WASTWATER AND SCAWFELL
We reach the scree where the route is safer, but at the zig-zags more than once overshoot the path. The clouds apparently are densest near the mountains, for beyond the rock-girt valley some brighter clouds render darkness almost visible. There is a dream of a grey Wastwater, a mirage of something not chaos beyond. A spark of light shows where the hotel lies, but it is far away. Some twenty minutes from the pass-head we find grass beneath our feet. Looking backward, there is a walpurgis of grey shadow and black night. Now the path is easier and we walk more rapidly, though frequently stumbles remind us that the path is far from smooth. The light—from hospitable windows—is nearing perceptibly. Now, in front, is a darker mass—the yew-trees crowding round a tiny House of God, shielding it by their tough green limbs from the storms. We were walking quietly in the narrow lane thinking of the gloom on all things made, when a white shadow beyond that of the dale-church arrested us. What is it? Memory hasted back a week to that most terrible disaster in the annals of Lakeland rock-climbing—the accident on the Scawfell Pillar. Four fine young men were killed, and three are laid here. A heap of white flowers, like a pall of mountain snow, masks the grave. Sadly impressive is the scene; the white wilting flowers represent fitly the brief human span of life—to-day we are, to-morrow we are not, thus is the will of God: the dense green yew-trees symbolise death, the time-long end of man. But look higher, I felt—around. “O death, where is thy sting?” for, though the mists of night bewilder, great rock-ribs are rising upward, higher, ever higher, till earth and heaven meet. And the yew of death will moulder by the kirkgarth, but the mountains must stand fast to prove eternity—immeasurable, infinite.
Wastwater, its shores treeless and forlorn, its waters rippling against their shingly bays, with mountains beyond and around, curtains of rock and ribbons of scree. In the cool days of spring the mountains are delightful, but sometimes there is a sudden revulsion to winter. A shade sweeps from nor’east, and behold a squall plastering all with snow, a gale shrieking around, and the temperature tumbling to zero. Such mischances apart, the bracing air makes a new creature of one after the fogs of winter, and you simply stroll up the ascents. So much has been written of the mountain-climbing around Wastwater that to infuse romance, to say any new thing, is difficult. Steep ghylls there are to ascend, loose bands of scree to pass, bogs varying in depth according to weather. Here a rushing rivulet to ford, there, winding beneath crazy rock fragments, the path hangs on the brink of a deep ravine; collar work up five hundred feet of slippery grass, and splendid poising exercise over beds of boulders. When winter holds sway and a white garb hides the bloom of meadows and hillsides, Wastwater is a very home of loneliness. Its surface is no home for the wildfowl from northward: a wastewater it is to them and not worth a minute of the foody, oozy sands of Irt and Esk, seven miles away. Loneliness and silence. When the babel of the flock in the intakes ceases to the ear, the absence of all sound will depress the liveliest soul. The air, chill and cutting, goes soundlessly by; the lake broods in leaden, stirless gloom. There is no sound of tinkling rivulets; the raven’s croak, the curlew’s wild shriek, are no longer heard; the plover, the heron, and the birds of the hedgerow have flown to less sombre regions. When the stars are mirrored in the steely blue water and the moon throws shafts of glory across the mountain barrier, the silence is more crushing. One side the dale is in shadow; frost spangles give to the other an ethereal, unreal illume. Gable and the Scawfells are snowbound where on ledge and scree snow can lie; the rocks, through which, from the mountain’s heart, hidden springs are driven, are sheathed with ice. Day after day, the deadness of living nature seems to increase; day after day, the unknowable mysteries of the mountains seem to deepen. The loudest voice seems hushed; the most fervid imagination is consciously dwarfed. Then the weather changes; the air turns raw and damp, and day seemingly forgets Wastwater. Silent, implacable, falls the rain. Down almost to the water trail the ragged cloud-beards—they choke day from the low land. Up the mountains—he is a hardy wight who dares to be there. Half-molten snowdrifts, torrents roaring, cascading from unseen above to invisible below, gouts of water cleaving through the mistwreaths. But seldom does such a wanderer brave the elements long. Turgid torrents and close-enwrapping fogs charm no one. Indoors the fires burn bright; save for a brief space about noon, when a sickly lightening proclaims day’s climax and glory, the lamps are hardly out. To the gloom of the clouded sky is added the great shadows of close-hemming mountains; there are houses among the fells on which for three months of the year the sun never shines.
WASTDALEHEAD AND GREAT GABLE
Towards evening in autumn
Wastwater, and the Screes. Three miles of buttresses crumbling down in fan-shaped beds of ruin. It is grand to pace the opposite shore and watch the play of light and shade on the rugged mountainside. Streaked with rich brown are some of the yawning gullies: up there are stores of ruddle or native iron. Soft and soluble as mud, the substance once had a value as providing an indelible mark for sheep. The shepherd lads from distant dales came here to collect it—for a premium of sixpence per pound from their masters. On the brink and halfway down the face of the shivery rocks are the little veins of ruddle found. A steady step and a firm nerve had the lads who dared such labour, for a misstep might split their foothold to pieces and throw them far down the ravines. We are told that many lives were lost in the pursuit of ruddle: compared with it, modern rock-climbing, with the skilfully used safeguards, is safe, though of course far more arduous. The climber of to-day chooses a sound crag for his work: the ruddle-gatherer could only work among the loosest, craziest ground.
The best way to see the Screes is to take a boat and row close to them. High above your head, a great rampart of rock, scored since the world began with the cabalistic record of frost and storm, hides the sky. Somewhere betwixt the crags and lake, following the smoothest route, is a rough path. In and out of parks of huge boulders (many, geologists say, still sliding downwards at speeds varying from slothful inches to a bustling six feet per annum), the track threads, affording a grand though tiring walk. After frost there is danger in approaching some of the crags. Huge breasts of stone are so finely hung that the ice wedging their crannies rends them as surely as gunpowder. There have been some tremendous rockfalls in the Screes. A century ago one of the sights of Wastwater was a lofty fragment to which an uncouth imagination gave the name of Wilson’s Horse. For long the vicinity had been shunned: pieces of rock were for ever disintegrating from the mass. Then, after a winter grim with frost and snow, came the final catastrophe. At dead of night was heard the roar of falling rock, and at daybreak the Horse had disappeared. Judging from the splintery gulf whence the Horse fell, “What a splash it must have made!” interjected one as we scrambled about the place. It is said that a twenty-foot wave passed north and south after the rock struck the water.
WASTWATER SCREES