July 8 24
Blog by Lynne Pearl
THE DARTMOOR MOUNTAINS
Dartmoor isn’t mountains at all, it’s even more exciting really, it’s volcanoes, long ago extinct volcanos that are a circle of fire that no long smokes. What’s more thrilling? I went back to have a look. We can only go in the summer, there is a bus that runs and takes you up on the moor. It’s only a little bus, the roads are too narrow to take a full-sized bus or coach which is good because then not too many can get up there. It keeps it quiet.
BORROWING LANDSCAPES
When I write I use/borrow landscapes that I know and love, then I put characters there! Like this:
The scenery changed gradually as the days past. Somehow Thiel did not get lost in the mountains. They were only a small range but still enough to be alien terrain for Thiel who came from lush green hills and valleys. When he doubted the road he would draw out the map he had so painstakingly made under Rurn’s guidance and consulted it as he would an oracle. The map was more than a drawing to show the way, it was a beacon in the darkness of the unknown land that lay all about. The road he had drawn on the map was like a ribbon of fire flies to be followed to the metropolis of Goneton.
WALKING ON DARTMOOR
I went for a walk I knew from a while back, one I have done before from the middle of the moor under the shadow of the cathedral of the moor. You have to leave the central common and the trees, though there is one missing from when I was last there. Take a right- hand road and then take the first left up a very steep lane that would challenge most cars or vehicles, up and up and up until it peters out at the farm at the top, to only a path then that begins to narrow to and there’s high hedges and stone walls. Finally, you get to a five- bar gate and that has the fixture broken but I manage to wangle it open and step out onto the moor itself.
‘MOOR FRIGHT’
The air’s different up there, really it is. There’s something called ‘Moor Fright’ that people get if they are up there alone for too long, its that kind of vast up there. Just wind and sky and nothing.
So I search for the path that I used to know but try as I might walking in a straight line parallel to the valley below I cannot find the old path, I try two routes but come to a dead end. The ferns are very thick and may well have grown over the path that used to run parallel to the valley until there is another lane down into the village.
USING LANDSCAPE IN FICTION
I use this kind of experience when I write fiction:
The mountains let themselves slowly down into the grassy land of Bury Plain. This was a plain that rolled only ever so slightly, but just enough for the tall green grass to curve out of sight before the natural horizon. The track that came out of the mountains quite soon became a proper road that ran straight and unerringly to where all travelers in the area wished to go, Goneton. The remoteness and silence of the mountain forests behind him, Thiel carried on. At his back the Shrog Mountains lay indolent and still. Their grey rock and dark green mantle of pines had taken good care of Thiel, never once even frightening him with a sudden loud noise, which they did enjoy to do with most creatures on their way to the metropolis. It was as if to prove the pointlessness of all the invention and cleverness of these folk in the face of a world more alive than they ever dared imagine even in their cleverest moments.
For days Thiel had seen no one,…
And so the story goes on…
DARTMOOR VOLCANOES
I give up and just look at the sky and the sun up there. It was clear and I could see the tops of Tors for miles in three directions. They are all named
e.g. ‘WIND, HOLLOW, TOP, PIL, RIPPER, HAYTOR, HOLWELL, HOUND, GREAT HOUND, BELL, CHINKWELL, HONEYBAG, HAMELDOWN.’
Behind me was the height of the tor I was standing on, but I wasn’t going to set out on the moor alone with no map, it’s not wise. The moor is to be respected. It’s a serious place to walk.
FINDING THE PATH
I found my way back, I just retraced my steps and found familiar bushes and dried up stream, and the stone wall. There was the gate I had opened. It was still there. I was not lost. There was sun everywhere and the bigness of the sky and the space of the moor, which always inspires poetry. As in ‘ROAD TRIP RIVER VOICES.’ By Lynne Pearl, which is my pen name where I say in the preface:
WRITING TRAVEL POETRY
This is a journey told in verse, a travelogue crossing continents.
“Canada Liminal ” is a story of writing poetry on the run, a leaving and loving Canada narrative, that continues today.
These books are available and the next two Thiel books are arriving soon.
Author Central on Amazon: https://www.amazon.co.uk/stores/Lynne-Pearl/author/B0CX9F26FR?isDramIntegrated=true&shoppingPortalEnabled=true&ref=ap_rdr&isDramIntegrated=true&shoppingPortalEnabled=true
https://www.goodreads.com/author/show/7796332.Lynne_Pearl
