Wild

Some grand traditional wet bank holiday weekend weather today … it excelled itself. I perversely rather enjoyed it. I had briefly wondered about a day trip to Edinburgh to see Gordon Brown but it seemed a bit crazy and so, just a few hours after reading ceridwen’s blip about the film Wilding https://www.blipfoto.com/entry/3271783195762233220 , I decided to be a brave little soldier and headed for Keswick on a wet bank holiday (extra … what was I thinking?!) and was soon in the Alhambra watching it. Afterwards I sat in my favourite Keswick cafe https://westhouse.org.uk/cafe-west/  drying out and warming up with a cuppa whilst watching the expanding moat in Fitz Park.

I then headed to Great Wood on the slim chance that I might find my woolly hat that I lost last Saturday. Given the lake level (extra) it will undoubtedly have drowned by now but it was wonderfully wild anyway. I thought about the film as I battled the elements and couldn’t help think how ahead of his time Wordsworth was with his advice to George Beaumont when it came to landscaping Coleorton and ‘working with Nature’ … and our ‘meddling intellect’.

The Tables Turned - William Wordsworth 

Up! up! my Friend, and quit your books; 
Or surely you'll grow double: 
Up! up! my Friend, and clear your looks; 
Why all this toil and trouble? 

The sun above the mountain's head, 
A freshening lustre mellow 
Through all the long green fields has spread, 
His first sweet evening yellow. 

Books! 'tis a dull and endless strife: 
Come, hear the woodland linnet, 
How sweet his music! on my life, 
There's more of wisdom in it. 

And hark! how blithe the throstle sings! 
He, too, is no mean preacher: 
Come forth into the light of things, 
Let Nature be your teacher. 

She has a world of ready wealth, 
Our minds and hearts to bless— 
Spontaneous wisdom breathed by health, 
Truth breathed by cheerfulness. 

One impulse from a vernal wood 
May teach you more of man, 
Of moral evil and of good, 
Than all the sages can. 

Sweet is the lore which Nature brings; 
Our meddling intellect 
Mis-shapes the beauteous forms of things:— 
We murder to dissect. 

Enough of Science and of Art; 
Close up those barren leaves; 
Come forth, and bring with you a heart 
That watches and receives.