My relationship with my home in the Lake District has gone through some turbulence since the beginning of the pandemic, and especially since the end of the first lockdown. For a while I struggled to cope with what I perceived as a kind of rape of this environment—with all the crowds and litter and shit and noise. One day I had one of those moments, when knowing I was about to die, I relaxed completely as it was far too late to do anything about it. A drugged-up driver using the circuit of Derwentwater as a race track lost control and headed straight for me and the wall I was trapped against. It wasn’t until they actually missed me, half a second later that I felt scared. And I didn’t know if I could stay here, in the place I love to be at home in, any more.
Thankfully I, along with many others, have weathered this rocky patch in our Lake District love affair, and tried our best to engage with solutions which meet the needs of both locals and visitors. Although I did give a sad smile recently when reading the Keswick Reminder, where one of our local councillors described how the National Park Authority makes him like a member of the Sioux Nation. He said it would be much easier for the Park Authority’s vision of the economy if all the residents who want to pursue lives unrelated to tourism could just be cleared out to a reserve somewhere less picturesque. I understand what he means, although I wouldn’t have been bold enough to put it in those terms. But I will stand with him, because I don’t want to be ousted. I have seen the Lake District in a different light these last two years. It is a beleaguered, worn-out landscape with an ecology way out of balance. But still beautiful, and with care and work, still capable of regeneration. But while I can only live in one place, I don’t have to be truly monogamous. I can love other places too.
Tomorrow I’ll be travelling to what I consider to be the best country in the world—Scotland. Once we are north of Perth, heading into the Cairngorms, my heartstrings will be strumming. I love those extraordinary expanses of mountains, the hidden lochs and the pines that wreak of an ecological history much stronger than anything I have known in Cumbria. In amongst that landscape, I feel like a tiny, short-lived speck. I also feel connected to a whole much bigger than myself. Crunching my feet over the sandy granite hill paths sprinkled with glinting minerals reminds me that this earth and this me—we are both made of stardust. I’m a spacewoman and my minerals will carry on glinting.
And what about Northumberland? Everything depends upon the light we view things in. I’ll not forget that bloody sunrise, and swimming in the scarlet sea. And peaceful afternoons under sunsets that if they were ever painted no one would believe they could have been real. The Peep of the oystercatchers and the Shush of lapping sea along the shore—such a peace. The place itself did not cause me harm. It’s where I learned to swim after all. Which on that never prouder day seemed like a miracle to my little self. And remembering it now, it still does.
