The road home

After a day of rain Luna and I went up for a late afternoon walk to the Elephant Trees just as the sun was dipping behind a bank of smoking cloud. I've run and walked this route in every kind of weather and every season. Once in early December a snowstorm swirled in from no-where as I was running home and within minutes the snow obscured the path. I got home just before great drifts closed the dale for about four days. Another time, in mid-August, I went up on a bright sunny day and the stillness of the air was thick with the hum of thousands of bees on the heather gorging on nectar.

But today there was only the craak of the pheasants and the gentle wind soughing through the dried grass and leafless trees, a noise like the sea. Luna startled a hare out the heather and it jinked away over the moor and I feared I'd never get her back, but she returned looking like she'd just had a brief run rather than a sprint across the fells. She is a formidable dog.