Outdoors Diary - Friday 22 February, 2007

Muckthwaite, Friday 23 February, 2007

It's been a while since I mused gently over wonder of natural world and outdoors, mostly because main consequence of my attempt to prevent global warming were substantial bill at local glazier. But that were the last thing on my mind as I sat with my back against my favourite rounded boulder on edge of Muckthwaite Moor and drank in the last dregs of weak winter sunshine.

A tousled sea of frost-burned heather lapped against my booted feet, tendrils like Medusa's locks imploring him as made moor, to cast kindly light upon them. Sheep heavy with their winter fleece lolled in the distance and on the skyline, a brooding vulture tore into the carcass of a lost goat.

Aye, the great circle of life, I thought to myself drinking in the solid, real feel of the place like a jar of Muckthwaite's finest ale. The moors are honest and real, I say. You know what you're getting - mutton, heather and a smattering of sheep poo.

How has man, I mused, overreached himself so far. Travelled so far from his roots? How have we built a world where wars can be fought for what seem like such petty things? Oil, land, a pair of woollen socks even? Sometimes, on my rare visits to big town, I wonder how it would have looked before man came along with his tarmacced roads and red-brick houses? Before man tore down the trees and flattened the hills and crags? Raped the land and dressed it in an alien cladding of stone and greyness and golf courses.

I suppose many of you will be expecting some smart arse remark now, some witty about turn, but you'll not get it. Leastways not until next week. For now Alfred Todger is at one with the world. I took out my new-fangled digital camera and as the last dregs of the sun dribbled over the edge of t'moor, I captured the moment forever. Tha never knows, it might be worth a pair of socks I thought...

Alfred Todger