The Herdwick sheep of the Lakeland are said to be bound to their mountains by a memory so deep it outlives generations. Once hefted, they need no fences; they remain faithful to the fell where their mothers once grazed, knowing every fold and crag as though the shape of the land were written into their bones.
The shepherds speak of it with reverence,
for it is a bond unbroken—a covenant between creature and landscape.
I have often thought there is something in that story which mirrors the stirrings of the human heart. Each year, when the first cool breath of October moves through the air, I feel that same instinctive pull—the inward call to return to the Lakeland hills, and most especially to the Duddon Valley.
No matter how far I have travelled, the thought of this valley returns to me with the persistence of
a cherished memory. It is as though some part of my spirit, once hefted to
these mountains, has never left them.
To come back here is more than a holiday; it is a kind of homecoming, a restoration of the self to its native air. The steady march of ordinary days—their hurried rhythm, their airless routine in which one scarcely marks the turning of the seasons—fades swiftly from thought.
That existence, so filled with purpose and yet so strangely devoid of feeling,
drains the spirit almost without one’s knowing, until the inner life grows pale
and thin.
But here, in the quiet heart of the fells, I feel the pulse of living return. The air moves more gently, the light falls with meaning, and peace gathers around me again, steadfast as the Herdwick’s trust in its own hillside.
Perhaps this, above all, is what it means to belong:
to feel the earth answer one’s longing with recognition, as though it had been
waiting, patient and unchanged, for one’s return.
Contentment in
Proportion
“Happy the man, whose wish and care,” wrote the poet, Alexander Pope, “a few paternal acres bound, content to breathe his native air.” I have often thought of those lines when I am here, for they speak to a kind of blessed simplicity that the modern world has almost forgotten.
Pope’s vision was not of wealth or conquest, but of sufficiency—of a life contained within the compass of one’s affections, where peace lies not in possession but in proportion. In these mountains, that sentiment feels newly alive.
The heart
learns again that happiness does not depend on enlargement of circumstance, but
on harmony between the inner and the outer world. Perhaps this is the truest
measure of contentment: not to have all one desires, but to be grateful for the
few things that sustain the soul—the steadfast hills, the clean air, and the
unspoken companionship of one who walks beside you.
As much as I love being by the sea, the longing for the hills returns unfailingly each autumn. The wild wish to breathe in the crisp October air of the Duddon Valley becomes an imperative.
My
spirits, so buoyant in the early summer, had been gradually sinking as the year
waned. With the daylight retreating earlier each evening, my thoughts grew
dimmer, like embers cooling after a long glow.
One day, in a small charity shop near my home in Scotland, I came across a framed reproduction of Giotto’s St. Francis Preaching to the Birds. The simplicity of its scene held me fast.
The gentle hands of the saint, raised
in benediction, lingered in my thoughts as an invitation to the world beyond
walls. There was in that image a call to solitude, to communion with the
natural world. I told G that we must take a short autumn retreat to the Lake
District.
The Lake District, for us both, has always been a place of golden memory. G’s childhood holidays were spent among these hills, and our own visits here through the years are strung like bright beads along the thread of our shared life.
We spoke of past journeys, leafing through
old travel journals, recalling those years when the weather was kind and the
light clear. Perhaps, I said, we too are hefted to these mountains.
The Painterly World of
Autumn
How shall I preserve the glories of this autumn so that I shall never forget them? Rousseau once observed that “our existence is nothing but a succession of moments perceived through the senses.” Here, each moment feels intensely alive.
By night, I hear the barn owl’s mellifluous cry as it glides through darkness; by day, the world becomes a painter’s palette—copper beeches, golden oaks, russet bracken, silver birches trembling with light. The colours seem to sing their own slow requiem for the passing year.
After a shower, the country lanes glisten with tender melancholy. The English
rain is gentle here—a fine smirr, as the Scots call it—a caress rather than an assault. I often find
shelter beneath an old oak and watch the leaves fall headlong through the air,
each descent a silent surrender to the season’s music.
Country Inns of Repose
and Fireside Romance
Inns, half-hidden in hushed valleys, offer warmth and repose: a hearth’s low glow spilling through old, mullioned windows, a sturdy oak table polished by countless hands, the soft murmur of conversation drifting beneath beams darkened by centuries of smoke.
Within these walls, time seems to drowse; the modern world, with its clamour and haste, falls obediently away at the threshold.
Here, one lingers over a slow, civilised meal—the hallmarks of the
region plain before you: roast lamb, butter-rich puddings, bread with the taste
of the valley’s grain. There is a tenderness in such simplicity, a fidelity to
place that nourishes more than the body.
The fireplace, bright and old-fashioned, lends the room a hearth-warmed romance—as if the very past had drawn up a chair beside you. To sit there is to step quietly out of time, and one does not mind the exchange. In our hurried age, when even our leisure must justify itself, we so rarely find peace with one another.
Yet here, beneath the low beams and soft lamplight, companionship resumes its natural rhythm. Guests drift in for an afternoon of conviviality about the hearth; the only entertainment is the meal before them and the talk that flows unhurriedly between sips of ale or wine.
No screens, no sports, no music to command the
air—only the old, human music of voice and laughter.
And in autumn, these country inns are at their most enchanting and most romantic. Outside, the hills smoulder with russet and gold; within, the fire glows like a steadfast heart.
Something in the season stirs a tender nostalgia—a sense that life, for all its impermanence, can still be savoured in moments such as these.
These little inns
are havens for daydreamers, sanctuaries for the soul grown weary of haste.
They are, to my mind, the truest retreats of all: places where romance is softly
rekindled and renewed, and the spirit, long wearied by the world’s commotion,
remembers again how to rest.
Birds, Refuge, and the Spirit’s Renewal
One afternoon, from the window of the country inn, I watched a flock of sparrows gathered about the bird bath in the small garden. The rain had ceased, though the air still trembled with its freshness. They dipped and fluttered with such unguarded pleasure—drinking and washing in the same instant— that their untroubled joy held me in its spell.
There was something almost redemptive in their play, though not of faith, but of spirit; a lightness born of forgetting. I thought of Dante’s souls at the river Eunoe, renewing their memories of the good before entering Paradise.
How I longed, too, to wade into such waters—to let their
cool current refine the mind, keeping only what was kind and worth remembering,
and letting the rest drift soundlessly away.
The Mountains Shape the
Heart
Joseph Campbell once reflected upon Thomas Mann’s The Magic Mountain:
“The call to adventure is to a land of no return that is absolutely removed from every law and notion of ‘flatland,’ as Mann called it—the business-land, the newspaper-and-ledger-land, of the hero’s native city. On the flatland, life is reaction, whereas on the timeless mountaintop there can be fermentation, spontaneity—action as opposed to reaction.”
How right Campbell was to speak of the “flatland” as that measured world of ledgers and routine — a place governed by habit rather than wonder.
Here, enclosed by these solemn fells, the mind is lifted out of that narrow commerce of thought. The mountains do not permit trivial preoccupations; they insist upon a deeper stillness, a clearer reckoning of one’s being. In their presence, life pares itself to its essence.
To dwell awhile here is to remember what it
means simply to exist: waking, walking, breathing, being — no more, and yet no
less. One feels, in this valley, not diminished by solitude but restored to
proportion, as though the self had finally come home from exile in the
flatlands and found again its natural height among the hills.
Blest, who can
unconcernedly find
Hours, days, and years
slide soft away,
In health of body, peace of
mind,
Quiet by day,
Sound sleep by night; study
and ease,
Together mixed; sweet
recreation;
And innocence, which most
does please,
With meditation.
I thought of Alexander Pope’s vision of contentment once more — that rare blessing of hours and days sliding softly by, of peace untroubled and the mind at ease. Such tranquillity seems almost forgotten in our age, yet here, among the mountains, it stirs again.
Study and ease, work and rest, thought and stillness — all are reconciled, as if life had remembered its own right order.
Away from the pandemonium of the flatland, I
begin to see that what Pope praised was balance — a
reconciliation of mind and matter, labour and repose. In this retreat, life
slides soft again, as if time itself had remembered how to move in gentler
measure.
There is a deep, enduring romance in those country inns and small hotels that gaze upon the lakes, their windows glowing with the warm hush of firelight while the leisure boats lie moored and still in the mist-veiled hollows below.
So it is here: the flatland recedes, and I find in its place a life unmeasured by clocks, a stillness that allows something inward to stir again.
In an antique bookshop in Ulverston, I found
an old volume entitled Days in
Lakeland: Past and Present by E. M. Ward
(1929). Ward writes with tenderness of the Herdwick sheep:
“The Herdwick bodies thus guarded against the dangers of their mountain life, that something within a sheep which directs its conduct gives them an irresistible devotion to these same mountains, as if nature, having moulded them to mountains, saw to it also that such moulding should not be wasted on the languors of a lowland life.”
There is a truth in that reflection that extends beyond sheep. Nature, too, shapes the heart for certain landscapes, forming in us a loyalty to the places where we once breathed most freely and felt most at peace.
For those once shaped by the mountains, the lowlands seem a kind of exile; crowded and unfeeling, where life presses close but seldom touches the soul. The high places give space to reflection. But the lowlands, with all their noise and nearness, too often leave the heart adrift, like one who lives among many yet belongs nowhere.
Morning Light and Calming Rituals
Each morning here begins with serenity: breakfast before wide windows framing the mountains, the slow turning of the trees, the soft notes of piano music, and the delicate light refracted through etched crystal glasses.
We read, we rest, we walk. The old oak trees stand like
sentinels of endurance, their boughs whispering lessons in patience. The air
smells of moss and woodsmoke.
Even the wardrobe in our holiday cottage seems to participate in this renewal—the city scents in our clothes giving way to the gentle fragrance of potpourri, and the soft sweetness of lily-of-the-valley sachets. There is no need to rush the mornings here.
G
brings me a cup of tea, and I sit wrapped in a plush terrycloth bathrobe,
watching the mist drift over the mountains. In the evenings, I slip into my navy silk gown, patterned with delicate polka dots, and read by the fireside,
the flickering flames transforming each page into a tender ritual of repose.
Imagine stepping into an old stone cottage, its walls steeped in history, its fairytale chamber adorned with lace and dainty doilies, and the windows softened by chintz — that quintessentially English grace, in the best possible taste.
When you wake up in the morning, you draw
back the curtains to see the mist rising from the mountains as though the very
hills themselves were waking.
A Love Letter to
Lakeland
This little holiday has been more than a
respite. It has been a sanctuary, a reawakening of what I might call the
stillness of the soul. I confess, I dread the return. The flatland of humanity,
with its constant demand for response and reaction, feels unfit for a spirit
newly quieted. Yet even in leaving, one carries something of this peace away.
And so, I write this as a kind of thanksgiving—a love letter to you, beloved Lakeland. Your autumn solitude, almost untouched now by visitors, has given me back a measure of peace.
When
the lakes gleam with soft, mellow gold and the winds fall still, you return to
that deep, original loneliness that preceded humankind. Yet it is a loneliness
that consoles rather than wounds.
When I return to the flatland, I shall carry
with me the memory of your golden hush. It will be a hidden compass, pointing
always northward to the mountains. For I suspect the heart never wholly leaves
the place where it has been hefted. Though distance may intervene, belonging is
not undone by absence. It abides within us, unspoken yet constant.
I fall in love with the English rain all over again during our visit — its gentle insistence, a silvery veil softening the familiar outlines of hill and valley until the world seems dreamlike.
After the showers, the lanes wind and glisten, zigzagging among sodden leaves that catch the waning light like small, fleeting embers. I cannot resist lingering with my camera to capture those moments for they seem to hold both the soul of England and the soul of the season in one elusive breath.
To me, they are among the most poetic images this country offers, a quiet consolation for the heart.
And to G, my steadfast companion in all these
wanderings, I owe him a debt of gratitude. Through the years, he has met my
whims with a smile and turned each sudden fancy into a shared adventure.
I am grateful for that—for his readiness to follow where my heart inclines, and for allowing me to dwell within the storybook of his memories, now lovingly rewritten as our own. It feels, at times, as though the valley itself has closed its pages around us, preserving our brief season together like a leaf between its turning years.
It feels, at times, as though the valley
itself has closed its pages around us, preserving our brief season together
like a leaf between its turning years. |
And so I end this entry as the valley itself prepares to rest. The mountains fade into evening; their flanks gleam with the last gold of autumn. A breeze carries the scent of woodsmoke from the country cottages. It seems the world is whispering its own prayer of thanks for another year’s beauty.
I listen, and within that hush, I find a peace I had forgotten was
possible.