Pyrenean Longing

The Pyrenean mountain range stretches for about 270 miles from the Atlantic Ocean to the Mediterranean Sea, separating France from the Iberian Peninsula. It's a stunning area, largely unspoilt, and wonderful for hiking.

Reading yesterday about Andy Howell's trips to the Pyrenees made me long to go there again. I've been twice before, both times flying from Stansted to Carcassonne and hiring a car at Carcassonne airport. I mixed in some walking with car touring. Next time I'd like to use the car as little as possible - and just walk.

The part I know best is the eastern end: the Couserans, the Ariège (read about a walk I did here) and the Pays de Sault; the valleys of the Tet and the Tech which border the Canigou massif north and south; the Castellane valley which was described so beautifully in Rosemary Bailey's book Life in a Postcard: Escape to the French Pyrenees; the gentler wine-growing hills of the French Albères; the strange volcanic region of the Spanish Garrotxa; and the Mediterranean coast from charming, artistic Collioure in France down to the Aiguamolls nature reserve just east of Castello in northern Catalonia.

I've always yearned to trek one of the Pyrenean long distance trails ever since I read Chris Townsend's account of doing this in his book The Great Backpacking Adventure. There are 3 waymarked end-to-end footpaths: the GR10 on the French side, the GR11 on the Spanish side and the HRP (Pyrenean High Level Route) which sticks as closely as possible to the frontier. (The HRP shares some sections of both the GR10 and the GR11.) Logistically and technically I suppose the HRP is the most demanding; but the GR10 and the GR11 are no pushovers as there are lots of steep-sided valleys to negotiate.

3 books on the Pyrenees I own and would recommend are: Walks and Climbs in the Pyrenees written by Kev Reynolds and published by Cicerone; Pyrenees: Car Tours and Walks in the Sunflower Landscapes series; and the excellent Rough Guide to the Pyrenees by Marc Dubin.

My first photo shows the village church of Castillon-en-Couserans; the second is a view from the castle at Foix in the Ariège valley; and the third is of Collioure on the Mediterranean coast.

The Macrocosm Lies Within the Microcosm

The further you travel, the less you know (Tao Te Ching). Discuss! I think this means that covering big distances, physical or mental, has nothing necessarily to do with knowledge. And pilgrimage nothing necessarily to do with attaining wisdom. Nirvana can be an instantaneous thing - not necessarily the result of years of diligent effort and pursuit.

It's how you filter, deal with and learn from experience that counts - not just having more and more random experiences. Though personally I love random experience - in a Jack Kerouac kind of way.

To echo Dylan - when younger I felt so much "older" (more pretentious?) than when I read the Beat writers now. Perhaps I'm just journeying towards a profound simplicity? Any thoughts, anyone?

The Beauty Of Things

To feel and speak the astonishing beauty of things -

earth, stone and water,

Beast, man and woman, sun, moon and stars -

The blood-shot beauty of human nature, its thoughts,

frenzies and passions,

And unhuman nature its towering reality -

For man's half dream; man, you might say, is nature

dreaming, but rock

And water and sky are constant - to feel

Greatly, and understand greatly, and express greatly, the

natural

Beauty, is the sole business of poetry.

The rest's diversion: those holy or noble sentiments, the

intricate ideas,

The love, lust, longing: reasons, but not the reason.

ROBINSON JEFFERS

In A Dark Time

A few days ago was the 6th anniversary of Loren Webster's excellent blog, In A Dark Time. Now there's nothing wrong at all with all those blogs about going to the loo and the antics of one's hamster - the Net's a wonderfully democratic place. However it's nice now and then to come across a more serious blog provoking a lively discussion about poetry, prose and politics. And it's personal and often drily humorous too. 1000 hits a day is pretty impressive for a literary blog. Happy birthday, Loren. The blog's title was taken from this poem by Theodore Roethke:

In a Dark Time

In a dark time, the eye begins to see,
I meet my shadow in the deepening shade;
I hear my echo in the echoing wood -
A lord of nature weeping to a tree,
I live between the heron and the wren,
Beasts of the hill and serpents of the den.

What's madness but nobility of soul
At odds with circumstance? The day's on fire!
I know the purity of pure despair,
My shadow pinned against a sweating wall,
That place among the rocks - is it a cave,
Or winding path? The edge is what I have.

A steady storm of correspondences!
A night flowing with birds, a ragged moon,
And in broad day the midnight come again!
A man goes far to find out what he is -
Death of the self in a long, tearless night.
All natural shapes blazing unnatural light.

Dark, dark my light, and darker my desire.
My soul, like some heat-maddened summer fly,
Keeps buzzing at the sill. Which I is I?
A fallen man, I climb out of my fear.
The mind enters itself, and God the mind,
And one is One, free in the tearing wind.

Know Thyself

Know Thyself. This Greek aphorism - whether coined by Socrates, Pythagoras or a myriad other possible sources - was inscribed in the forecourt of the Temple of Apollo at Delphi. To understand oneself is to understand the rest of humankind. I wonder how many of us understand ourselves even partially?

Baa Baa Black Sheep

Feeling I gave sheep a bit of a bad blogpress in yesterday's post, I thought I'd try to redress the balance. But it's difficult. I researched quickly the poetry field. There seem to be very few good poems about sheep.

There's Ted Hughes' blood-and-gutsy description of a stillborn lamb in February 17th from his collection Moortown Diary (1989) and his long poem Sheep from Season Songs (1976).

There's the Portuguese poet Fernando Pessoa's book of poems The Keeper of Sheep - but this is more about God, nature and metaphysics.

So I fear sheep are still getting an indifferent coverage in these pages. With one notable exception - William Blake's delightful The Lamb from his Songs of Innocence and Experience (1789-94):

Little Lamb, who made thee?
Dost thou know who made thee?
Gave thee life, and bid thee feed,
By the stream and o'er the mead;
Gave thee clothing of delight,
Softest clothing, woolly, bright;
Gave thee such a tender voice,
Making all the vales rejoice?
Little Lamb, who made thee?
Dost thou know who made thee?

Little Lamb, I'll tell thee,
Little Lamb, I'll tell thee:
He is called by thy name,
For he calls himself a Lamb.
He is meek, and he is mild;
He became a little child.
I a child and thou a lamb,
We are called by his name.
Little Lamb, God bless thee!
Little Lamb, God bless thee!

Final thoughts about sheep. When I walked the Pennine Way in springtime this year I was accompanied throughout by the sight and sound of lambs - which was a continual joy. To watch their protective mothers constantly keeping an eye on them was very touching.

And lastly, let's not forget Black Sheep Ale from the Black Sheep Brewery based at Masham, North Yorkshire - one of the finest of British beers.

The Eleusinian Mysteries

Today is the autumnal equinox. It's a time of balance - as the hours of night equal the hours of daylight - but it can also be a time of stress, meditation and re-evaluation, as we pause, take stock, and move on. It's a time of harvest, when grain and fruit have been gathered and thanks is given to Mother Earth for her bounty. And it's also the time of the Vine, when excess fruit is made into wine, and the Greek god Dionysus (or the Roman god Bacchus) drinks, dances and revels before descending into the Underworld for the winter months. The falling leaves of autumn reflect his journey. In the well known story from Greek mythology Persephone (daughter of Demeter, goddess of life, agriculture and fertility) is abducted by Hades, god of death, into the Underworld at this time of year. She returns to the land of the living in spring, when new life blossoms once more. This timeless and symbolic myth of death and rebirth is re-enacted in the enigmatic Eleusinian Mysteries. Little is known about these secret, ancient rites from Eleusis, except that they were some kind of initiation ritual for the cult of Demeter and Persephone held throughout the Hellenistic and later the Roman World. Two axioms have emerged around these Mysteries: Know thyself and In silence is the seed of wisdom gained.

Mugged By Sheep

On all my countryside escapades I've never once been mobbed by nesting terns or attacked by arctic skuas like Bill Oddie. Or even bitten by a dog or chased by a bull. But I have been mugged by sheep. It happened yesterday in fact.

I began my 7 mile route on a minor road at Townhead just north of Hope (OS Outdoor Leisure Map 1, Map Reference 168845). This led north to Oaker Farm Cottages where it became a path. After crossing Bagshaw Bridge the way contoured the hillside overlooking Jaggers Clough then forked right just below Crookstone Barn. Another right turn at a stile and the path doubled back on itself at higher altitude. It was now a rutted old Roman road heading south-east above the conifer slopes of the Woodlands Valley. Lose Hill (476m) was constantly in view across the Vale of Edale; but I was making for its companion, Win Hill (462m). A long, easy ascent took me to the rocky cone on top, two paragliders adding interest along the way. It was here the marauding sheep stepped in.

I'd found a nice, sheltered spot for lunch among the rocks and heather. Everything was laid out - tomatoes, dried apricots, wholemeal rolls stuffed with Camembert... Then they hit. An evil-looking ewe, with her smaller but powerfully built offspring, ambushed me from out of a fortification of ferns. Their eyes were fixed and staring. Only one goal was on their mind. My sandwiches. And my camera, mobile phone, and complete rucksack contents if they were lucky. I was so surprised that I half rose and said something like "Shoo!" They were unimpressed by this resistance tactic and still charged on. It then got physical as they knocked me over. I tried to push them away but they were incredibly hard and strong.

I still don't know how I did it, but I managed in an adrenaline-fuelled rush of speed to gather up lunch and pack and camera into my arms - at one point wresting the nose of one sheep out of my open sack - and beat a hasty retreat off the hill. I decided on reflection that it wasn't really a case for the MRT - after all I was alive and in one piece and had lost only a few mouthfuls of French cheese (haven't Derbyshire sheep got upmarket tastes?)

The photo shows my ancient Karrimor daysack next to the trig point at the summit of Win Hill. Thankfully with not a sheep in sight.

Pork With Prunes

Just back from another couple of days in Derbyshire's Peak District. Thursday evening found me pitched at Fieldhead Campsite, Edale. And in the Old Nag's Head. Sweet memories of when I'd started out from here in April to walk the Pennine Way. On Friday I did a couple of slow saunters.

The first was in the Hope Valley, separated from the Vale of Edale by the lovely Mam Tor - Lose Hill ridge. I simply walked from Castleton to Hope by field paths to the north, and returned by field paths to the south along a tributary of the river Noe, an easy clockwise circular of 4 miles. I stopped for a chat in Hope with the manager of the climbing shop, Hitch n Hike, a small satellite of the much bigger outlet at Mytham Bridge. He'd been a lecturer in electronics and also chef-manager on a steam train restaurant in Matlock (but not at the same time - at least, I don't think so!). How nice to have had such a varied path in life. He was crazy about French cooking and gave me a recipe for pork with prunes marinaded in Vouvray. Sounded good at the time - particularly as I hadn't eaten all day! Nice deli next door to the climbing shop, incidentally.

It had poured down with rain for almost an hour on the walk back to Castleton so I tried drying things out at the Edale campsite. But a 5 o'clock sky promised a fine evening, so I couldn't resist setting out again - this time directly from the tent south-west to Barber Booth; across the railway, road and river; then up, on a reasonably gentle slanting path, to Hollins Cross, the centrepoint of the Mam Tor ridge. I came back down to Edale via Backtor Bridge and Ollerbrook Booth. This had been an anti-clockwise circular of 5 miles.

The photo shows the Vale of Edale from the path up to Hollins Cross.

On The Edge

Yesterday at 10.40am I decided on impulse to snatch a dry, sunny afternoon from the jaws of autumn. I packed my ancient Karrimor daysack with waterproofs, water bottle, flask of tea, two cheese and lettuce sandwiches, two oatmeal biscuits, two fresh peaches, hat and gloves, map and compass, and Victorinox multi-feature Swiss Army Knife. No, it wasn't a mercenerary expedition. Merely a quick raid on the Derbyshire countryside. By 11.40 I was off, and at 1 o'clock exactly had parked at Curbar Gap (OS Outdoor Leisure Map 24, Map Reference 263747). Up on the gritstone escarpment of Curbar Edge the views westward were very fine (the 1st photo was taken from the Edge looking down on the villages of Curbar and Calver in the valley of the river Derwent. The abandoned millstone is a reminder that the manufacture of millstones used to be a thriving industry in this area.) Climbers were out in force (see 2nd and 3rd photos) and a few walkers too. An obvious path led along Froggatt Edge and down through Hay Wood to Nether Padley. Stonechats darted across the way and bobbed their heads on nearby rocks. There was a feel of autumn in the air, with a chilly breeze on the higher ground. I noticed some of the ferns and some of the birch, oak and sycamore leaves were starting to turn rust-coloured; and the leaves of the fading rosebay willowherb were changing from green to purple. Resisting the temptation to call in at the Grindleford Station Café - which is almost as famous among the outdoor community as the Pen-y-Ghent Café in Horton-in-Ribblesdale - I made my way past the entrance to the 3 mile long Totley tunnel towards Padley Chapel, which used to be the medieval gatehouse of long-ruined Padley Hall. After a more open, grassy area a lovely path leads through woods above the railway line. Somewhere round here I ate my packed lunch, perched on a convenient, lichen-stained rock. I love eating out-of-doors, don't you? Eventually the way passed under the railway and joined a riverside path which skirted Grindleford, went straight through the pretty village of Froggatt and took me all the way back to Calver. My mind switched off and I meandered in a trance-like state along this pleasant, generally level, uneventful path. At Calver there's a wild, marshy, streamside patch of ground where you may find such rare animal species as the brook lamprey, the great crested newt, the water vole and the harvest mouse. It was a slight shock to have to complete the short, sharp climb back up to Curbar Gap and the car. After the calm of the valley, the chill wind here seemed to have increased in velocity and chilliness. The clouds of late afternoon had closed in. I got in the car and made for home.

The Romance Of The Open Air

Recently there's been a flurry of people doing the Robert Louis Stevenson thing and sleeping out under the stars. (Though without the donkey.) First there was Robert Macfarlane, nightwalking and open-air sleeping in his wonderful new book, The Wild Places. Now we have John Hee and Weird Darren making the most of those last few warm summer nights with their bivouac on a Dorset beach.

I love sleeping outdoors too - all that fresh air, the rush of the wind and the rain, the shriek of owls, the bark of foxes, gosh it can be noisy out there - but so far it's always been in a tent or some kind of shelter. Except on three occasions long ago. When I was very young.

The first was on the beach at Nice on the French Riviera. Lovely to drift off to sleep with the peaceful, hypnotic sound of waves slapping shingle. Not so good when a gang of opportunistic thieves descend on all the hippy overnighters and steal their valuables.

The second was on a riverside seat by the banks of the Seine in Paris - with a friend, two tramps and several bottles of cheap red wine for company. (No doubt I was pretending to be down and out like George Orwell. All very bohemian.) I woke with a start in the early hours of the morning - and found a rat actually sitting on top of my sleeping bag!

The third was on a street bench next to a tram stop in Frankfurt, Germany. No sleeping bag or bivvy sack involved at all this time - just the clothes I'd been wearing the night before in the Sinkkasten jazz club in Mainzstrasse. I woke to the hostile glares of Frankfurter businessmen on their way to work. I think an excessive amount of lager and wine had something to do with it.

Negative Capability

After considering Keats yesterday, and his poem To Autumn, my mind now turns to his letters. In a famous letter dated Sunday 21 December 1817 he invents the term "Negative Capability": ...that is, when a man is capable of being in uncertainties, mysteries, doubts, without any irritable reaching after fact and reason...

This idea, this state, appeals to me a lot.

The Tao Te Ching says of the hollow space inside a cup or of the empty spaces in a house or room: Without their nothingness they would be nothing.

St John of the Cross writes about The Dark Night of the Soul, the state into which he plunged when he could no longer feel God's presence, and prayer could no longer inspire him.

The Via Negativa of mystical theology approaches God from a position of ignorance rather than one of knowledge.

Perhaps not-knowing is a necessary state of mind for learning.

Song At The Beginning Of Autumn

Another poem about autumn which I like very much has come to mind. It's called Song at the Beginning of Autumn and is by Elizabeth Jennings (1929-2001). Elizabeth Jennings was born in Lincolnshire, where I was born, and became a librarian, which I became for a while. I think many of her quiet, sacramental poems are very fine indeed. This poem is taken from her early collection A Way of Looking (1955), and is included in the paperback Elizabeth Jennings: New Collected Poems (2002) edited by Michael Schmidt and published by Carcanet Press.

Song at the Beginning of Autumn

Now watch this autumn that arrives
In smells. All looks like summer still;
Colours are quite unchanged, the air
On green and white serenely thrives.
Heavy the trees with growth and full
The fields. Flowers flourish everywhere.

Proust who collected time within
A child's cake would understand
The ambiguity of this -
Summer still raging while a thin
Column of smoke stirs from the land
Proving that autumn gropes for us.

But every season is a kind
Of rich nostalgia. We give names -
Autumn and summer, winter, spring -
As though to unfasten from the mind
Our moods and give them outward forms.
We want the certain, solid thing.

But I am carried back against
My will into a childhood where
Autumn is bonfires, marble, smoke;
I lean against my window fenced
From evocations in the air.
When I said autumn, autumn broke.

Beautifully written. I hadn't read this poem for a long time; it must have been somewhere at the back of my mind waiting to be rediscovered. Strange how yesterday, when discussing the poem by Keats, I drew, as Jennings does, a connection with Proust. My subconscious must have "remembered" her mention of the madeleine cake, for I didn't consciously recall the poem's specific details (except for that wonderfully simple but effective last line) until I took her book from the shelf just now. Perhaps we never really forget anything - we just mislay things.

Mellow Fruitfulness

Of course there's really no such thing as the end of one season and the beginning of the next. The seasons, like the stages of our lives, merge imperceptibly one into the other. This said, autumn, or fall as they say in America, will be with us before we know it. Next Sunday 23 September marks the autumnal equinox - the culmination of harvest, and a time when day and night, light and dark, are equal. John Keats wrote one of my very favourite poems about autumn. I learnt this poem, along with many others, for school English lessons. Memorizing poetry off by heart was the norm in the English grammar schools of the 1960s. This was a chore at the time - but now I'm very glad I did it. Like piano lessons. But perhaps not like cross-country running. Anyway, here's the poem:

To Autumn

Seasons of mists and mellow fruitfulness,
Close bosom-friend of the maturing sun;
Conspiring with him how to load and bless
With fruit the vines that round the thatch-eaves run;
To bend with apples the mossed cottage-trees,
And fill all fruit with ripeness to the core;
To swell the gourd, and plump the hazel shells
With a sweet kernel; to set budding more,
And still more, later flowers for the bees,
Until they think warm days will never cease,
For Summer has o'er brimmed their clammy cells.

Who hath not seen thee oft amid thy store?
Sometimes whoever seeks abroad may find
Thee sitting careless on a granary floor,
Thy hair soft-lifted by the winnowing wind;
Or on a half-reaped furrow sound asleep,
Drowsed with the fume of poppies, while thy hook
Spares the next swath and all its twined flowers:
And sometimes like a gleaner thou dost keep
Steady thy laden head across a brook;
Or by a cider-press, with patient look,
Thou watchest the last oozings hours by hours.

Where are the songs of Spring? Ay, where are they?
Think not of them, thou hast thy music too -
While barred clouds bloom the soft-dying day,
And touch the stubble-plains with rosy hue;
Then in a wailful choir the small gnats mourn
Among the river sallows, borne aloft
Or sinking as the light wind lives or dies;
And full-grown lambs loud bleat from hilly bourn;
Hedge-crickets sing; and now with treble soft
The red-breast whistles from a garden-croft;
And gathering swallows twitter in the skies.

I really enjoyed typing that out. The feel and sound of the words, as I keyed them and repeated them to myself, transported me back 40 years, rather like the taste of Proust's madeleine cake. Keats paints such a vivid and sensual word-picture that you can almost see, hear, smell and taste the autumn.

The Number 3

Thought, word and deed - the human triptych?

Ever since my post about the 3 denials of Peter, the 3 verses of Seferis and Lawrence's 3 angels, I've been thinking about the significance of the number 3. Though I'm also quite partial to 5, 7 and 13 (my birthday), 3 is my favourite number. All these are prime numbers incidentally! And, again incidentally, true gardeners always plant in groups of 3, 5 or 7 rather than 2, 4 and 6. I wonder why that is so? The cachet of number 3 has a long and universal pedigree. In Ancient Greece there were 3 Fates (Moirae)(see pic) - Clotho (who span the thread of life), Lachesis (who measured the thread of life) and Atropos (who cut the thread of life). There were 3 Greek Muses - Aoide (Song), Melete (Practice) and Mneme (Memory); and 3 Graces (Charites) - Aglaea (Beauty), Euphrosyne (Mirth) and Thalia (Good cheer). In Celtic times they had the sacred tree-trinity of oak, ash and thorn; and also the Wiccan moon goddess (manifested in the stages of the moon's waxing and waning), the triple goddess of the cycle of rebirth: Maiden, Mother, and Mature Woman. These 3 archetypes were transmuted into the Greek goddesses Artemis, Demeter and Hecate; and the Roman goddessess Diana, Ceres and Trivia.

Hindus believe in a triad or trimurti of overarching gods: Brahma (the Creator), Vishnu (the Protector) and Shiva (the Destroyer); and the basis of Christianity is of course the Holy Trinity of Father, Son and Holy Spirit.

I could mention the 3 persons in grammar (he, she and it), the 3 dimensions (length, breadth and height), the 3 windows of time (past, present and future), the 3 kingdoms of matter (animal, vegetable and mineral), the 3 primary colours (red, yellow and blue), the 3 primary human cultures (art, science and religion), and the 3 vital human constituents (body, mind and spirit).

I could go on. What about the Greek logician's syllogism of major premise, minor premise and conclusion; the Greek philosopher's dialectic of thesis, antithesis and synthesis?

According to the cliché, 2 may be company and 3 a crowd - but often a third party can smooth over differences and prevent a 1 to 1 relationship becoming an injurious and dead-end superior/inferior or dominant/submissive one.

The Beatles were of course a 4some - but what band could match the pared down, attacking drive of Ginger Baker, Jack Bruce and Eric Clapton in the legendary rock trio Cream? I'm getting silly now..!

Any more 3somes, anyone..?

Dharmakaya Light

I've been stimulated recently by Loren Webster's discussion of Robert M. Pirsig and the Buddhist concept of Dharmakaya Light.

I interpret it as a kind of ecstasy of illumination which may be reached, for example, through meditation, sexual union, deep sleep, a near-death experience, and other paths. (Or photography, Loren!) According to Buddhist teaching the 4 main characteristics of this sublime state are: a Bright Image; Cessation of Thought; a pervasive feeling of Oneness not Duality; Slowness or even Cessation of Breath. I'm not sure how this differs from Nirvana - but it seems to be in its particular emphasis on Light as the gateway. In a wider context I think there are connections here with all kinds of "peak experiences" - from the epiphanies of Joyce to the insights of early Christian mystics such as Meister Eckhart - and even the transformative jazz riff heard in the café by Roquentin in Sartre's Nausea.

I was reminded of a poem I wrote years ago on this very subject. Whatever its merits or demerits - I now think it's too self-conscious, too literal, not metaphorical enough, though I still like the ending - it's perhaps interesting in its attempt to define some sort of mystical experience, to capture an instance of Dharmakaya Light:

Light Shines

The days go by

unnoticed as breathing

- weeks, months, maybe years -

and then perhaps at the end

of a dark avenue of leafless trees

- just when you were not specially

looking, thinking or expecting -

you come across a simple church

- rough, stone-hewed -

and witness a rush of winter sun

spotlighting dark ivied corners

of the graveyard, fragile symmetries

of spider webs now dewbright filigree.

This sudden, unsought

gleam of understanding

renders you breathless,

altered in some way

just for an instant,

clarifying for a moment

what you'd half thought

or dimly felt one time

- on the road to Damascus

or to Egypt in flight -

that you're an unknowing pilgrim

at an altar of pure light.

National Heritage

Lately I've been mentioning English Heritage and the National Trust, those 2 guardians of the nation's heritage. What are these bodies?

English Heritage (or the Historic Buildings and Monuments Commission) is the government's statutory advisor on the historic environment. It reports to Parliament through the Secretary of State for Culture, Media and Sport. It's funded partly by Government and partly with revenue earned from the historic properties under its guardianship. Its aims are:

• to conserve and enhance the historic environment



• to broaden public access to our heritage



• to increase our understanding of the past

The National Trust, on the other hand, is a registered charity and is funded entirely from membership and entrance fees, donations, legacies and revenue from its commercial operations such as publishing and gift retail. It has 3.4 million members and 43,000 volunteers.

It was founded in 1895 by 3 Victorian philanthropists: Miss Octavia Hill (a social reformer and one of the most influential women of the era), Sir Robert Hunter and Canon Herdwicke Rawnsley. They were concerned about uncontrolled development and industrialization.

To date the Trust has 300 historic houses in its care, plus 49 industrial monuments and mills; also castles and islands, gardens and nature reserves, and other countryside areas including forest, fen, woodland, moorland, farmland, downland and the coast. Its aim is:

• to preserve and protect the coastline, countryside and buildings of England, Wales and Northern Ireland

It acquired its first building - Alfriston House (Sussex) - in 1896, and created its first nature reserve - Wicken Fen (Cambridgshire) - in 1899. Blakeney Point (Norfolk) became its first coastal nature reserve in 1912. During the 1930s the children's author Beatrix Potter gave the Trust much financial support; and she left the Trust farms, land and flocks of Herdwick sheep in her will. More recently in 2002 Sutton Hoo was placed under its stewardship, and William Morris's Red House in 2003.

The National Trust for Scotland was set up in 1931.

9/11

I mentioned the mysterious world of the subconscious mind a few days ago. It seems my subconscious has been at work again. I've just read Old Girl Of The North Country's moving post about 9/11. Then I reread my own post from yesterday. In it the "twin towers" of Orford Castle loom down on you. There's talk of fortresses, war and the military. There's talk of burial grounds. Albeit in a historical context of long perspective. When I wrote the piece all of this sub-text was completely unmediated by my conscious mind. I thought I was just writing about a pleasant day out. It's somehow comforting that nature always takes over again in the end and tries to heal the wounds. As the National Trust took over Orford Ness from the MOD.

Heritage Open Day (2)

On Sunday last weekend we enjoyed free admission to Orford Castle which is managed by English Heritage. Only the keep remains of the original 12th century fortress built by Henry II - but it's impressively intact.

We walked north from Orford Quay along the western bank of the Alde and Ore river - the river with 2 names. It was very peaceful, with only the terns and the occasional sailing boat for company. Across the river lay Orford Ness, a National Nature Reserve and the largest vegetated shingle spit in Europe. It was a secret military test site until the mid-1980s - when the National Trust bought it from the Ministry of Defence. It's a wild and fascinating 10 mile coastal strip formed of rivers, mud flats, lagoons, saltmarsh, grass, shingle and abandoned wartime buildings. Someone once called it "half wilderness, half military junkyard".

Later we explored another National Trust site nearby: the mounds at Sutton Hoo, the burial ground of Anglo-Saxon kings. The most heralded excavation here in 1939 (Mound 1) revealed a ship burial site containing many priceless treasures - including the famous iron helmet which probably belonged to King Raedwald of East Anglia. Many of these beautifully crafted artefacts are housed in the British Museum.

Heritage Open Day (1)

Back from another long weekend in Suffolk. This was a weekend of Heritage Open Days throughout the country - meaning free access to many National Trust and English Heritage sites and properties which are normally closed to the public or charge for admission. We made the most of this, visiting, on the Saturday, Valley Farm at Flatford (see photo on left), a 15th century open hall house with a crown post roof and huge fireplace; and Thorington Hall near Stoke by Nayland (see photo on right), a beautiful 17th century timber framed farmhouse with a splendid limewashed oak staircase and six-stack chimney. The novelist and travel writer Nicholas Wollaston had been tenant here for 30 years until his death in May. I've never read any of his work, but Graham Greene described his book Red Rumba (1962) as perhaps the best travel book since Patrick Leigh Fermor's The Traveller's Tree. His widow Deirdre, who was there to welcome the visitors, told us that he was unable to find a publisher for his last 2 books - a reminder of how authors and styles of writing can go in and out of fashion just like everything else. Read here Wollaston's Observer article on how it's difficult to get published if you're not young and trendy.

We Are Transmitters

As we live, we are transmitters of life.
And when we fail to transmit life, life fails to flow through us.

That is part of the mystery of sex, it is a flow onwards.
Sexless people transmit nothing.

And if, as we work, we can transmit life into our work,
life, still more life, rushes into us to compensate, to be ready
and we ripple with life through the days.

Even if it is a woman making an apple dumpling, or a man a stool,
if life goes into the pudding, good is the pudding
good is the stool,
content is the woman, with fresh life rippling in to her,
content is the man.

Give, and it shall be given unto you
is still the truth about life.
But giving life is not so easy.
It doesn't mean handing it out to some mean fool, or letting the living dead eat you up.
It means kindling the life-quality where it was not,
even if it's only in the whiteness of a washed pocket-handkerchief.

D. H. LAWRENCE

Waiting For The Cock To Crow

It's amazing how often we sleep on a problem and the solution is there in the morning. I went to bed last night reflecting on yesterday's poem. I've just woken abruptly - the idea fresh in my mind that Peter denied Christ 3 times and that this is the key to the meaning of the 3 verses with their, if you like, 3 denials. I don't know where this idea came from. I wasn't consciously thinking towards it. I've never read any critical works on Seferis. I hardly know his poetry. It was as if someone had put the idea there. Very strange.

But I suppose this subconscious process, often active while we are sleep, is the basis of much creative thought. Artists, writers, many creative people often feel their work comes from a source "out there" - or, conversely, from somewhere "deep within" - which they are powerless to control. They are simply agents being channelled by a greater force. D. H. Lawrence, in his poem Song Of A Man Who Has Come Through, writes of the wind that blows through me. I've just looked up the poem, reminded myself of it. In it he mentions three strange angels. 3 again!

The human mind is an extraordinary thing. I always like the idea that the mind is a limitless place, that you can travel forever its depths and infinities. That you can go much further "inwards" than the physical body can ever journey "outwards".

But back to the poem Denial by Seferis. Does it mean we are living our lives somehow in the wrong way - though we can't help it since we are human and nature is a force over which we have no control - but we have the power to change? That our passion and desire are somehow misdirected - so the water tastes bad? The poem seems on the surface easy to understand. In fact it's quite mysterious.

Denial

This early love poem by Giorgos Seferis became, under the Greek Colonels' régime, an anthem of liberation:

Denial

On the secret seashore
white like a pigeon
we thirsted at noon;
but the water was brackish.

On the golden sand
we wrote her name;
but the sea-breeze blew
and the writing vanished.

With what spirit, what heart,
what desire and passion
we lived our life! a mistake!
so we changed our life...

Travels In Greece

One of my favourite travel writers is Patrick Leigh Fermor (1915- ). I revel in the descriptive fireworks of his 2 best known books, A Time Of Gifts (1977) and its sequel Between the Woods and the Water (1986) - accounts of a youthful journey he made from the Hook of Holland to Constantinople. Among other travel writings he's published The Traveller's Tree (1950) about the Caribbean - and 2 books on Greece, Mani: Travels in the Southern Peloponnese (1958) and Roumeli: Travels in Northern Greece (1966). In these books he explores very remote regions by mule and on foot. Leigh Fermor is passionate about Greece, its people and traditions, its myths and its landscape. He lives there and speaks fluent Greek. During WWII he fought in Greece and Crete, and helped organize the Cretan Resistance as an SOE officer. Disguised as a shepherd, he planned and achieved the capture of the German General Heinrich Kreipe in 1944, a daring operation which was later immortalised in the film Ill Met by Moonlight (1957) starring Dirk Bogarde.

Wounded

Giorgos Seferis, the Greek poet, wrote: Wherever I go Greece wounds me. Wounded by beauty? Wounded by love? Wounded by death? All 3, I think...

Greek Tragedy

Something is burning, baby, are you aware?
Something is the matter, baby, there's smoke in your hair
BOB DYLAN Something's Burning, Baby from Empire Burlesque

The fires in southern Greece have raged for almost a fortnight. Much of the devastation is centred on the western Peloponnese, that beautiful, mountainous peninsula separated from the northern mainland by the Corinth Canal, which links the Aegean and Ionian seas. Around 500,000 acres of farmland and forest have been ravaged, 6000 homes are believed to have been destroyed and at least 65 people have died. An Athenian schoolteacher was found dead in her car with her 4 children. She had tried but failed to outrace the flames. These have been the most extensive wildfires in Europe's history - much more serious than the ones which engulfed the northern Peloponnese in 2000. It's the biggest environmental disaster Greece has ever known. Helena Smith wrote this in the Guardian: In the Peloponnese, the peninsula worst hit by the fires, the signs of death are everywhere: in the stumps of still smouldering olive trees; the silver ash that carpets the land; the charred remains of carcasses putrefying in the summer heat; the trees tinged orange as if they are wearing wigs; and the thousands of others turned charcoal black, their baldness too awful to contemplate for those whose families have lived in these parts for centuries.

Jane Tomlinson

Jane Tomlinson (1964-2007) died yesterday evening. In July 1990 she was diagnosed with breast cancer. In August 2000 a scan revealed multiple secondary cancers. These cancers were pronounced incurable. She was given 6 months to live. Since then Jane took part in marathons and triathlons. She also completed 3 long and gruelling bike rides: from John O'Groats to Land's End, from Rome to Leeds and from San Francisco to New York City. She was given a BBC Sports Personality of the Year Award; and the Queen awarded her the MBE and the CBE. She has raised over £1 million for charity. She was - she is - an inspiration. But Jane would have been the first to point out that most people with terminal cancer could not or would not want to do what she did, and why should they? Who would - even if totally fit and healthy? The point is this: unless we really can't help it (and for some this may be understandably impossible), try not to give up. No matter how short life is. Whatever we do. For, as Ruskin said, There is no wealth but life.

More Stoat Stories

The mustelidae family has been getting a big blogpress lately.You know how you wait ages for a bus and then 3 come all at once? Well, first there was Annie Dillard's epiphanic weasel; then there were my own running stoats; and now comes Chris Townsend's dramatic stoat event in his garden (Stoat Encounters of the Third Kind?) involving 2 stoats, 3 pheasants, a coal tit and a sparrow hawk. A word about Chris Townsend, a member of the UK hiking community's blogerati. An outdoors enthusiast, he's been gear guru for tgo magazine since 1991. He's also a photographer, and author of 16 walking-related books. Chris has trekked many trails and long-distance paths including the Pacific Crest Trail, the Continental Divide Trail and the Arizona Trail in the USA; and he's walked from the toe to the tip of Britain, from Land's End to John O'Groats. I remember reading what I think was his first book, The Great Backpacking Adventure (Oxford Illustrated Press, 1987), which I enjoyed very much at the time. But his writing style and ability have improved by leaps and bounds since then. A book of his that's become a bit of a classic is The Backpacker's Handbook published by Ragged Mountain Press, one of the McGraw-Hill group of companies. As I write I'm looking up at my own copy on the shelf above my desk. It's a 440 page practical guide to backpacking equipment and technique. Indispensable. This sentence comes from the chapter On the Move: Skills and Hazards: One bear-country saying is that the way to tell the difference between black bears and grizzly bears is to climb a tree - black bears will climb up after you, grizzlies will knock the tree down!

Snowy Woods And Pilgrim Islands

The reviews are now appearing for Robert Macfarlane's new and eagerly awaited book The Wild Places and they are universally ecstatic. Look at the notices from The Sunday Times or from The Scotsman for example. I mentioned how much I was looking forward to reading this book in a post a few weeks ago. I don't think I'll be disappointed when I get my hands on a copy. In yesterday's Guardian he describes how he went about researching the book: I travelled widely, and I tried to travel wildly. I walked, swam and climbed through landscape and seascape. Wherever possible, I slept out. I travelled in all four seasons, in sunlight, rain and blizzard, and by night as well as day. I also sought out the company of native guides: people who had lived in those landscapes for many years, or came to know them intimately as scientists, artists, shepherds or foresters - people who had acquired the wisdom of sustained contact with a place... I had a great deal of fun. I spent nights out on cliff edges and distant bays, in snowy woods and on pilgrim islands. I walked up frozen rivers by night, swam into sea caves, and one midnight I wallowed in a phosphorescent Irish Sea. I slept near a shearwater colony (noisy), and under the sky route of thousands of migrating geese (deafening); in a winter wood (cold) and on the summit of Ben Hope (bone-chilling). I became lonely, tired, wet, midge-bitten, irritated with nature and, most often, very happy. If this account of getting out into the wilderness - living in it for a while, sleeping in it, experiencing it first-hand - doesn't inspire us, I don't know what will...

Trust Yourself

Trust yourself
Trust yourself to do things that only you know best
Trust yourself
Trust yourself to do what's right and not be second-guessed
Don't trust me to show you beauty
When beauty may only turn to rust
If you need somebody you can trust, trust yourself

Trust yourself
Trust yourself to know the way that will prove true in the end
Trust yourself
Trust yourself to find the path where there is no if and when
Don't trust me to show you the truth
When the truth may only be ashes and dust
If you want somebody you can trust, trust yourself

Well, you're on your own, you always were
In a land of wolves and thieves
Don't put your hope in ungodly man
Or be a slave to what somebody else believes

Trust yourself
And you won't be disappointed when vain people let you down
Trust yourself
And look not for answers where no answers can be found
Don't trust me to show you love
When my love may be only lust
If you want somebody you can trust, trust yourself

BOB DYLAN Trust Yourself from Empire Burlesque