VI. Mountain Moonlight
Evening drew on apace as we walked out of Keswick by the Castlehead road. The ground, though not frozen, was firm and dry, and the faint breeze carried just a tinge of winter from northward. In the great hollow behind us lights began to twinkle here and there. Lake Bassenthwaite stretched like a sheet of blue steel between the steep slopes of Skiddaw and the brown coppices beneath Barf, while the cloudless western sky still glowed with the waning radiance of sunset.
On the hills lingered day; in the valleys night was nigh. At a corner in the long ascent we paused. A thin blue mist was gradually ascending, extending and joining into a canopy beneath which the lowlands were rapidly lost to view. Two wide fleecy clouds showed where the lakes lay. The vapour rising from the Derwent marked a streak across the level meadows between them; a thousand rills sent up their several lines to make a pall over the wide Newlands Vale, while a reek-like smoke rose from where Greta fretted over its deep rocky course beneath Latrigg. Ere we finally turned away, our eyes had wandered for some minutes over a continuous, slowly-moving sea of cloud, upon which the solid fells and precipitous crags seemed to be floating.
In half an hour we had crossed the ridge of Castlerigg. Through the leafless hedgerows bounding our track to the right a series of dark summits approached us closely. The last glare of day had left the sky, and above these rugged heights shone a few of the brighter lamps of heaven. A dull cloak of vapour occupied the hollowness in front, with the stumpy Naddle fell standing islandwise, for beyond it could be seen the night mists o’erhanging St. John’s Vale. To our left Blencathra was the most prominent mountain, its huge mass and sharp, broken contour showing to great advantage in the starlight, while along the eastern horizon stood the leviathan Helvellyn range, some five miles away.
A pale primrose light ran along their topmost ridge, flushing the sky so that for a space the sparkling stars could not be seen. The moon, we knew, was about to rise; indeed, we had chosen this night for a stroll because continuous light would illumine our way. It was grand walking along that hardened road, watching for rifts in the drifting mist above us, giving us brief glimpses of the brightening quarter of the sky. But we were within the shade of the mighty mountains before the moment arrived when the moon would appear over Crossfell, and flood with bright, uncertain light the upper world of mountains. But instead of this spectacle we watched, as we groped up the pony-track in the semi-darkness, the light touch the summits, and then the narrow ‘edges,’ or ridge-approaches, to Blencathra, making every boulder and cranny on the eastward side visible, accentuating the steepness and ruggedness by leaving the western slopes in utter darkness.
Perhaps five minutes’ walk below the crest of the pass we stopped to view the scene at leisure, and to regain our breath for the brief final ascent. To northward a great ridge of mountains, furrowed with dark ghylls and decked with great rock-faces and beds of scree; beyond, the uncertain glimmer of lakes caught through riven masses of mist; still further away (to westward), a sea of blue mountain-tops. To the right of these, broad moors and craggy fells, shadowy glens and sparkling tarns, with here and there a twinkling rivulet. But the finest scene of all was a crag deep beneath our feet, seemingly
‘with airy turrets crowned,
Buttress, and rampire’s circling bound,
And mighty keep and tower.’
With the level fleeces of mist kissing its lowest wall of slabs, it seemed a veritable castle suspended in mid-air, yet so real that we seemed to listen for the challenging blast of an Arthur’s horn to shake the echoes of the hills upon which the solid pile of gray would once again rouse itself to life and light. But even in this hour of moonlit witchery our senses would not play us false, and carry us back in spirit to the fabled days of old.
We turned in silence to resume our journey, yet it was not with cold we drew that sharp breath. For on the bright skyline above us horses and men were moving. Knights-errant? No, they were not clad in glistering mail from top to toe, nor carried they the bows and spears of the men of the Border raids. No, they were peaceful farmers of Legburthwaite, returning from a sheep-fair in another vale. We greeted them warmly—Nature at its loveliest, as we see it to-night, yet makes a man feel lonesome—and after a few words they passed on. But for long their occasional voices and the ringing of the horseshoes on the stony track were companionable sounds.
We did not quite ascend to the top of the pass, but just as the eastward prospect began to open turned southward for Helvellyn. There was no path, but the ground was fairly even. A flank of the great mountain cut off the view of dun, coppice-fringed Thirlmere; an outcrop beneath our feet hid the Vale of St. John. There was but little breeze on the uplands. The sound of a prowling fox or the bark of a wakeful dog at a sheep-farm in the gulf beneath again and again came to our ears as we strode along the grassy brae nearer to the highest peak.
‘Now for a short rush’: for thus years ago was I introduced to the wonderful view, and I like to re-feel when possible that glorious sensation. So up to the crest we came. As we stood there in the cold night air, it seemed to me that in a few yards we had climbed into another world. Our feet were upon a narrow beach of loose, clinking mountain limestone. To right and left the ground continued a few paces, then abruptly fell into depths unseen, and beyond, at a much lower elevation, the eye rested upon the jagged rocks of Striding Edge and Catchedecam. That long floating cloud is Ullswater. The confused masses are raising themselves somewhat, and the narrow waters of the lake in all their moonlit loveliness are partially to be seen.
Every one of the deep abysses radiating from the ridge on which we stand is occupied by a wandering patch of white vapour, but, as often happens, the moist places have by this time ceased their supply, and the clouds are gradually thinning and will shortly disappear. We felt as though from some insecure, lofty platform we stood regarding the creation of a world of giant rocks. Everything seemed so huge, so primitive, so awe-inspiring. A patch of thin night mist could hide every vestige of men’s handiwork; but up here works of God’s own fashioning stood supreme, overtowering the highest banks of vapour, and sheering in majestic silence their ambitious shoulders far up into the starlit sky.
For long we stood gazing—first north, to where the view ended on the plains of Cumberland; southward, over enormous piles of rocks, and over mist-brimming hollows where we knew lakes were hid; eastward, over a mass of mountains furrowed with deep valleys; westward, over low moors to a silvery range of heights.
My eye was perhaps most attracted to a long and nearly level series of ridges, along which I knew the Romans of old had built a road which still endures. More than once I had walked there by moonlight, and noted the giant front of Helvellyn, fenced with crags and strewn with scree, formidable-looking even so far away. But the chill air of night compelled us to move, and for an hour along the crest we walked, skirting cliffs which fell away abruptly to pastoral coves, and coming at last to where over the dark Grisedale Tarn we came opposite the long scree-strewn shoulder of Fairfield.
The only sheep we met as we walked along the ridge was most palpably a ‘stray.’ When the flock were driven down from the heights a month ago, this item managed to avoid both dogs and shepherd. Poor creature! it hailed us with a loud bleat; but though we had wished to give it help, we knew not whither to drive it. What happens to such during winter? The ravens and hawks and foxes squabble over their carcases at the foot of deep cliffs they have wandered over during time of storm, or in the narrow ghylls where their bodies lie after the drift in which they were smothered has melted away. Sometimes also the sheep’s wanderings are ended by a splinter of rock falling upon it as it threads the path beneath the precipices. A good many of the ‘strays’ are undeniably collected by the dread ‘night-shepherds’—sheep-stealers. Anyhow, very few are folded home or met again when with spring the flocks return to the uplands.
Now we turned westward, traversing a bog from which a streamlet flowed, and by the descending course of this we quickly returned to the dale. From Sticks Pass to the bog we had walked six continuous miles without coming so low down as 2,000 feet above sea-level. The whole journey was within the region of barrenness. The ground was strewed with stones of various sizes, between which bent-grass and occasional mosses—and in summer a few hardy saxifrages and other alpine flowerets—made a show of life. Once the hoot of a wandering owl came up from a ravine in Nethermost Cove. Everything winged had left the uplands on the approach of winter; the other migrants would come with the snow.
From Wythburn we crossed the fields to the west shore of Thirlmere. The moon had now risen high above the mountains, making a mellow path along the waters. It was delightful, and not too cold, to lean awhile on the wall next the road, look at the long ridge of mountain we had walked upon, and to watch the flocks of wild-duck and geese quickly moving about the moonlit bays at our feet. Midnight was past long before we neared Armboth, where the ghosts of the Lake Country families are said to meet and hold occasional revel, and in another two hours, after many a halt to enjoy the glory of the night, we were at that corner in the long Castlehead whence we watched day fade from the western sky. The valley beneath was still the haunt of floating mists; at one moment there was a bewitching glimpse up Newlands Vale, at another we saw the silver moonlight streaming across Lake Bassenthwaite. Yet after our ramble of some twenty-six miles we were loath to go indoors, and first repaired to Friar’s Crag, where perchance the cloud might rive apart and let us see Derwent Water in all its moonlit unearthly beauty, with its wooded islets floating like bits of paradise upon its tranquil bosom.
The clouds did open while we stood there. Words cannot convey what we saw.