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July 19, 2010
Highs and Lows in the Lake District
Well, I was up in the Lake Distrct this weekend leading a parish retreat.
And the first thing to say about the Lake District is that it's very popular. William Wordsworth may have wandered lonely as a cloud in these parts, but he wouldn't manage it now. Fat chance. When I went out for a quiet stroll off the beaten track, or so I imagined, I was passing people all the time. And as the tradition here is to say 'hello' to everyone you pass, my quiet stroll becomes quite an exhausting social experience. Hello! Hello! Hello! Hello!
I start dreaming of an undisturbed 50 yards...hallucinating about twenty seconds of non-contact time...
The Lake District began to become popular in the late 18th century, when continental wars made travel a little risky for rich English folk. Revolutionary Europe could seriously damage your health, so suddenly the Lake District looked really interesting. Wordsworth's 'Guide to the Lakes' in 1810 accelerated the process, long before the M6 did its work.
It's all very striking of course, this strange and unique mountainous part of North-West England. Glaciation 15000 years ago has left ice-carved valleys, with many of them filled with water. This is not surprising; water is something of a theme here. Seathwaite in Borrowdale is the wettest inhabited place in England, with 130 inches of rain a year. And while we're with the Guinness Book of records, it also has the highest English mountain, Scafell Pike, (reaching 978 metres upwards) and the deepest English lake, Wastwater (reaching 79 metres downwards.)
And like the landscape, a parish retreat is full of extremes - laughter and pain, breath-taking honesty and walled-up denial, seething anger and bright hope. I was certainly struck by the bravery of intent and the honesty of the offerings. Truly, here is nobility.
It's a mystery why so much is made possible when we leave our normal rat-runs. But there's no doubt that when we change our geography, when we go away, a new alchemy of possibility is created within; and much becomes clear that once was not so.
Though whether this is true for the crowds of Japanese who make the pilgrimage to Beatrix Potter's house, I couldn't say. Maybe it's enough to be able to say, 'I'm standing where Peter Rabbit stood. Oh.My.God.'
Posted by Mr Bojangles at July 19, 2010 01:01 PM