Skiddaw is alone in shroud, the cloud cover nowhere else to be seen except in that one location.
At last the rains have abated and we have clean, clear skies – vivid, crystalline. All except the heights of Skiddaw which, if one were to believe the old adage, is being fought over by a berber and a devil having a smoking contest with briar pipes each the size of a car whilst all around returns to calm, clarity, and thankful dryness. Thermal air makes the waspish edge of the cloud cover spiral out and up, but other than that it does not move, stuck fast to the peaks.
I am hoping this change will allow some opportunity to make contact with the land again. After all, the recent weather has caged everyone in: sandbags up against doorways, the rushing activity to remove possessions from vulnerable places. I have felt increasingly in flight from this land rather than proving some existence among it. Watching it from arms length, through windows, with the briefest of forays out, head down in the driving wind and rain wondering when the flood will come.
Now the higher altitude winds start to shift the clouds up there, at some speed; and Dodd, the western edge of Skiddaw’s collection of companion hills, is lit by the rising sun, a golden russet swatch of land. The thick, blue-grey nimbus peeled back and away. Warmed by the sun and no longer indestructible.
Keswick, Cumbria 17/12/06
At last the rains have abated and we have clean, clear skies – vivid, crystalline. All except the heights of Skiddaw which, if one were to believe the old adage, is being fought over by a berber and a devil having a smoking contest with briar pipes each the size of a car whilst all around returns to calm, clarity, and thankful dryness. Thermal air makes the waspish edge of the cloud cover spiral out and up, but other than that it does not move, stuck fast to the peaks.
I am hoping this change will allow some opportunity to make contact with the land again. After all, the recent weather has caged everyone in: sandbags up against doorways, the rushing activity to remove possessions from vulnerable places. I have felt increasingly in flight from this land rather than proving some existence among it. Watching it from arms length, through windows, with the briefest of forays out, head down in the driving wind and rain wondering when the flood will come.
Now the higher altitude winds start to shift the clouds up there, at some speed; and Dodd, the western edge of Skiddaw’s collection of companion hills, is lit by the rising sun, a golden russet swatch of land. The thick, blue-grey nimbus peeled back and away. Warmed by the sun and no longer indestructible.
Keswick, Cumbria 17/12/06
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