Melbrek and Crummock Water

from Coledale Hause (via Hopegill Head)

Love this walk - havn't done it for years. My husband endlessly took the mickey out of me because I always called it a 'scary' edge and although its no Striding or Sharp Edge there is something knife-like about it and its just as wonderful as I remember. The valley bottom is great too, feels like it should be a gorge in the foothills of the remote Himalayas - you emerge into the open at the the other end and realise that it is as if the water in the beck has been running through your head. Watched a Dipper doing lots of dipping and I'm sure I saw a Reed Bunting and a carpeting of fresh green growth of bilberry, Parsley and Mountain Fern.


The Hermit Crab (by Mary Oliver)

Once I looked inside
the darkness
of a shell folded like a pastry,
and there was a fancy face -

or almost a face -
it turned away
and frisked up its brawny forearms
so quickly

against the light
and my looking in
I scarcely had time to see it,
gleaming

under the pure white roof
of old calcium.
When I sent it down, it hurried
along the tideline

of the sea,
which was slashing along as usual,
shouting and hissing
toward the future,

turning its back
with every tide on the past,
leaving the shore littered
every morning

with more ornaments of death -
what a pearly rubble
from which to choose a house
like a white flower -

and what a rebellion
to leap into it
and hold on,
connecting everything,

the past to the future -
which is of course the miracle -
which is the only argument there is
against the sea.