It begins, as many days do here in the Lakes, with the RAF making their presence felt - Jaguar and Harrier jets (thieves of the Kestrel's soul?) playing war games over the fells, flying low through the valleys. I can only liken it to how it must be on the eve of a country being invaded - and indeed everything about these machines invades one's consciousness - the dark, threatening, shiny visions of death passing low over the treetops followed by the screaming engine noise that obliterates everything in a constant, debasing echo. What are they doing this for? Surely they've been getting enough 'practice' in the Gulf over the past few years; don't tell me they need more. Or is it an opportunity on the summer solstice to remind us never to forget who really owns this land and the immediate sky above it? All day long they fly over in groups of three, forming up and bombarding the town with noise and throwing the animals and birds into flurries of panic as they race northward; and they choose this day of all days to make their presence felt more than any other day I can recall since living here. No coincidence - this is the deliberate presence of the techno-military beast making sure that we never lose sight of our place in the world and never get the chance to contemplate an alternative - the idiot sidekicks to the numb-nuts US. How will we excuse ourselves in the face of history? Becoming as we are the embarrassing joke of the world - e.g: 'There are known knowns. There are things we know we know. We also know there are known unknowns. That is to say, we know there are some things we do not know.'
Of course some succumb to the 'wow' factor (a tourist version of shock and awe?), mostly middle-aged men craning their necks and getting their sons to come take a look in predictable genetic adoration of the deadly. But those of us who are here every day get pretty angry at the invasion of our privacy from above - this is bad enough, christ alone knows what its like when they're dropping bombs as well!
- Living with war - as Neil Young puts it -
These machines and all that they symbolise, as you can guess, add to my current despondency and feeling that I am out of place. I haven't felt drawn in to the landscape here yet since I left Suffolk. There is a barrier of sensation and memory linked totally with the land there. I need to remedy this. This is a good day to do it. Only one way I know how. Even though the storms and gales are still strong, pummelling the little town without respite, driving everyone indoors, I need to trek out and get lost in the wilderness for a few hours -
I have a plan -
My intention is to traverse the marsh at the southern end of Bassenthwaite Lake, following the length of the River Derwent, the umbilical link between the two lakes (the other being Derwentwater itself). I don't want to study the map too much, something in me wants to discover trails and paths rather than know in advance, to be a little lost and not know which way to get back. I note a few names, landmarks for reference - How, Pow Beck, Rough Mire - and Redness Point, my intended 'destination' where I believe I'll have a good chance of catching sight of a male Osprey hunting for fish -
After ten minutes, the rain slouches in heavily and the winds come up in the late afternoon - small trees crack apart caught in particularly violent gusts, two on the riverbank at Portinscale, pale gashes of xylem and leaves sucked into the current - the destruction is sudden and recalls the fighter jets and their pall over the day - I am soaked and have a bad feeling and return home twice as despondent to gaze out the window at the ensuing tempest, the most gratifying result of which is that it has temporarily grounded the RAF -
I don't sleep well - anxious, I wake around dawn - it is still raining hard and I lie awake for ages even more determined that I must get out, engage I the process of 'shedding' that can accompany a walk into the wild - a lone Song Thrush runs the range of its calls and song patterns, barely the same phrase twice, savouring every stray note of it -
At around 8.30 a.m. the RAF return to infiltrate your dreams if you're lucky enough to still be sleeping after they've hammered home their presence. It is such an assault on the senses, such a shattering of equilibrium - I can understand why Iraqi's feel so aggrieved at being invaded, at very least, despite the violence and the political and natural resource implications, because there's no chance of rest or quiet with all that airborne ordnance flying around - it is potential sleep deprivation at its worst - the coercive methods of Guantanamo and Abu Ghraib writ large -
How lucky I am -
The day settles, grey cloud overhead and the winds are beginning to die down and I set off with all good intention to retrace my steps and head on further toward my initial destination, a good long walk set in my mind and step - but nature has a way of always shifting your plans, and if your lucky its very often into the line of unexpected beauty and spiritual treasure. Beyond the fallen trees at Portinscale (now new landmarks to playing kids), I stop to check on the Sand Martin colony (see entry Visitation 11/5/06) in the riverbank. It is an electric sight - birds are flying everywhere up and down the length of the river, screeing between each other with barely any distance apart and then rising up, or coming in direct to the nest mouths where the tiny white heads of growing chicks peek out, mouths agape and the adults come to rest there to feed them quickly before shooting off again. The full, clear view of them is delicious - wings fold back into a streamline curve, the tiny snub-nosed heads switching left to right and dipping to transfer the bugs and flies they've caught on the wing. There must be at least three to four chicks in each nest making an approximate total of 60-80 young, add the parents in and that makes close on 100 birds in this colony alone. It is a truly heart warming sight and I am enrapt there on the opposite bank watching the mix of extreme flying (a better kind!) and tender feeding. An opportunist Grey Wagtail even gets involved at one point, foraging on the bank beneath the line of nest holes for any stray morsels of bug or gnat, never getting too close, but in harmony and trust with his neighbours, after all if he puts them off he's not getting fed either -
Biophilia - the affinity we humans have toward species other than our own - because it takes us out of ourselves and places us back where we belong, at a deep subconscious level, in the heart of some Eden - some Babylonian garden -
Try telling that to the RAF -
Keswick, Cumbria 21/6/06 - 22/6/06
Of course some succumb to the 'wow' factor (a tourist version of shock and awe?), mostly middle-aged men craning their necks and getting their sons to come take a look in predictable genetic adoration of the deadly. But those of us who are here every day get pretty angry at the invasion of our privacy from above - this is bad enough, christ alone knows what its like when they're dropping bombs as well!
- Living with war - as Neil Young puts it -
These machines and all that they symbolise, as you can guess, add to my current despondency and feeling that I am out of place. I haven't felt drawn in to the landscape here yet since I left Suffolk. There is a barrier of sensation and memory linked totally with the land there. I need to remedy this. This is a good day to do it. Only one way I know how. Even though the storms and gales are still strong, pummelling the little town without respite, driving everyone indoors, I need to trek out and get lost in the wilderness for a few hours -
I have a plan -
My intention is to traverse the marsh at the southern end of Bassenthwaite Lake, following the length of the River Derwent, the umbilical link between the two lakes (the other being Derwentwater itself). I don't want to study the map too much, something in me wants to discover trails and paths rather than know in advance, to be a little lost and not know which way to get back. I note a few names, landmarks for reference - How, Pow Beck, Rough Mire - and Redness Point, my intended 'destination' where I believe I'll have a good chance of catching sight of a male Osprey hunting for fish -
After ten minutes, the rain slouches in heavily and the winds come up in the late afternoon - small trees crack apart caught in particularly violent gusts, two on the riverbank at Portinscale, pale gashes of xylem and leaves sucked into the current - the destruction is sudden and recalls the fighter jets and their pall over the day - I am soaked and have a bad feeling and return home twice as despondent to gaze out the window at the ensuing tempest, the most gratifying result of which is that it has temporarily grounded the RAF -
I don't sleep well - anxious, I wake around dawn - it is still raining hard and I lie awake for ages even more determined that I must get out, engage I the process of 'shedding' that can accompany a walk into the wild - a lone Song Thrush runs the range of its calls and song patterns, barely the same phrase twice, savouring every stray note of it -
At around 8.30 a.m. the RAF return to infiltrate your dreams if you're lucky enough to still be sleeping after they've hammered home their presence. It is such an assault on the senses, such a shattering of equilibrium - I can understand why Iraqi's feel so aggrieved at being invaded, at very least, despite the violence and the political and natural resource implications, because there's no chance of rest or quiet with all that airborne ordnance flying around - it is potential sleep deprivation at its worst - the coercive methods of Guantanamo and Abu Ghraib writ large -
How lucky I am -
The day settles, grey cloud overhead and the winds are beginning to die down and I set off with all good intention to retrace my steps and head on further toward my initial destination, a good long walk set in my mind and step - but nature has a way of always shifting your plans, and if your lucky its very often into the line of unexpected beauty and spiritual treasure. Beyond the fallen trees at Portinscale (now new landmarks to playing kids), I stop to check on the Sand Martin colony (see entry Visitation 11/5/06) in the riverbank. It is an electric sight - birds are flying everywhere up and down the length of the river, screeing between each other with barely any distance apart and then rising up, or coming in direct to the nest mouths where the tiny white heads of growing chicks peek out, mouths agape and the adults come to rest there to feed them quickly before shooting off again. The full, clear view of them is delicious - wings fold back into a streamline curve, the tiny snub-nosed heads switching left to right and dipping to transfer the bugs and flies they've caught on the wing. There must be at least three to four chicks in each nest making an approximate total of 60-80 young, add the parents in and that makes close on 100 birds in this colony alone. It is a truly heart warming sight and I am enrapt there on the opposite bank watching the mix of extreme flying (a better kind!) and tender feeding. An opportunist Grey Wagtail even gets involved at one point, foraging on the bank beneath the line of nest holes for any stray morsels of bug or gnat, never getting too close, but in harmony and trust with his neighbours, after all if he puts them off he's not getting fed either -
Biophilia - the affinity we humans have toward species other than our own - because it takes us out of ourselves and places us back where we belong, at a deep subconscious level, in the heart of some Eden - some Babylonian garden -
Try telling that to the RAF -
Keswick, Cumbria 21/6/06 - 22/6/06
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