild wood. Walking south, we’re dazzled by the sun. The rime-ice is melted, the ground softened by the warmth of the sun.
Home again, I reread Dorothy Wordsworth’s Grasmere Journal and ponder her experience and ours. She and her brother walk everywhere, sometimes by moonlight. They are not troubled by Climate Change, Species Loss, exponential population growth. Although there’s poverty, beggars at the door. Dove Cottage is not insulated from its surroundings, it’s damp and cold, a confined space for a growing family. Dorothy is a keen observer but she laments not having ‘ a book of botany.’ No field-guides at Dove Cottage. She speaks of a stone chat in the Rydale shallows- probably a wagtail. There are ' small birds' she does not know. She sees (or thinks she sees) a heron swimming. Two days later I’m at Leighton Moss where there's a range of optics, binoculars, telescopes, powerful cameras. And ID posters and field-guides galore. And all those wildlife documentaries.
Take a look at the winter woods in my images. The white rime-ice woods of the early morning down in the dale. The dark green of Scots pine on the shore. And the golden wood of Nab Scar. Must be reflections of sunlight on rime-ice, and bracken beneath the winter trees.
Take a look at the winter woods in my images. The white rime-ice woods of the early morning down in the dale. The dark green of Scots pine on the shore. And the golden wood of Nab Scar. Must be reflections of sunlight on rime-ice, and bracken beneath the winter trees.
Charlotte Bronte had a copy of Thomas Bewick's Waterbirds and she has Jane Eyre reading it. The Wordsworths are often reading Shakespeare's plays but there's no reference to Bewick's work.
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