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.

The Thaw

Having been up to Dartmoor the day before, it meant that one knew that the ice and snow must have melted at last. As last year, Telegraph Hill had been closed, the road that leads to the Haldon Hills from the east.

Up on Dartmoor, the landscape had been monochrome, and the roads turning to streams with borders of slush, as the suddenness of 7 degrees hit the frozen tors and moor. Around Widecombe there had been a shifting mist, sometimes turning to fog as huge amounts of melt water evaporated into the air. Stopping at Haytor Rock, on the way it been snowy, on the way back, huge patches of green showed new streams everywhere. The sheer amount of water meant that surely it would be sinking mud? No, the ground was hard, as if still frozen solid. Walking up the hill merely meant avoiding the many streams. At the top, as there was everywhere, a swathe of snow remained. It was untouched in many places, truly deep and crisp! and with a backdrop of the stone cliff. It was definitely snowball time! The crystal pure snow making wonderful instant compacted shapes. The fog lifted and drifted, darkening, and incredibly, within half an hour, the ground that had been firm turned to the mush that one had thought that much water should do. Boots splashed at every seemingly green patch of ground, and began to sink, where before they had not.

Up on Haldon ridge, it had melted almost entirely. The heaps of dirty snow were just where it had been piled to clear the roads. The paths were muddy, naturally, the adventure trail more of a stream, but the light was like a photographic studio. At a heady 10 degrees celsius, the Forest felt positively balmy in comparison to the previous wintry conditions, and many of the trees were livid green with mosses. Single dew drops hung from delicate branches in the thaw, and some of the barks of the thinner trees and saplings felt so mouldy and damp that they would imprint to the touch. They were shedding bark from the frosts, renewing themselves, perhaps?

Many of the most picturesque twists of roots and apoplectically writhen stumps were backlit with a soft dark light, their viridian greens sharply contrasting the with dark greys and browns and rusts of the January forest hollows. On the ridge, so much water vapour came off the pines that they looked as if they were smoking with a chill damp fire. The mist after thaw again.

On the path off the ridge that joins with the bridle path again, past the part where broken tiles (many tales of those!) lie recalling that lost folly landscape (that I have a fantasy was there), was a tiny palisade fence made of thin logs to the right. I went over to it - and it marked the top of a steep dip. Below in a beautiful shallow bowl of the forest, was an exquisite electric green tree, short, with its bare arms open in the shape of a many-fingered hand. There it was, the centre of a small fort, the ramparts defended with logs, the drawbridge the little palisade. A new feature - one of the amazing things about the Haldon Hills is not that they change so dramatically with light and shade, season, weather, time of day, but that there is always some new feature to be seen, whether by nature, an arts project connected to the Gallery, CCANW, or the Forestry Commission or - well, who knows? On one tree on the same path, there's a piece of bark hung up - which looks, whether by chance or design, exactly like a mask.

And then the day darkened - the cloud had come over the hill at last, and it began to spit a light rain. Back just in time before the heavier rains began...

New Year's Day on the Hills

Yesterday, (being New Year's Day), the Haldons called again. Up we went, encountering a little ice only at the turn to the bottom ridge...and then on the track the ground was frozen rather than icy. The forest - ever surprising, had kept some chill out and the paths were mainly just muddy save where some stretches of shallow water had turned to ice, or there was frost on parts of the forest floor that flanked the paths.

The light was extraordinary, long slanting golden light like a summer evening. And being a crystal blue sky with such a sun, and the day that it was, there were plenty of people on the trails.

How different to last New Year's Day! When one almost had second thoughts...but went anyway, to see. The mist was thick, and there were no panoramic views to be had, but the whole forest was hung with an exquisite hoar frost. The paths were all clear of snow or ice, but the entire place was a winter wonderland, all delicate silvers and grays, an infinite lace filigree to wander through. The mist was all sudden shadows and breathy veils - plumes of steam seemed to rise from some pines below the main ridge. The ground was covered in icing, the woods all cake and chiffon. The clear rime glimmered like a thousand diamonds even in the subdued light of the shrouds of low cloud. And there was almost no one else there. As ever, it was completely transformed, the special effects of another season. Full of unexpected moments, and of dazzling beauty.

That was last day of the electric ex-Finnish postal van - left stranded partway between hill and somewhere warm! The rescue van came at last in the fading light as the temperature dropped to below freezing, and one was just beginning to think it would never arrive. When the snow came, Telegraph Hill (the road that leads to the Haldons) was completely blocked. And the wait was on to find another van...hopefully one that worked!

The Forest in Dark December Mist

The Haldon Hills are like a dream. The main difference being that in the Haldon Hills, any attempt to go to the lavatory is generally successful.

I half expected the paths to be all mud and mist. But this is the Haldon Hills and the Forest paths, so of course it was always going to be more than that. The path begins (where I join it) not far from the Belvedere, and so we took that road first, through the black ironwork gate, and past the picturesque bridge, seemingly part of some lost folly landscape. The road wound up toward the strange white apparition, just like a nightmare (rather than its usual fairytale), the ivory of the tower gaining in snowy intensity as one got nearer, until it resolved into the familiar tower. Familiar? Could anything in that light, all ill-defined and white on white look familiar? No, and yet of course I knew the tower's name. Lawrence Castle or the Haldon Belvedere. A light was on over the door, making it even more dream/nightmare-like.

After that, we returned to the main road and turned into the bridle way. And then the climb up to the right begins, and one enters - as if the Belvedere hadn't introduced it already - into another world. The pines soared into the mist, darker than other heavy mists I'd seen. There was no view on the ridge, but it didn't matter, as the whole path from the crocodile (carved log in the ditch) past the summerhouse ('play sculpture') had passed in a beautiful dream, the soft edges and surreal tones of light and shade muffling all awareness of chill or mud. Trance in movement rather than winter walk.

It was too muddy to go on the 'adventure cycle trail' path which had turned into a stream, so instead, we took the track (more a forestry commission road) which turns to the 'Butterfly Trail', and loops up to the Hawk Observation space.

The darkness of the thick mist through the pines here was not heavenly (like the beginning of the high path from the bridleway that climbs above the escarpment) but demonic. The gloom dripped between the forest trees darkening into perspectives that looked like evil things from old folktales were lurking there.

Where we crossed the Dartmoor-esque bridge, the water was foaming it had been so wet. Further on where another stream crossed under the road in a pipe, we saw foam banked up in a pile - it was frothy - and bizarrely, warm to the touch. More like whipped milk on coffee than bubbles in a bath. It dissolved like kindly soft ice on the skin.

Passing a huge stump covered in vivid moss and electric ferns, perhaps those ferns which were sheltered or near a lot of water didn't need to turn to orange bracken like most of the ferns? But the stump, so architectural and leaning on a sudden steep curve of land was so devastatingly eye-catching, the greens so sharp against the white gallery-walls of mist, that nature was showing how it alone was the inspiration both for amazing installations and floral decoration for big events (think the designer Daniel Ost).

Back down the hill, words for colour failed to detail or describe the thousand shades of dark burgundy pastel grey, and all the livid darknesses toned to pastel by the mist. At the end my boots were wet and spoke of mud, but having walked through a dried ice dream of cloud and a thousand paintings of tones and shadows, or rather a thousand old black and white film stills hand tinted with unreal pastels, I could say nothing of mud. I had hardly seen it.