The high moor of Dartmoor is open and empty and bleak. In winter, the wind roars its terrible roars. Along my route, the gullies are sometimes walkways and sometimes rivulets. Boggy areas expand and contract according to how much rain has fallen. The only thing that runs in a hard line are the roads and fences, but the gnashing of time has made even those hard lines less rigid than they once were.
Your prompts for this week
Monday
If your walk is paved, are there places where the single surface breaks up? Perhaps between the paving slabs, or where the snow shovel stopped short as it ran into grass.
Tuesday
What is the feeling of the place you're in? Does it change as you move along your route? In ancient Roman religion, the genius loci was the guardian deity that lived within a place, protected it, and influenced its character. Does your route have more than one place? How big is "place" and where does a place change from one to another?
Wednesday
If there are still leaves on the ground, collect a few. If you can, find some from different trees. Examine the veins on the back. How are they the same? How do they differ? In your notebook, take a rubbing of each leaf. If you know the name of the tree they came from, add it to your notes.
Thursday
Are you able to see the history of use where you walk? Perhaps gravel has been kicked to the side, steps are worn in the centre, or the asphalt has been repaired. If you travel a path, has it always been under where your feet go now, or has it deviated as the mud deepened, or the water encroached?
Friday
Develop a library of patterns by taking rubbings of tree bark. Match these patterns to the leaves you traced, and the descriptions you made of the tree buds. This is the beginning of an identification guide to your nearby neighbours. Each individual with its own characteristics.
Saturday
Does the moss really grow thicker on the north side of the trees? Use the sun as your guide to find east in the morning, and west in the evening.
Sunday
How many different types of lichen can you find on a single rock?
Observations for the week
There aren't many terrible beasts on Dartmoor, apart from the things of legend. The skies, however, are huge and changeable. I absolutely love them, but they can be fierce. When storms come to visit, the sky can have the most wonderful and unexpected edges. Something you need to be outside to see properly.
The second time around
Today is a week to get out your notebook. As the days get longer, this is your gentle reminder to capture something real. Something on paper. Something you can hold and that will not vanish into the cloud. Something that is entirely yours.
The photo this week is from my walk "back home" from the workshop. My back is to the vista (invisible today), and by this point in the hill, I'm normally breathing out my ears. To the right, hawthorn trees have dropped their berries, and a little further on, the tall ash tree has seen its final leaves some seasons ago. Now, its only responsibility is to oversee the passage of time.
Some days I'll meet sheep, ponies, or cattle along the lane. When I'm lucky, there will be a car pushing them moor-ward, otherwise I risk driving them to the cattle grid at the end of the lane where, trapped, the animals become more challenging to get past. On this day, I had the lane to myself.
Things you might like to read
Where the Wild Things Are by Maurice Sendak. The most wonderful of children's books. It was made into a movie, but I prefer the original illustrations by Maurice Sendak's alongside my own imagination. There are lots of read-along versions of the book on YouTube if you prefer to have it read to you.
As a second recommendation, a book themed on liminality and water edges would have been perfect for this week. But, as much as I racked my brain, I couldn't pull a title for you. I've settled on the more generalised, Islands of Abandonment, by Cal Flyn. In it, Cal is often cross edges from habitation to abandoned places where nature has begun to reclaim wasted space.