We’re a little further up the Ribble Valley today at Hurst Green. It’s a cloudy bright sort of day with a fresh wind, the meadows glowering darkly one moment and glowing a lush green the next. The hedgerows closer to home are already in leaf, but here, not an hour’s drive away, it’s still early in the season, trees bare and gaunt in silhouette from afar, and you have to get up close to see they’re budding. It’s the Tolkien Trail today, a loop of the rivers Hodder and Ribble amid some fine, rolling Lancashire scenery. It’s about a year since I last came this way, in tow with a whimsical Galadriel, as I recall. But she’s keeping a low profile today.
Speaking of Galadriel, I’m reminded how elves can at times be as warlike as humans, but their legends don’t depict them being anywhere near as stupid. As we walk we’re mindful the world is shaking to its foundations. The Strait of Hormuz is now closed, a predictable response to the bombing of Iran. As of this morning, UK fuel prices haven’t moved much, but they will, when strategic reserves run out. Then there’ll be panic-buying. All of that will come, but I’m conscious our inconvenience is insignificant, compared with the suffering of others who have munitions raining down upon their towns and cities. Of course, we’ve had Middle-Eastern conflicts before, but there seems a particularly unhinged madness about this one, and I have a bad feeling about it.
There’s a roaring in the trees as we come down to Over Hacking wood and approach the Hodder. Pines soar here, closely packed, and they clatter ominously above like bamboo chimes as we pass, the wind stirring them. Some are freshly fallen, bearing the bright scars of newly splintered wood, the soft earth cratered at their base.
It’s a route I’ve pretty much photographed to death. Still, find myself pausing at the same view-points, looking for something new in the details. Mostly the light isn’t promising, the sun slipping behind cloud at the wrong moments, then on we go. The triptych of trees here, seen from the track leading down from Hodder Place, I’ve not noticed before, so loiter awhile, waiting for light.
But as I wait, I find it hard to avoid the sense that it’s becoming more difficult to find beauty in the passing detail, in the small, like this, when there’s so much going on in the world now that is irredeemably, and profoundly ugly. We woke up this morning to images of burning tankers in the Persian Gulf, and here we are waiting for the light to shine on some trees. At what point does that become ridiculous? When is it less of a resistance to the Zeitgeist and more a refuge from things we cannot alter? Perhaps it’s both. Or perhaps such things become even more important, the uglier the world becomes.
It’s striking how commentators still assume there is a reason for it all, yet even the most informed appear to be struggling with this one. For myself, observing such things from afar, it seems that, once upon a time, terrible acts were undertaken for identifiable reasons, however cynical. Now it more often feels as if explanations have been dispensed with, and confusion itself has become the atmosphere, indeed the entire oeuvre of power. Thus have our leaders moved beyond explanation. They have nothing useful, nothing intelligible to say to us, inhabiting as they do their own world, as do we ours. What this means for our futures is unclear, but disturbing all the same – our certainties shrinking to a bubble no greater than might fit in the palm of your hand, or through the all too selective viewfinder of a camera.
Lunch is by the Hodder, a stretch of pebbled bank where one can get down to the waterside. We’ve had plentiful rains recently, including torrents overnight, so the river is high and deep voiced. There’s plenty of company here, with other walkers and dogs, and the usual detritus – bottles and beer cans and the almost obligatory bags of dog-dog muck. The Tolkien Trail is always well walked, even midweek. I would not think to attempt it at the weekends. The Hodder is reflecting sunlight here, an alluring sparkle to it as it slides by, and the trees on the opposite bank roar in the wind, a touch of March Madness about them.
I filled the car this morning, burned about a gallon on the way over here, another gallon by the time I get home. It used to be I’d be panicking about conserving fuel, needing it for the commute. There was no such thing as home working during previous fuel-shocks, and I recall a particularly inflexible attitude on behalf of employers, too. Unlike in past crises though we now have far more electric vehicles on the road. You can pick used ones up very cheaply, though their battery life is probably much reduced now, with uncertainty over longevity and the cost of replacement. Still, they’d be fine for knocking about locally. Were I in a bind, and still having to commute, I’d be considering an older model as a backup now, though as it is, I can probably ride out at least some of what is coming our way.
We don’t linger over lunch but press on, making our way by Cromwell’s Bridge, up the hill, cross the meadow to Winkley Hall and the Piggery. Here we pick up the broader sweep of the Ribble, the newly diverted path no longer taking us by the spectacular oak, but here it is, captured in other times. Instead, we have this old tractor by the wayside – always something Stoic about them, I think. It doesn’t look to be in working condition, but I’ve seen worse, and still running. How many seasons, I wonder, ploughing the earth? It speaks of continuity, of certainty, of return.
We have a clear path now back to Hurst Green, most of it in company with the run of the river. Up ahead there’s another walker, what looks like a tall young woman, long auburn hair and a Barbour jacket, nipped at the waist. She has a graceful, upright posture. I catch her up as we climb from the valley, to the Shireburn Arms, and exchange greetings in passing. She’s actually getting on in years, a lovely, mature face that smiles easily. We meet again in the coffee shop in Hurst Green, and we exchange a joke, then I’m carrying my coffee-to-go back to the little blue car. It’s looking a bit grey actually, ready for a wash and spruce up.
The woman was interesting – in other times a potential meet-cute of course – but for the writer, it feels more like an introduction to a character who simply has to be written about, after she’s spent some time developing in the imagination. With the world on fire these are such small things, but beautiful in themselves, and we mustn’t forget that.
Sometimes it’s the only thing we have to go on.
The Rivendale Review 
