Not the Lakes

This week I had been hoping to write about the Lake District, having booked a short stay there many months ago but because of Covid 19 I was forbidden to cross the border, or, indeed, to leave my county. This was a great disappointment — apart from the enticement of the hills I was looking forward to meeting friends there, but they have been similarly restricted. There is a well known TV comedy called ‘Not Going Out’ and there is something bizarrely amusing about the present situation. If viruses could laugh they would be beside themselves watching politicians, mayors, councillors, even health ‘experts’ themselves switch and turn and scratch their heads about how to cope with it all. So much is at stake: not just the health crisis itself but the political reputations involved. A disinterested observer might wonder why on earth the four parts of the United Kingdom all have different measures in place and why their leaders must never be seen to agree with each other. The virus is the same, after all — it doesn’t take sides. Why cannot our politicians get their heads together and work out a UK wide regime which all can adhere to and understand? Instead we have a bewildering mish-mash of rules and restrictions, tiers and levels, face masks and bubbles, essential and non-essential, indoors, outdoors, no to alcohol, yes to takeaways, which leaves the public confused, resentful and increasingly rebellious.

The Bridge over Hedderwick Burn

It was such things that I ended up discussing with a one-armed man at the little bridge over Hedderwick Burn, a little outlet into the Tyne Estuary. When I should have been up some Lakeland fell I was grateful at least to have my local shores and woods to escape to. The man stopped me to ask where the path over the bridge led to. He seemed to know of nearby steadings and villages but not how to get there cross-country. I explained as best I could and then we turned to the virus. We had little faith that the restrictions placed on businesses, sports, music and individual liberty were really doing much good. He became quite animated and whirled his armless sleeve around.

The Woods near Foxlake

We parted company. I crossed the bridge but he chose not to. I continued across the heath, through the woods around Foxlake and back to the shore. The tide was full, become the sea itself. Only a narrow strip of beach remained as the tide advanced and I amused myself trying to get along it without getting my feet wet.

The Estuary is Full

*

When faced with the sort of difficulties and frustrations many of us are experiencing at the moment, the Stoics would advise that it is not the events themselves that are the problem but the way we respond to them. Stuff happens, viruses included. If we can’t control events we can manage how we react. This approach does, however, require a particular clear-sightedness and self-control which is often hard to achieve, as I repeatedly find. I have been reading a most entertaining book by Professor John Gray called ‘Feline Philosophy’ i.e. how to live like a cat. He takes a swipe at the Stoics, accusing Marcus Aurelius of a dour and loveless pursuit of mental tranquillity in his calm acceptance of the vicissitudes of life. ‘The result,’ says Gray, ‘is a funereal celebration of endurance and resignation.’ I have some sympathy for his point that such a mode of living is OK for the likes of Marcus who was an emperor, after all, and had his palace orchard to go and be calm in. Not so easy for the seething masses who live in slums amid disease, squalor and violence. However, in my reading at least, the Stoics were not as dour as all that. Their counsel not to rue what has happened or fret about what might happen, to live in the present and be adaptable in your actions and plans — to have what they called a ‘reverse clause’, is not such a bad way forward. In a recent ‘Thought for the Day’, the Rev. Dr. Sam Wells acknowledged that controlling our reactions rather than blaming events conferred a kind of freedom of the soul and admitted that many of his friends might have been Stoics had they not become Christians instead. But perhaps the drawback in Stoicism was its reliance on self and will rather than looking out to something beyond, in this case — and here he referred to St. Paul — faith in Jesus, in a full acknowledgement of our fragility as human beings rather than trying to cultivate an imperviousness to the difficulties that beset us. I see the point, but there is a problem for the non-believer

Epictetus, a cat and St.Paul

On a dramatically moody morning a few days ago I opened my curtains to a deep grey sky and a magnificent rainbow rising vertically out of the sea and arching over Dunbar.

The Rainbow, a beautiful illusion.

*

As I drove back from my walk by the shore I saw the one-armed man again striding along the main road back towards town — not on the pavement but in the road itself, his empty sleeve flapping in the breeze. Should I have stopped and offered a lift? By the time I had pondered the matter I had gone too far, it seemed, to turn back.

*

Not the Lakes then, but a couple of days later I did find a lake. The bright morning tempted me out and I drove the few miles out to Pressmennan Wood, bumping along the rutted track to the parking space. The wood cloaks the steep northern slopes of Deuchrie Dod, a 1000’ outlier of the Lammermuirs. The wood is now managed by the Woodland Trust and contains the remnants of some very ancient woodland, most of which is to be found in the valley, the upper slopes now mainly conifers. The Trust is gradually clearing these to make way for native broadleaf trees.

The jewel of the walk is a slender lake about a mile long which runs along the valley. It is an artificial lake formed in 1819 by a Mr. Nesbit by damming Bennet’s Burn. It was apparently well stocked with trout, perch and carp. Like much of East Lothian, the area was owned by the Hamiltons, who have provided the succession of Earls of Haddington to this day. In the late 17th Century, Sir Robert Hamilton had as one his titles Lord Pressmennan.

The first section of the walk proceeds along the southern shore of the lake. Near the head of the lake on a steep ridge is a stand of windblown trees I once painted.

The Ridge above Pressmennan Lake

Unfortunately, I have no other paintings of this place, a shortcoming I will have to remedy, but I took my camera along.

I walked in the shadow of Deuchrie Dod, but the sun lit up the trees on far side of the lake. The waters were well populated with mallards and a family of swans. Eventually I left the lake behind — temporarily — and ascended to the main forest track. The ranks of conifers rose up to my right, the sun just beginning to slant through the upper reaches.

I walked down to the marshy ground at the foot of the lake and began to loop back. It was at this point that I attempted, rather foolishly, a dialogue with a robin. He was moving about in a bush next to the path and didn’t seem to mind my presence. I started whistling an inept version of a robin song. The bird flitted from twig to twig, stopping to stare at me with what must have been pity. I gave up my whistling and got my camera out. He flew away at the click of my shutter — but I caught him all the same.

I returned by the foot of the lake, then regained the main path.

Looking back up the Lake

The last section involved climbing up the steep slope through the conifers to find a narrow path along the top of the wood. From here I caught glimpses of the open hillside and the flanks of the Lammermuirs in the distance.

The Top of the Wood

*

A grand walk and a world away from the febrile preoccupations of the US Election and the pandemic which fill the airwaves at present. Later that evening as I watched with slowly mounting relief Joe Biden edging towards victory I was startled by loud cracks and bangs echoing in the darkness outside my window. I had forgotten it was Nov. 5th. Public fireworks displays are, like much else, banned and, yes, I’m aware that fireworks are bad for the environment, pets and old people. But from a back garden along the road from me a brilliantly colourful if brief fountain of rockets and showers of luminous globes filled the air. I could not help cheering inwardly at this joyful, explosive V sign at the soap opera of the American Election and the doubtful world of pandemic, face masks, lockdowns and travel bans!