Rain on the Roof

The rain continues, as it has most of the night. I doubt whether the huge puddle
outside the 'barn' here will ever be depleted. Happily, this time last
year down here in West Penwith we were deluged with frost, snow, ice
a freezing temperatures. This year people have been prudent in getting
their wood, coal and kindling together a lot earlier in preparation for winter.
Often as not winter only passes an occasional snowstorm or frost dusting
down here on the edge of Britain. There is a micro climate that protects 
this little peninsula. The puddles and mud mazes continue all up the track
here as far as Tressider farm, going past Crean Mill and several houses
on the lane. It would require a group effort to tackle the mud and puddles
and this is one more example of how people who need to work together
don't. Everyone thinks they are right and the other is wrong, result really
bad muddy lanes. Probably because of having to put money into it people
just want someone else to take care of it. Really not good. How can we
expect a dialogue with the Taliban when we cannot come to agreement
about such practical things?

I'm reading Roger Deakin's Waterlog, appropriately, as I do my walk, hikes
and photo journals and sometimes dictated notes as I go hither and thither
on the bridle paths, public footways and roads down here mainly in the
piece of land south west of Penzance, known of course as West Penwith.
Deakin says 'walking, cycling and swimming will always be subversive activities.
They allow us to regain a sense of what is old and wild in these islands by getting
off the beaten track and breaking free of the official version of things." He thinks
there are still places of mystery, like darkness, mist, woods, mountains or indeed
the sea and rivers. 

Mystery what is it? I know that when I walk back here from St Buryan on a dark
night, since it is getting darker so much earlier now as we proceed to the shortest
day on 21st December, I realize I enjoy what I can only describe as the 'feeling of the darkness.' I feel like I am in a different world that I don't see or hear normally during
a bright day for instance. This blurring of edges may simply allow our minds to 
wander, 'off the beaten track' as Deakin would say to use a popular cliche. And the meaning
of that phrase? It is what people want to do when they have their short freedom of
holiday, weekends away, a longing to return, re-unite with something almost lost
but at the same time necessary. My mind in the darkness is freed from normal
recognition processes that label and define allowing a burst of creative thought,
or a flight of fancy or maybe even contact with a different energy.


I know that I have a thirst for this kind of energy or experience. It feeds something in me
that I can hardly define, it is what drives me, motivates me and heals me. I cannot understand how people can survive without contact with this world that lies hidden
from so many people. It feels like the difference between clean water and pollution. I will
have to think about this some more and come back to it. But I am sure the same feeling underlies some of the best of our nature writing. The simple glory of birds playing in the treetops, their unconscious happiness at just being alive, the joy of life.