3 January 2010 – Setting our hearts on pilgrimage

I don't expect to find many if any who share my enthusiasm for nocturnal rambling, but if you are mildly susceptible to the lunar cycle I strongly recommend a walk on the wild side under a full moon. Camping for the night in our wood we left the fire going and crunched off in the ice and frost to find Chris and Anna for supper a couple of miles downstream. We stumbled in the darkness through 3 coverts and over a stream feeling our way a little hesitantly not wishing to run into the game keeper of the well furnished shoot. Pheasants are the most hysterical and irritating of birds making a huge amount of entirely unnecessary noise. We also disturbed a huge flock of jackdaws much dismayed at a pair of blundering beasts crashing around beneath their roost. All was well and we supped warmly and happily. The return journey was what makes night walking an adventure and delight, when "midnight's all a-glimmer" as Yeats put it. The full moon had risen huge and bright making black shadows in the sparkling frost. We crunched the ice and felt almost dazzled by the silent empty universe of light. Nothing stirred. No one moved. The few cottages we passed as we left the hamlet were firmly shut up, dogs snoring by the telly, central heating purring.

Our intoxication in the bright madness of frosty light didn't last for long. No sooner had we entered those keepered woods than a storm of pheasants, emboldened by the moonlight, exploded in a cloud with terrible alarm. We hastened on a little quickly wondering whether it is best to offer an immediate and unconvincing explanation to an enraged keeper disturbed from his fireside or to bolt into the undergrowth and hide. No worries; it never happened. Those ridiculous pheasants deserve to be shot for making such an unnecessary fuss. But what a walk, and what a moonlit world. Arriving “home” to the embers of a fire beneath the towering spruce in a frozen Narnia, we bedded down beneath a horse blanket and a huge thick quilt. Walking by owl-light, especially by a full winter moon, is strange and wonderful.

But camping in a wood, even for just a night or two, offers interesting lessons. If you had little clue how to take care of yourself the experience would be uncomfortable at best, or even dangerous. However farmers who care for livestock, just like woodmen who still live and work in the woods, know that living on the land is hard graft. But much more than that it requires community and discipline. These are obligations that we have tried to throw out in the name of independence, but they are part of our fabric, personally and socially. They have to be a part of a healthier future.

Back home in the Marches we walked from church, thoughts of pilgrimage into a new year on our minds, and crunched our way straight up onto the snow-frozen Hergest Ridge. If only I had my langlauf skis! Perfect squeaky snow. The gorse was lost beneath a sculpted frozen cloak. The hills of Radnorshire rolled in frozen white waves to the sun-lit West. The green hedged lowlands of Herefordshire to the East were somehow released from the White Witch's spell. We crunched our way down through the gorse; a pair of ravens tumbled in the blue sky. Places, work, people, homes, going on together; a year of new adventures, perhaps challenges. As the Psalmist declared “Blessed are those who have set their hearts on pilgrimage”.