Precursor of Spring

A stolen day, taken swiftly from the jaws of needs-must. The light this time was of a surrealist painting in Italian sun. The slanting sunlight shafted through the pines like lasers, and the moss greens still vivid looked as inviting as velvet cushions in Nature-the-stylist's corridors otherwise known as paths.

On the ridge, the fog rolled in from the Sea along the estuary, the patchwork of fields and woods, hills and perspectives was lit up and darkened according to the cloud, some in sun, some in shadow, the fields alternately green or dark blue. The fog beyond took on the shape of the hill it had just been on, and made the landscape higher, grander, as I have seen it do before.

Once the fog lifted so high and in so many places taking the hills as models, that the view toward Exmouth and the Blackdown Hills was transformed into a mountainous realm, of gentle drama - a rugged terrain yet with the watercolour light of shadow and slate blues.

Pre-occupied with serious work-related concerns, still the light through the trees went through me like a cleansing arrow of clear-mindedness, and the fog and rolling mists beyond, the sheet in the distance between wood below and hilltop above floating like a flying carpet...layered my consciousness with that meditative quality which the Haldons so often exercise. What is this place? Hardly another soul there, what is it's strange power? I could not deny its call.