There are some corners of the landscape which are irredeemably marked with death and perhaps have always been that way.
A ram's corpse in a corner of a field, close by Pow Beck, in the shadow of the dense primeval foliage that twines about the brickwork of the disused railway navigation - a dark, whispering place -
The flesh of the beast is, in majority, long gone - a semblance of fleece, now grim and dirty lies in a ring around the remains, framing it and culminating in the untouched parade of its legs splayed fore and aft, black emblems of what once was. A large bolus of fermented grass about the size of a rugby ball sits just beneath the exposed ribcage, the contents of the creature's stomach when it died; the ribs themselves opened out in extremis on one side. Oddest of all is that the beast seems to have been burned either to death or at some point immediately after - the skull which remains quarter robed in a swatch of fleece, and upturned so the empty sockets still stare, is scorched to char black, reddish at the edges and around the turned horns which are untouched by decay or burning. There is the hint of the ritualistic about all this. Or did it simply have to die for fear of disease? But then, would a farmer burn a ram and leave it here spread across a public footpath almost like a warning? Maybe a tramp used the whole for a fire one night to stay warm? Yet, none of these possibilities seem to make total sense; really there is something beyond this, that the ram is a symbol of place than some example of rural necessity. It marks a change between lands. Stepping beyond the dead beast you enter a marshy region hemmed by dark hawthorn hedges, the stench of stagnant water and mire rising; a place where nothing moves. The birds stop here at the edge; Robins secreting themselves in the low branches turn back into the field behind. There's no discernable path through either and the ground is shifting, unsafe underfoot. It is like the 'blasted heath' where the witches in Macbeth reside.
From somewhere in the direction of Portinscale, distant, tremulous, the voices and applause of a cricket match can be heard. But in this place it is as if they are part of some dream, untouchable and far removed from the mood here.
Travelling on through, shaken but fascinated by such an extreme change of mood, I am drawn to thinking about the wilderness and its uncontrollable potential for violence and the harsh dealings in blood of survival - cannibalism, theft of the unborn or recently born, the berserk and the blood-lust - dark thoughts that hunt around the edges of the subconscious, the primeval markers of ancestry - and eventually, breathless, I need to get out of the place. Discovering a collapsed set of rock slabs over the beck, the crossing is almost miraculous as the change beyond the thick tree border is sudden and the swallows and sweeter air come again; and in another corner, a female Roe Deer watches unmoving, her large, soft eyes and gentle being come as a blessing.
Keswick, Cumbria 24/6/06
A ram's corpse in a corner of a field, close by Pow Beck, in the shadow of the dense primeval foliage that twines about the brickwork of the disused railway navigation - a dark, whispering place -
The flesh of the beast is, in majority, long gone - a semblance of fleece, now grim and dirty lies in a ring around the remains, framing it and culminating in the untouched parade of its legs splayed fore and aft, black emblems of what once was. A large bolus of fermented grass about the size of a rugby ball sits just beneath the exposed ribcage, the contents of the creature's stomach when it died; the ribs themselves opened out in extremis on one side. Oddest of all is that the beast seems to have been burned either to death or at some point immediately after - the skull which remains quarter robed in a swatch of fleece, and upturned so the empty sockets still stare, is scorched to char black, reddish at the edges and around the turned horns which are untouched by decay or burning. There is the hint of the ritualistic about all this. Or did it simply have to die for fear of disease? But then, would a farmer burn a ram and leave it here spread across a public footpath almost like a warning? Maybe a tramp used the whole for a fire one night to stay warm? Yet, none of these possibilities seem to make total sense; really there is something beyond this, that the ram is a symbol of place than some example of rural necessity. It marks a change between lands. Stepping beyond the dead beast you enter a marshy region hemmed by dark hawthorn hedges, the stench of stagnant water and mire rising; a place where nothing moves. The birds stop here at the edge; Robins secreting themselves in the low branches turn back into the field behind. There's no discernable path through either and the ground is shifting, unsafe underfoot. It is like the 'blasted heath' where the witches in Macbeth reside.
From somewhere in the direction of Portinscale, distant, tremulous, the voices and applause of a cricket match can be heard. But in this place it is as if they are part of some dream, untouchable and far removed from the mood here.
Travelling on through, shaken but fascinated by such an extreme change of mood, I am drawn to thinking about the wilderness and its uncontrollable potential for violence and the harsh dealings in blood of survival - cannibalism, theft of the unborn or recently born, the berserk and the blood-lust - dark thoughts that hunt around the edges of the subconscious, the primeval markers of ancestry - and eventually, breathless, I need to get out of the place. Discovering a collapsed set of rock slabs over the beck, the crossing is almost miraculous as the change beyond the thick tree border is sudden and the swallows and sweeter air come again; and in another corner, a female Roe Deer watches unmoving, her large, soft eyes and gentle being come as a blessing.
Keswick, Cumbria 24/6/06
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