Up onto the Dam (Avon)
After a flask of homemade chicken and tarragon soup i took a few pics.
As when i’d been there back in Sept, the silence was palpable – as an absence.
A birdless silence.
Nothing moving – except as shimmers across the water.
Nothing noisy or extraenous to disturb the spaceousness.
Only Sound.
That soup tasted so good.
I live on the edge of Dartmoor, but don’t know it that well. I’ve always preferred heading off to the sea.
In the last weeks I’m going up onto it more.
Yesterday i went to Shipley Bridge; then walked 2 miles up to Avon Dam.
A rare sunny Sunday afternoon meant all the world and his dog (s) were there. And a Mr Whippy ice-cream van. Young mothers with baps out feeding babs. Dedicated hikers with walking sticks. A solitary bird watching binocular man. Hippy witches. And 2 carfuls of muslims (I’ll write about them in the next post)
Cus it was Sunday. And it was warm and sunny. Not raining. Quick – lets get out and do the walking and picnicking we didn’t do all Summer, before Autumn sets in and it starts raining again.
So up and up i walked, with moors banked to the left and the right.
Most people didn’t bother going all the way up to the the dam at the top. Which is a pity cus they missed this:
Hardly a thing stirred. Nothing and nobody was around. Not a bird anywhere. A silent lagoon plonked onto the roof of Dartmoor.
I got my flask of coffee out.
The silence was palpable. I could feel the quiet, could see it. Could see silence rippling on the water in quiet bubbles. One floated by. A fragile bubble of peace, unbroken, unbreaking.
I got up and walked across the high ridge of the dam (not permitted – but hey, we’re not living in Iran)
A few people were below, but only i was up here, stood on the top of the dam
feeling aloof – inside my single bubble of peace.
Essentially that’s what Dartmoor is about: experiencing aloneness
Sometimes as loneliness, sometimes as emptiness.
Empty of self. Silent of self.
Just a quiet bubble floating on by.
