Scout Scar Escarpment 14 January 2013
Scout Scar escarpment January 2013. Twelve years have passed. The look could be centuries ago and snow muffles sound, obliterating the 21st century soundscape. Echoes of pheasant shooting in the woods below, could be Breugel's hunters of 1565, from his painting 'Hunters in the snow.' Gunshots from hunters hidden in winter woods.
Snow dazzles on cliff-edge where a south-westerly has sculpted it, and the bright sun picks out wind-slab shadows. Scots pine on the cliff face are dusted in snow. Not a day of clarity. The morning began with a temperature inversion and mist lingered. Sometimes thick mist sits in the Lyth Valley below, defined and contained. Then suddenly rises and flows over Scout Scar to engulf me in sudden chill and conceal familiar landmarks. Beware the cliff-edge!! Back in 2013 Welsh Blacks were the management tool for conservation grazing. Recently they've been replaced by larger white cattle so when the sun disappears and Scout Scar is plunged into gloom they should be visible.
It's thrilling being alone in snow and mist up here. On this January day in 2013 I was walking south watching mist shot-through with sunlight over Morecambe Bay when a runner called out to me- 'look behind you'. There was wonder and excitement in his voice. 'I shouldn't stop to look but I have to.' I turned to look north for this moment of epiphany.
Pieter Breugel's Hunters in the snow, 1565, evokes this January landscape- for me. His painting shows hunters returning to their village where folk are out having fun on a bright winter's day.
Down below in the Lyth Valley colour is almost lost but snowfall enhances landscape features otherwise unremarkable. Single trees are etched dark against the snow. Stone walls show field-patterns, not only below the escarpment but toward the distant fells.
14th January 2013 was a rare day. Even then, snow seldom settled thick on Scout Scar. Now, with climate change, it's something special.. From the escarpment I see the first snow of the season on fells to the west and north and I like to see the progress of snow-clouds, sparing some fells, turning others gleaming white. In this image the fells appear hazily in sunlight and shadow, beneath a hint of blue. You have to know they're there to make them out.
I recently heard an art historian speaking of slow-looking. She recommends we spend three hours contemplating a painting. If we become tired, rest a moment then look again. She regrets our short attention-span, aggravated by social media. I'm taken with the notion of slow-looking, although three hours is a challenge.
Snow dazzles on cliff-edge where a south-westerly has sculpted it, and the bright sun picks out wind-slab shadows. Scots pine on the cliff face are dusted in snow. Not a day of clarity. The morning began with a temperature inversion and mist lingered. Sometimes thick mist sits in the Lyth Valley below, defined and contained. Then suddenly rises and flows over Scout Scar to engulf me in sudden chill and conceal familiar landmarks. Beware the cliff-edge!! Back in 2013 Welsh Blacks were the management tool for conservation grazing. Recently they've been replaced by larger white cattle so when the sun disappears and Scout Scar is plunged into gloom they should be visible.
It's thrilling being alone in snow and mist up here. On this January day in 2013 I was walking south watching mist shot-through with sunlight over Morecambe Bay when a runner called out to me- 'look behind you'. There was wonder and excitement in his voice. 'I shouldn't stop to look but I have to.' I turned to look north for this moment of epiphany.
Pieter Breugel's Hunters in the snow, 1565, evokes this January landscape- for me. His painting shows hunters returning to their village where folk are out having fun on a bright winter's day.
Down below in the Lyth Valley colour is almost lost but snowfall enhances landscape features otherwise unremarkable. Single trees are etched dark against the snow. Stone walls show field-patterns, not only below the escarpment but toward the distant fells.
14th January 2013 was a rare day. Even then, snow seldom settled thick on Scout Scar. Now, with climate change, it's something special.. From the escarpment I see the first snow of the season on fells to the west and north and I like to see the progress of snow-clouds, sparing some fells, turning others gleaming white. In this image the fells appear hazily in sunlight and shadow, beneath a hint of blue. You have to know they're there to make them out.
I recently heard an art historian speaking of slow-looking. She recommends we spend three hours contemplating a painting. If we become tired, rest a moment then look again. She regrets our short attention-span, aggravated by social media. I'm taken with the notion of slow-looking, although three hours is a challenge.
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