Mid-November and it’s time again for New Networks for Nature, the annual conference which brings together artists and scientists to consider how and why Nature natters. This year’s theme is Place and Belonging. Aside from meeting old friends and making new ones, high spots for me begin with Esther Tyson’s artwork – her painted sparrows leap off the wall towards me from their place in the exhibition. I'm in that jittery incubation period that comes with the start of a new book, and I’ve arrived hoping to chat to Mark Cocker about bird migration. That doesn’t happen, but I find ample food for thought from Ruth Padel, who describes bird migration as ‘the heartbeat of the planet’. I love her reading from ‘Nocturne’, where she tackles the ‘routine daily migrations’ of jellyfish, from the ‘full mooch skyward’ to the sea’s surface to the ‘delicate descent’ to the sea bed. I’m captivated by the debate, led by Tony Juniper and George Monbiot, on the Real Value of Nature, and moved to tears by Mike McCarthy’s question in its closing minutes ‘What value do we put on birdsong?’ And John Aitchison’s short session is a delight, both his extraordinary short film on looking for beauty in the natural world, and his quiet exploration of ‘the truth… that we are all one community’. For him Nature makes life worth living, particularly when on the move: according to the Romans, he says, whatever the problem, ‘walking solves it’.
I have a chance to test this out the following week, when a train to Skipton and then a tricky car ride through flooded roads takes me to Arncliffe in Littondale, North Yorkshire for a very welcome holiday. We walk out in the late afternoon, stopping by the farm to borrow wellingtons, taking the footpath down by the church into fields along the river. Easy enough with the wind behind us, though one or two patches are underwater. Once the ground gives way beneath our feet: a moment longer, and it feels my feet will be sucked down. Perhaps I will sink without trace. Sometimes we walk through streams newly sprung, spilling over grass and stones and gravel. The river races past, churning, boiling, a constant breathy roar; a relief to reach Hawkswick and the bridge to the road safely. Then a brisk march back, some stretches of the road flooded to near knee height, as it grows dark.
In the morning the sky is rinsed clean, the light pink-tinged, and a wild wind has got up which stays with us all week, erupting now and again into gale force. From my bed in Green Farm Cottage, I see stone walls, a single tree, the mass of land rising green opposite. After breakfast we set out along the track towards Malham but I don’t make it past the first awkward section of the path, where the stony ground falls away unevenly on one side, turning me first immobile and then instantly feeble and fearful. A few tears and we head back down the tussocky slope for coffee then out at once for a second attempt, taking the narrow Malham road on the far side of Cowside Beck up towards Darnbrook, opposite the ridge we would have walked if we’d continued on the track earlier. It’s a steady climb into a stiff wind, gusting belligerently, occasionally carrying a shrapnel of moisture, dipping sometimes but a constant companion, so that we lean into it, into the gradient, mimicking the acute angle of the heaps of cloud; like letting your tango partner take the weight, Carole says. We slog up (actually Carole closer to skipping) under a constantly changing sky: now a rainbow’s end behind a barn, now a thin veil of rain blown moodily across the valley giving way almost at once to sunlight and clear blue.
We pause for the view: the massy shoulders of land lumpy, knobbed, knuckled or lazily smoothed by a giant hand, pocked with boulders white against the green, or folded into narrow horizontal pleats. Stony outcrops and lines of cliff break the surface here and there. A distant stretch of woodland in winter plumage the colour of old sage; from here it might be made of grey fur. Above the beck, patches of scree map a series of flattened continents, each altering the outline slightly, here a new inlet, there a peninsula narrowing to a string of islets. The sky is birdless. I watch a smudge of cloud the colour of bruised skin become a flat fish, swelling at one end into a skate or a ray, tail stretched out behind. It moves tail first in front of a stack of shiny ice cream cumulus, at ground level its shadow always a step ahead. Sometimes a spell of sunshine turns a spread of bracken to burnished copper or backlights the outline of a leafless tree for a second or two. The top of the ridge beyond the valley darkens to charcoal then black, with a crest of silvery light. Now raincloud blurs land and sky behind me, leaving a spyhole for a watery sun to peer through. I turn back, letting the wind buffet and bully me downwards, watching the village appear bit by bit, solidly grounded on the wide valley bottom. Two crows fly past; three gulls whip and weave. The roar of the gale is replaced by the splash of the stream.
I am learning larch trees. How have I never noticed them before? Partly perhaps their associations with forestry – or is it that they are more common in the north, whilst my interest in trees is a relatively recent Cambridge thing? Well there are plenty here. They seem to occur in groups, their tall straight trunks often leaning into each other, as if a little drunk or in some other way unhinged. Their branches reach out laterally in a complex tangle of angles, whilst the topmost slope gracefully downwards, like the arms of a ballerina resting lightly on the folds of a skirt. There is a hint of craziness about them, though, which I find both intriguing and endearing. The dead one on the track behind the pub has collapsed into itself and has an air of magic - or menace? Though conifers, they are deciduous, so by November have lost their leaves. Carole says they turn a wonderful ochre in the autumn. Still, from a distance they have a kind of glow which, when you get close enough, you can see comes from the bare pinkish twigs which hang from the limbs like hair. Quite a few branches have what look like old cones – apparently they can retain old cones on their stems for many years. Their wood is tough and waterproof and good for fences, furniture-making and boat-building. Larch are said to protect against enchantment and evil spirits and, according to the Bach centre, are the remedy for those who lack confidence in their ability to succeed.
There are ash trees too, lots of sycamore, one or two oak, lots of beech, most reduced to skeletons now, so that what you see is their essential form and structure. Every few yards along the path offers a new arrangement: a tracery of dark veins against the skin of the sky; a group of tall fellows, their tops shaped to a smooth curve; a knot of shoulders and elbows. Occasionally there’s a sycamore with leaves still golden and lime, or a flush of beech leaves burning orange. By a stream we meet a low tree whose contorted branches are completely covered in vivid green fur with miniature ferns growing out of the moss. On the hillsides, patches of bracken rusted almost to crimson. At the side of the road up towards Pen y Ghent, stems of some roadside weed stand deadened and wetted to chocolate brown.
There is a lot of rain. One day we walk from Litton to Halton Gill and on to Foxup, the source of the River Skirfare. According to Wikipedia, the name Foxup means upstream with the foxes. We mooch around the houses and discover ‘Katie’s Cuppas’, a tea room with cake, a loo and an honesty box, along with an invitation to sit in the porch opposite. Sadly, we have no cash with us. All day the cloud has hunkered down in the valley so that, if it’s not actually raining, we might as well be swimming though cloud. It’s not unpleasant. Into the afternoon the wind picks up, and the cloud seems to separate into a white backdrop with occasional hints of brightness – or is that just wishful thinking? – and, closer, those wispy grey smudges which unequivocally mean rain. By the time we get back to the car, the parts of us that aren’t totally waterproofed are thoroughly soaked. The next day is stormy with flurries of hail, grassland the colour of straw deepening to honey gold, mustard, ochre. In the sultry light it glows as if floodlit, turning to burnt orange to toffee to sienna to maroon. The greens: lemon-lime darkens to emerald to viridian, with the thin needle-like grasses spiking up from boggy ground darker still, and the underside of the pines near-black. The sky smoulders, flat white bruising to dirty grey to a sulky purple, sometimes clearing to liquid blue, then pinks and golds as sunlight outlines the banks of cloud with a lightning stripe
After a wild night, the wind howling and rattling at the windows, the following morning it’s still raining, but not much. The cloud has lifted so that we can see the tops. We drive out along the Hawkswick Road to Kettlewell. There are stretches of quite deep flood water to negotiate but Carole is becoming expert and tolerant of my failures of nerve. We park and head off up the steep Leyburn road – 1 in 4 at its start. The surface is littered with debris, leaves and stalks and pebbles deposited by the flood waters. I let Carole get ahead – I’m not in the mood for anything too challenging and already I’m thinking about coffee. Still, I’m happy enough for a mile or so, until the streams that tumble down over the road every few yards accumulate in a sizeable puddle and I want to avoid wet feet for the third day running. I’m pleased with my walking: after those moments of mild panic on our first morning, I’ve felt capable and fit, enjoying stretching my legs. Every now and again a pale sun filters through the cloud, and once a technicolour rainbow touches the sky with a rose blush. A thin shaft of light hits what I imagine is a metal roof, and for a moment there is a blazing sun on the valley floor. The river snakes off into the distance. On the other side of the water the ground rises to a stand of larches still in their autumn colours, their tops a rich gold. In every direction I see tracks winding up the mass of the hills, their green sweep punctuated with stones and skeletal trees and sheep. As with trees, I wish I knew more about the different breeds of sheep. This morning’s are mainly black-faced with a small white muzzle, and white fleece. Swaledale, perhaps? Or Jacob’s (is that even a breed?)
The stones: in the wet the walls are mid-grey, the surface of some lichen-blotched with white and pink and sage and mauve. Other are furred with emerald moss. Occasionally a large boulder flops like a seal on the grass, dappled fawn and pink, its pelt slick with the rain.
The sounds: the muffled clatter of the wind, the constant breathy splash of water, the pocking of rain, the sputter of hail. A dog barks; the plaintive whimper of a lamb; the tinny chime of a church clock; somewhere – always – someone is hammering.
And the smells: wet leaves; manure; and everywhere the comforting scent of wood-smoke.
The sounds: the muffled clatter of the wind, the constant breathy splash of water, the pocking of rain, the sputter of hail. A dog barks; the plaintive whimper of a lamb; the tinny chime of a church clock; somewhere – always – someone is hammering.
And the smells: wet leaves; manure; and everywhere the comforting scent of wood-smoke.
From Grassington out along the road towards Pately Bridge, a circular walk takes us down a grassy track sheltered from the biting wind and through a small valley to Parceval Hall. Warm sun from a dazzlingly blue sky has vanished by the time we start the climb back up the road, giving way to icy rain and mean skies. A scattering of goldfinch dart about along the roadside. We’ve also seen heron, owls at dusk, a hawk surprised by our passing, red kite, buzzard wheeling and mewling, and nuthatch and greenfinch amongst the tits and sparrows on the feeder in the garden at Arncliffe. Our last evening follows the now familiar pattern: a drink in The Falcon, then home for supper and an hour or two with books in front of a log fire. We have had every kind of weather except for snow. The exception is countered on our final morning, when we wake to a dusting of white on the hills, and perilously icy roads. Still we manage a last slither round the village, each intent on her own paths, and then a sad car journey away from the hills and back to flat old Cambridge. Our problems solved by walking? I'm not sure. Perhaps at least we can see them more clearly.
In Arncliffe I read the first half of Donna Tartt’s The Goldfinch; also ‘Wind’ by Ted Hughes, ‘The Darkling Thrush’ by Thomas Hardy and listened to a recording of W.H. Auden reading ‘In Praise of Limestone’.
Back home, as well as finishing The Goldfinch, I plan to read Ruth Padel’s The Mara Crossing published by Chatto and Windus and to re-read Mike McCarthy’s The Moth Snowstorm: Nature and Joy (John Murray 2015)
Back home, as well as finishing The Goldfinch, I plan to read Ruth Padel’s The Mara Crossing published by Chatto and Windus and to re-read Mike McCarthy’s The Moth Snowstorm: Nature and Joy (John Murray 2015)
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