collect one when I loaded the landrover at lunchtime, and I didn't fancy
facing the first frost of the year without it.
The sun was still above the horizon when I started, and the woodland was
still, with patches of gold/green between the long shadows. Almost
nothing was moving, even the sheep were content to let me pass through
them, and I saw no birds excepts the raptors, kestrels and kites above
me, crows below in the valley floor.
By the time I emerged, with the duvet on my back the sun was gone, and
the valley was in shadow, although light still lingered on the fell top
to the North, where the cottage was waiting, about 30 minutes walk away.
I'd thrown a large log on the fire when I left the cottage an hour
earlier, and hooked the kettle against the bars, so as to have a mug
full very near boiling when I got home.
As I passed the small holding behind the hamlet, a little party of geese
were forming a conga line around their water trough, wandering wither
and thither in a patient waddle, quite unlike the mild curiosity of wild
geese at dusk. They didn't even look up as I passed.
It's amazing how much you can see in the dark. The colours have gone,
but the form survives, in close-up, in shades of grey. I just couldn't
see more than 10 feet ahead - except where, in the distance, the
landscape rolls away in places towards the river, and the last last from
the west made a bank glow a ghostly silver some way ahead. An owl
swoops past my head, westward.
I do always carry a headlight at night - with a red light setting, so
that if I have to use it my night vision won't be too badly affected.
But I didn't need it. I must know every step of the route by now, even
if it is eighteen months since I last walked it past nightfall. And I
have a mobile phone, so if I did roll an ankle...
Anyway, I didn't need the light on the railway track (although in place
the cutting is deep and almost all in shade. And I didn't need it on
the footbridge over the cutting towards the hay meadow.
That's where I stopped to check which stars are out. There were one or
two - but a sense of the billions points of sun waiting just beyond the
veil of atmosphere, thinning to nothing, second by second.
Now that is a lot more terrifying than being the only human being in the
sheep's line of sight - being the only apparent human being on a patch
of rock in sight of all the suns.
I only needed the light once; after crossing the oak wood and the Roman
ruins the paths (carved out by sheep) divide and dip down to a small
stream, which is bordered here and there by wire. Hit in the wrong
place, or at the wrong angle, and you get wet, or stuck, or both.
But after that, it's a short walk up and through two pastures to the the
clump of pines which hides the cottage from almost every angle. Not even
fire light spills out - until I open the door - because from this angle
the cottage has no windows...
When I've made the tea I sit on the bench by the door, watch stars and
listen to the thump thump of falling leaves, and the rustle of small
unseen animals.
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