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Wild weather on Scout Scar

28/1/2020

1 Comment

 
PictureLooking west from Scout Scar escarpment
Elemental on Scout Scar. Somewhere, there came a moment when I was all involved with wild weather, at one with the day, an  inspirational. day. It took me up.  
I began an alibi walker, somewhere else in thought. Frances had set me a challenge, birds beginning with R.  In my mind's-eye the Outer Hebrides. On the Benbecula causeway we stopped to admire  a wader with a long bill. The name eluded me.  Slithery mud underfoot, someone turned down the light and down came the hail.  Ruff, that was the bird's name. Recalling that kept me going, I was in two minds whether to bother. .    

Glimmers of snow and ice on the distant fells, when the rain cloud lifted.  A strong and blustery West to South West wind struck the cliff-face and the trees rising from the hanging wood.  Native trees on Scout Scar, hawthorn, holly and yew, incline with the prevailing wind, sounding as the wind strikes, exposed, resilient.. Branches snapped off, old elemental wounds on gnarled ash trees.  That's life up here. An alien conifer  went hysterical with the wild weather, shuddering  wildly. On the cliff-edge It sounded as if several trains were coming through, fast and loud.  Then, out of nowhere, a lull in the wind,  for a moment. Hail -bearing  clouds flow toward me from Morecambe Bay, from the fells to the west where a rainbow tells of sunlight through hail, a rainbow touching down in the winter wood - a palette of soft, warm colour. 
Wild weather is thrilling, all-involving.   The moment is everything, the sequence of moments because I see the weather coming and make ready for it.  Darkness and light come fast upon each other.  An elfin light, ethereal.  
The photograph is not, cannot be, the experience. To feel it, you have to immerse yourself.  Be inspired, breathe deeply of the morning.  Louring hail-bearing clouds..  How can I show the wild weather?  Raindrops on the camera lens, through veils of hail. When buffeting winds try to send me flying it's all I can do to take photographs.  Flying the wind, like the raven above the escarpment.  Only the raven and me.
It is purifying, a morning of wild weather. Happens to be Scout Scar, could be anywhere. It's the elemental experience that is thrilling.  
1 Comment
Glaramara
29/1/2020 07:46:05 pm

Wuthering Heights, I think

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    Jan Wiltshire is a nature writer living in Cumbria. She also explores islands and coast and the wildlife experience. (See Home and My Books.)

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