HONISTER PASS AND BUTTERMERE
It is a rare pleasure to be at Buttermere after a series of rain-storms. From the rockrib wherefrom the church commands its little flock, you look into a great amphitheatre of crag-set mountains. Beneath the eye is the water; it seems to be palpitating with movement from the rich riot its tributaries are hurling down the steeps. See how it wimples beneath the farther shore—through a wide rent in the lake-bed untold gallons of water are being forced upward from the heart of the earth; that flat circle in mid-lake against which the creeping catspaw of wind in vain forces its feeble ripples shows another fountain swelling up in quiet power. The steep hillsides are seamed with threads of white; Sour Milk ghyll, in a shimmering veil, sways from skyline to lake-shore. Where often a hermit stream hides and glides behind crest of rock, beneath screen of bracken, now is all tearing, jumping, spreading fosse. Every fold in the hillside casts down its bounding cascade; there is nothing in the air so loud as this turmoil of waters, this joy-song of deeps bursting from dark prisons in bog and crag. Already, we are warned, the paths to Wastdale and Ennerdale are impassable; the floods are out at Gatescarth. Climbing would be a questionable pleasure to-day; “beck-dodging” is far more suitable. At first our road is dry, washed free from dust by the heavy rain; through wide culverts the floods rumble beneath. The wider becks are bridged: look up this tree-hung gullet and see how the waters wilder down. Not in waves do they come, but in great gush after great gush, green and white. How they crash against unseen rocks, throwing feathers of spray at every shock, till the stream shooting beneath the arch seems but a flying mass of airy, tortured foam! There comes the sprite, the winged spirit of the day, robed in brown and white—the dipper, our mountain water-crow. How it chirrups and revels in the tumult! how it flirts its tiny wings and dives through some curling gout of spray! how it scolds the volume roaring through the darkened tunnel beneath the road, causing it, O highly important fairy, to flight up like a mere blackbird, among the dripping plumes of larch!
“Boat ahoy!” we shout anon, and our friend afloat a field’s breadth away waves answer; in a minute the boat is grinding the gravel, and we are almost down the soaking field to reach it.
“What, tired of fishing?” we ask. He is a desperate keen one with the rod as a rule, yet his tackle is packed up.
“No,” he grumbles, “can’t catch anything.”
“Now I did think to-day would suit you. Good spates in the becks, a light breeze, and plenty of cool clouds,” I marvel.
“Now look here,” protested the angler wearily, “it’s no good talking like that. The floor of this lake is leaking upwards as though the steam was escaping by a thousand cracks in the ceiling of the nether regions and being condensed into Buttermere. Why, man, the lake bottom’s that lively that the trout and the char, the big pike down to the tiny minnow, are all having a job to hold the water at all. I bet every minute they’re expecting a geyser that’ll blow the whole lot of ’em over Red Pike to Ennerdale.”
When an angler relapses into this mood he is hopeless to cheer, so we silently respect his sorrows. Perhaps into that vigorous pulling he will throw some of his despondency. Now Fleetwith, flanked by the precipice of Honister, is frowning at us over the low fields. To the right, against a background of watery clouds, is limned rugged Scarf Gap; the path to it is white with rushing waters. The rocks everywhere glimmer with oozing springs: down Honister pass a wide torrent is foaming, attracting to it many a milky force from Robinson and Fleetwith-side. The scraggy stone-pines by the lake-head give a characteristic finish to this scene of sodden brae and spouting rill. Save for the sycamores round the farm of Gatesgarth, there is hardly a tree for shelter; the aspect is bleak and storm-riven. The boat is run on to the shingles beneath the Scotch firs that we may land. Not far away is the main road; we pass up the hillside beyond it. In the recess beneath Fleetwith we are conscious of a flood indeed. Much of the stony level is swamped; with difficulty the sheep have been brought from danger, and are flocked near the farmstead. The torrents rushing in at the head of the mere can be traced, first by white horses, then by dark, level-flowing currents, far down the lake. From this height we again feel that the great water is rocking in its cradle of mountains. The furrows of incoming rills give the peculiar idea of ever-changing level to the water. I have never yet seen the whole level to Scale under water—one lake of eight miles instead of two smaller ones—but viewed from these heights it must be a noble sight indeed. Our boat pushed into the in-dashing beck, rapidly rides to halfway down the lake, thence by carefully avoiding unfavourable currents we easily make our landing-place.
To my mind, the valley is hardly less interesting when a thick winter mist glooms it, when, for all you can see, there is no difference between Honister top, the crest of Robinson, and the stony fields round Gatescarth. Under such circumstances it is well to be afloat an hour, and allow impressions to establish themselves in your mind. Twenty yards out you lose the land: the boat glides along in a grey circle of moving fogbeards and rippling waters. Save for the sounds from bow and rowlock you are in a dead silence. Shortly, however, the ear catches faint echoes: the croak of the raven, the skirl of the curlew, ranging in clear upper air, with now and then the attenuated bleat or low or crow from the farmlands. In mid-lake there are few sounds of water-birds, though at an odd time a coot, traversing the width, may show, a scared patch of brown and white, inside your zone of vision. The lake-birds are cuttering softly close inshore, finding the curtain of cloud an effective cloak for feeding. An hour of boating thus, in gloom and rowk, will form an experience not to be forgotten.
