"The Dart, lying low in darkness calls out 'Who is it?' " ...it was me.

I have been soaking up Alice Oswald's Dart all year. Matching the words to the walks as my Walking Friend and  I have meandered alongside the East Dart and up the valley on Dartmoor...

and with my sights set firmly on the journey to Cranmere Pool I booked that place on the guided walk months ago. 

'The Dart, lying low in darkness calls out Who is it?
trying to summon itself by speaking...'

This was further fuelled by a poem in Alice Oswald's latest collection Falling Awake called very aptly A Drink From Cranmere Pool..

Amphibious vagueness

neither pool nor land

under whose velvet

three rivers spring to their tasks

 

in whose indecent hills

tired of my voice

I followed the advice of water

knelt and put my mouth

 

to a socket in the grass...

 

I have massacred personalised my very precious signed copy of Dart with marginalia about the walks, and drawn maps on those handy blank pages at the back...

In the days before I walked out to Cranmere Pool I had also been re-reading (maybe for the fifth or sixth time) The Living Mountain by Nan Shepherd. Each time I read it something different is happening in my life and thus something different jumps off the page.

This time...

'One cannot know the rivers till one has seen them at their sources; but this journey to the sources is not one to be undertaken lightly. One walks among elementals and elementals are not governable. There are awakened also in oneself by the contact elementals that are as unpredictable as wind or snow.'

Never a truer word written about a walk to East Dart head than those, or these from Eric Hemery in High Dartmoor, the definitive book about the Moor...

'This is a place to visit alone or with one or two like-minded companions, to absorb the silence and be absorbed by it, for there is no place quite like it in Britain. The rim of the huge pan shuts out the centuries, preserving elemental purity - it is untouched by history.'

And when I stood at East Dart Head I felt it...

 It's a visceral place where that sense of isolation runs deep...

...as does the sense of awe and wonder that it is here the mighty river that will make its way down to Dartmeet, 

'a mob of waters
where East Dart smashes into West Dart.'

For much of the early summer the Dart was at peace with itself, docile and tranquil. Not so since the rains came, mob rule has taken over...

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

But the river that will eventually emerge at Dartmouth on the south Devon coast is born here in this place seven miles or so from the nearest road..

'in the black gland of the earth
the tiny inkling of a river...' 

Alice Oswald - River (Woods etc)

The Dartmoor writer and artist the late Brian Carter is about to undergo something of a welcome resurgence with the re-publication of one of his novels in 2018  but we know him best for his books in the 1980s about the moors and his love for them, this from Dartmoor - The Threatened Wilderness (1987)

'The Dart is my favourite river. Whenever I see it behind my thoughts is the flash of sunlight through rowan leaves and the stony scent of water and moss. Going alone up the East Dart to Cranmere Pool I am confronted by the familiar invested directly with a splendour springing from the whole wilderness experience.'

Brian Carter goes on to say something which touched on those feelings of desolation expressed by Beatrix Cresswell when she visited Cranmere Pool in 1900...

'Many find bleakness and solitude intolerable; but what can seem a hostile environment to the casual visitor my be an area of immense interest to those who love it for what it is...'

I did love East Dart head for what it is and walking out there again is now top of my list.

The pictures barely match the impression left in my mind...the burnished bronze of the upland grasses tinged with russets and purples are hard to describe, as is the silence. The group had walked on and oblivious I was still standing there, the quiet so profound I ended up saying something to make sure I hadn't gone deaf. It was the strangest of moments and I could have sat there for hours and soaked up many more of them.

As it is I crunched and sloshed my way to catching up (by this time it was 80 degrees plus in old money) but had to keep looking over my shoulder to believe what I had just seen and felt, and I hope that magic will stay with me for ever.

Footnote : I am using Instagram alongside and inbetween blog posts now, so keep an eye on the pictures over here <<<< for updates. Clicking on them should reveal all without you having to sign up, and in case you missed it here's a morsel of film footage taken at East Dart Head.