Derwentwater

It was pretty wild even in Keswick so after a visit to Oxfam I had a wander through the woods and along the lakeshore. I have always loved this stretch with its winter colours and textures of silver birch, bog myrtle, bracken and grasses and the backdrop of the lake looking towards distant Skiddaw.

(Note: I’m feeling a bit indignant having been watching Simon Reeve in Ireland. It seemed a given to me that he should have been on a holy well expedition with freespiral but instead they found some bloke who had made sure a motorway got diverted round a tree that the fairies are fond of...all a bit lightweight compared to our freespiral’s oeuvre, I reckon).

A Clear Day and No Memories - Wallace Stevens

No soldiers in the scenery,
No thoughts of people now dead,
As they were fifty years ago,
Young and living in a live air,
Young and walking in the sunshine,
Bending in blue dresses to touch something,
Today the mind is not part of the weather.

Today the air is clear of everything.
It has no knowledge except of nothingness
And it flows over us without meanings,
As if none of us had ever been here before
And are not now: in this shallow spectacle,
This invisible activity, this sense.