Cloud of unknowing

I had another poor night and woke up amid soaking sheets. I felt clammy and thoroughly out of sorts.

Everyone else was up making sandwiches, packing flasks and preparing for our hike. We set off in the cars to Gilsey and parked near the cottage where we stayed last time. Everything had stayed as it was; it's as if this place will endure forever.

We took the track up the eastern side of Gilsey Beck and sweated through bracken-choked woodland until we came out at an area where the beck widens and is bordered by wide grassy meadows at either side. Here, the grey refuse from lead mining is piled into small slag heaps. We stopped for a little while before pushing onward up the Beck. The lethargy of the previous day still seemed to dog me, weighing down my feet and deadening my responses to everything.

Finally we reached the ruined shell of an old lead mining office and Andrew took my photograph, just like 1980 when we were last here: I posed again in an identical stance, leaning against the same wall like before. Inside the structure, weathered carvings were scored into the stones, the dates and initials of people long forgotten. Across the narrow steep valley we could see another, more complete ruin staring back with empty windows.

We rested at the head of Gilsey Beck and ate our sandwiches. While everyone else went off up another little valley which led off into the hills, I fell asleep on the grass, but soon began to feel uncomfortable in the hot sun. I was disturbed a few times by inquisitive sheep.

An old grizzled shepherd descending from the hill tops with his white panting dog talked to us about his memories, as a six-year old, of this “fine, wild country.” Mum told him about our deer sighting and he wondered if perhaps it had escaped from a deer herd at Steadbeck Lodge: "I've only seen two my whole life.” He bade us goodbye and limped off up the track behind us with his dog.

It was a long wearying tramp back along the opposite side of the Beck. We followed the dusty straight track as turned up above Gilsey, and plunged down into the village on aching feet. We got back to the caravan at about four.

The evening was sunny, marked by a typical piece of Robert philosophizing and a silly argument between Mum and Dad after Dad tipped the cooking oil away. He felt humiliated in front of us all and sulked off on his own down the road while Mum sat sleepily in the caravan with a long face.

After the plates had been cleared away we got into a general discussion. Robert asserted that death gives life meaning and that it’s only because we lose sight of the inevitability of aging and mortality that we adopt shallow, transient attitudes. “Death could come next week or next month; people don’t appreciate that.” He pointed me out as a perfect example of this thoughtless attitude with my lounging and lethargy—(Robert:“I do it too!”)—and I felt my face colouring and heat springing into my cheeks.

But Robert doesn’t know how my thoughts go. I acknowledge these facts which condemn us all. For a moment too an old familiar sensation caught hold of me, a feeling of helpless not knowing, a sort of sudden desperate realisation that I’m not sure of anything and really am ‘all at sea’ as far as certainties are concerned. It’s a feeling I really didn’t expect to experience here. But what's the use of talking like this when I give myself up to sloth so consistently, so willingly?

Andrew and I wandered off after this, and we stood in the corner of the field gazing across at the adjacent mound. “I hate the mysticism and sentimentality attached to these places,” said Andrew quietly. Poor old practical Andrew. To him it's all just fields and trees and moors, which in a way I suppose it is, and nothing else. I can see why he says what he says, but I also appreciate the mystery of this place.

We went for a walk up the Forefield-Stonesdale Road, in the direction of Forefield. It was a soft evening, a hint of sun tingeing the stone walls, and Andrew had to go back because he’d forgotten his camera, so I stood and waited for him, leaning on a gate gazing across a field. As I did so, an old wellington boot-clad baggy-suited figure came clumping down the road towards me, and as I gave him a glance he turned, staring at me with hostile eccentric eyes.

When Andrew came back we climbed up and up, getting quite good views over towards Sleightshaw and the dark silhouette of the moor beyond. He took a few photos of the dark seething clouds rolling in before we had to sprint down the road amid a terrific downpour.

Back in the caravan we huddled in dim fluctuating gas light. Outside the sky echoed and shook to the thunder: in the enclosed valley, the reports of the thunder were much shorter and more concentrated Rob and Carol set out in the torrential rain for a walk along Blea Gate but we stayed behind watching the lightning fork all around. Mum, as usual, began to get worried at Rob and Carol’s absence, but after an hour or so they returned having just seen a family of deer quite near the caravan.

Robert was full of the “eeriness” of the area.