Common cotton grass in an Ullscarf tarn 18 June 2014 A red damselfly comes to rest on a patch of green lichen, flies off, returns to the sunlit rock. Above the sheepfold by Flour Gill a network of water-tracks drains off Greenup Edge through a zone of moss that must have been a glacial scour. A frog vanishes amongst pondweed and breeding dragonflies dart along the water. As we climb out of the dale the heat is overpowering.
To three tarns. Beware hydrosere, a summer tarn lush with aquatic flora asking to be photographed, where bog and open water are hidden by flowers.
To three tarns. Beware hydrosere, a summer tarn lush with aquatic flora asking to be photographed, where bog and open water are hidden by flowers.
Up on the watershed, we sit looking west toward Glaramara and the Borrowdale Fells, with sunlit cloud reflected in a tarn thick with pale seed-heads of cotton grass. We head for Ullscarf, the place of the wolf.
Before us, a mass of starry bogbean flowers. I stride forward, my camera ready. Next moment, I am sinking. From firmer ground, Barbara tries to grasp my hand. One of my walking poles snaps and drowns and I am prone in the water on my back. Austin grabs my rucksack straps and hauls and hauls but the bog holds me in its grip, and sucks and sucks. He has me by the shoulders but Grendel’s mother swims up from the depths and grasps my legs and she’s monstrous-strong. The surface of the water is sprinkled with mayflies, their breeding accomplished their brief lives over. A sheep has drowned and is decomposing in the bubbles of the bog. They come to drink, and drown in the mire. Sphagna have anti-bacterial properties, I tell myself, you slap it on wounds.
Before us, a mass of starry bogbean flowers. I stride forward, my camera ready. Next moment, I am sinking. From firmer ground, Barbara tries to grasp my hand. One of my walking poles snaps and drowns and I am prone in the water on my back. Austin grabs my rucksack straps and hauls and hauls but the bog holds me in its grip, and sucks and sucks. He has me by the shoulders but Grendel’s mother swims up from the depths and grasps my legs and she’s monstrous-strong. The surface of the water is sprinkled with mayflies, their breeding accomplished their brief lives over. A sheep has drowned and is decomposing in the bubbles of the bog. They come to drink, and drown in the mire. Sphagna have anti-bacterial properties, I tell myself, you slap it on wounds.
I lie on the ground, saturated and grateful for my friends. In years of hill walking this is my first immersion in blanket bog. I know the danger signs, the colours and textures of vegetation, transitions where the elements of earth and water are indistinct, where tussocks merge into sphagna and the flora becomes aquatic with free-floating sphagnum cuspidatum, known to its familiars as drowned cat. The rhizomes of bogbean rise out of silts on the bed of the tarn, a layer of decomposing vegetation. In summer, aquatic plants grow rank and lush and the tarns green over, with rafts of plants in suspension. For years, I’ve tiptoed about the fringes, my boots sinking in ooze as I take photographs, always wary.
If you fall in, you swim says Barbara. I can’t imagine how. Your feet lose contact with anything to push against, suspended. You can’t keep upright. There is nothing to grasp, no shore, no edge. And that powerful suction feels super-human.
Rescued, as I lie beside the tarn my boots look enormous, congealed in matter from the mire. At Ullscarf cairn, I pour water from them, pick out wads of dark mush and wring out my socks. The fabric of my trousers seems seeded.
Rescued, as I lie beside the tarn my boots look enormous, congealed in matter from the mire. At Ullscarf cairn, I pour water from them, pick out wads of dark mush and wring out my socks. The fabric of my trousers seems seeded.
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