Lake District

It is over two years since I was up on the ridge of crags, a stronghold of the red deer, where stunted larches, Scots pines and junipers compete for a toehold on the rock. It was hard work getting there today, too mild a December does not make for easy walking, and in the woods below the crags the depth of grass (unusual for the time of year) and the moss gave a feeling of walking in snow. Mist boiled over from the other side of the fell, deadening colour and sound, but the thready voices of tree-creepers mixed well with the sough of air in the larch tops. There were plenty of signs of deer on the upper slope and they must have lately gone for moist droppings were left and imprints of where the beasts had lain in grassy hollows between the boulders.

Winner takes all on the hill of the stag Read more

The deers’ road to the top of the crag is a rockfall, almost a rock-ladder, and today it was slippery and dangerous with damp. At the top of it this character of the place changes completely, one can turn and look down on the umber-brown tops of the tall larches, silvered with mist, but the larches at one’s back are old and grey with lichen. Many have fallen in the past two years, pushed over like ninepins in some gale, and they make movement difficult even – I think – for the deer. A lot of the junipers are dead, too, but some are still strong, green, and well-berried – except for one bush which has caught the fury of a stag in rut and stands, shredded, among its fellows. Clods of earth, too, have been flung far and wide by stags’ antlers. I saw no deer but there was a strong feeling of their presence and in that tangle they could have been only yards away, unseen and seeing. This is, indeed, their place where they shall see no enemy, but winter and rough weather.