BETWEEN THE LAKE AND THE BAY

'Could you count how many cars go past in, maybe, 10 minutes?’

I’m in my room in the city, trying to conjure up an image of my future home based on nothing more than estate agent photos and my mum’s voice down the phone.

‘Not too many, it’s fine. You’ll like it!’

Huntsmans Cottage, it’s called. The door knocker is a brass fox, greened by drizzle. It’s Huntsmans in simple serif on the slate by the back door, but Huntsman’s in fancy cursive on the one by the front. We opt to use Huntsmans: no apostrophe. It’s neater, and the door from the yard will be the one that we use.

__________

One week.

The landlord is unabashedly Cumbrian. The soil from which northerners grow is rich in many things, but not in sentimentality about ordinary matters of life. The first time we meet him, he spends two minutes screwing in a stray plug socket that had been drooping from the wall, then hands us the keys and heads straight for the door.

‘You know where I am if you need owt’.

He leaves. I feel like I know where I stand with him. Rose thinks he’s judging us.

We lie down on the bed, and wriggle around for the best view out of the window. To the north, the common; a low rough fell, with a beacon cairn at its top. To the west, the moor; dark and indifferent, low cloud clinging to its lingy slopes, which slide without definition or energy up out of our high valley and down the other side to the estuary sands.

The old house, where I grew up, was surrounded by forest, swaddled in a vale of mossy tree trunks and swaying branches. This is different. I say to Rose that it feels like Yorkshire. She says that’s no bad thing.

In the first few days, driving back along the high road from the old home to the new one, we pull up by a field gate. From here, we can look across to the dark waters of the lake on one side, and down to the open bay on the other, trickles of water running out across its sandy expanse to the sea. Our ‘valley’ is not really a valley; more of a pass, between the lake and the bay. It’s quiet, save for the road winding through.

The village is split in half by two fields, without apparent reason. On one side, a small clump of council houses and our own row of older ones. On the other, the main bulk of the homes. My imagination tells me that the villagers consider themselves two separate clans, immeasurably different and superior to one another, who, on late summer evenings hundreds of years ago, would spill out of the village inn onto the paddock and have an almighty tug-of-war for bragging rights. The pub has long gone though, and the mill, and the school, and everything except for the houses. A red phone box remains, lit up just a few yards from our front door, but now home to a defibrillator instead of a phone.

__________

Two weeks.

It’s been drizzling all morning. I take my bike out and fizz along the road down into town to buy some milk. A sausage and chips gazes imploringly at me through the steamy windows of the chippy, and I take them away wrapped in paper to eat hunched beneath a low tree, in a futile attempt to stop them getting soggy. I’m quite content.

Later, back at the new house, I lock up the doors, and double check everything; windows closed, lights off, appliances given a stern look not to malfunction while I’m away. This home still feels fragile. I haven’t found its rhythm yet. I loiter, a little on edge, in case something leaps out at me. Nothing. It just sits quietly, boxes of things stacked through all its rooms waiting to be unpacked. It’s refusing to promise me anything yet.

I bike over to the old house. By now, I know the route well by car, but it somehow feels closer as I move between them under my own steam, sweating and rain-soaked.

The old house is the opposite of fragile. Reliable. Known. Safe. But tired, like an elderly grandparent who used to run around with me and play games, but who now mostly sits in an armchair and smiles to see me growing up. Almost ready to move on.

It’s empty now. We are all moving out, and nearly everything is gone. My mum has her new house, Rose and I have ours, and my siblings are going too. A childhood home disbanded. We have a ceremonial bonfire out the back to burn all the things that nobody wants to take, but that are too personal, or tatty, to go to the charity shop.

__________

Three weeks.

I am cycling back to the new house. I interrupt the uphill slogs and smell-of-brake-rubber downhills of the route home to drop in at the pub for some food. As I stoop under the doorway, the three men sitting at the bar turn to stare at me.

‘How do’

It’s not a question, just an opening statement.

I accept their tacit nods of acknowledgement and take a seat at a table, as they return slowly to their pints. The chairs are mismatched and squeaky where joints have been loosened by generations of hardworking buttocks. The low beams are studded with horse brass. The carpets are reassuringly crap. The pie and chips are comfortingly nothing-special. The beer is mercifully cheap. Everything’s just as it is.

I eat, take my leave, and swerve lazily along the final stretch of lanes, weighed down by stout and pastry. I pause to look out across the fields towards the outline of the high fells, blue-grey against a forgiving sky. The cows stare at me and chew absent-mindedly. Nothing that I can sense in the world around me is doing much of anything. With the ill ease of the past three years still taking its time to fade slowly away, it’s all almost heartbreakingly what I need.

Further along, after sweating the salt and vinegar of the chips into my fleece, I pause once again at the gate that marks the high point over the pass. I turn my head from the lake to the bay, and back. This place is going to be alright.

I go home. The new home.

__________

Two months.

We drive over to the pub. It’s music night. We bump into a trio of women who’ve known Rose since she was a baby. I sip at a pint of bitter. The father of an old schoolfriend arrives with his guitar, and clasps my hand warmly with a grinning ‘good to see yer!’. A mate who farms just down the road walks in ten minutes later. We’re surprised to see him on his feet; a cow kicked him a few weeks ago and the doctors cut his leg open to stop the pressure of the bleeding in his muscles. He’s got an eight inch scar running down either side of his leg. Maybe it was a point of pride for him to walk in, not a crutch in sight, but he quickly retreats to a chair on which to elevate the leg, and I pull up a stool to chat. Music floats through from the other room. The barman pulls me a second pint, and a third.

We head home late, park the car, and stroll along the back lane to the house, stars strewn across the deep blue sky. Key in the door, and up to bed.

__________

Four months.

Rain and wind conspired to make the summer show an overly damp affair. Not long after folk began arriving to peruse the trestle tables loaded with entries of vegetables, flower displays and home baking, the organisers were to be seen hurrying around the show field with a sledgehammer and a worried expression, hastily bashing metal pegs deeper into the soft earth in an attempt to reassure themselves (and the show-goers) that the marquees were not about to take flight. A few hours later, they looked as though were going to do just that.

The fell race had attracted a grand total of 19 runners: a few from the valley, a few more from nearby running clubs, and a couple of off-comers to round out the line-up. We were drenched as soon as we stepped out of the tent for the pre-race briefing, which was yelled at us through the driving rain.

“Don’t climb walls, come back alive!”.

We nod. Most of us have opted for a thin raincoat over our vests, but it’s futile. Mine is stuck to me like clingfilm.

With a moist bang we’re released squelching and splashing across the valley fields, our shoes sodden within seconds. Before we reach the first ascent the pack has spread into a line, with me somewhere further ahead than I ought to be for my pace. This course is a quicker and flatter affair than most, and all the runners feel the urge to throw themselves round as fast as possible. I careen through knee deep puddles, soaked to the bone but alight with competitive energy.

“It’s a tad damp!” I yell as I run past two marshals huddled behind their Land Rover. They nod glumly.

I can feel the pressure of the runner behind me, just a dozen strides back. A single moment’s let up will be enough for them to rush past. We bash our way wildly past a muddy cops, through a stretch of waist high bracken – the coarse stems whipping at our ankles – and uphill, along a loose trod which the relentless downpour has turned into a fast flowing stream. The wind is shooting every drop at us as though it had a mind to create an exit wound.

As I skitter out onto the fell-top track, and begin the arm-flailing descent, the other runner draws alongside, and then passes me. But the advantage they’ve had in chasing after me has now turned to mine, and I match their pace not far behind. For every few yards they gain on a downhill, I regain on an up.

As we clamber up the final hill and drop loose legged down the other side, the white tents of the show field hove into view. We fly round the last gate, and dash across the field towards the finish line. I fling my legs as far forward as they will go, tear one last burst of energy from my lungs, and pass the other runner with only a dozen yards to go. “Well…done!” she pants, “than…ks” I splutter back.

“...and ther’s a big splash as anuther runner meks it back across the stream..” crackles the announcer through the loudspeaker. A handful of spectators look out from raincoat hoods and raise a half-hearted patter of applause. I bundle myself across the line, and collapse, gasping for breath.

A good day out.

__________

Seven months.

The squat little Christmas tree is shedding its needles remorselessly onto the carpet in the front room, finally giving up the ghost after a good three week run. It’s been snowing, and we’ve had the stove on every day for weeks, basking in our smugness, and its snugness.

All the years I was in the city, Rose was too. A city with a different name, in a different place, but a city just the same. We mirrored in each other our ache to leave, to stop holding our breath.

We are breathing deeply and slowly now.

__________

Fourteen months.

I’m looking for work repairing dry stone walls. I’ve had some practice, and I have some confidence, but I don’t know if I can make a go of it.

Early on a Thursday morning as the summer is fading, I trundle the van to a stop next to the farm by the crossroads above town. The bay stretches out to the horizon ahead of me. A man stands in the farmyard in loose plastic overalls, looking at me.

I get out and walk over, smiling. He smiles back, and stretches out a hand.

“You must be the walling lad?”

I sit on the back of his quad and he drives me a few hundred yards down the road, pointing at several gaps further down the lane. I tell him I can do them, we shake hands, and I depart.

I have to leave the van at the garage because it’s making unhappy sounds, so I walk the back lanes out of town, over the hill to home. I cast a critical eye over the walls as I pass. I’m an expert now, naturally. This is a good bit. That last bit was crap. I could do a better job than that bit over there.

In the afternoon, I bake bread, like my mum did when I was small. For those of us who come from nurturing homes, it seems as though all we do through our young adult lives is try and rediscover what we had as young children. To recreate the simplicity of those days. Our lives are just one turn of a cycle; each of us having our go, and then setting off new lives to do the same. Pointless, but satisfying.

The first and second loaves were dense, but edible. The third was a sticky mass. The fourth, better. This is the fifth. I shape the dough into a rough mound and slide it into the oven. It’s a brown cob; a low dome of flour-dusted crust with a cross slashed into the top. Half an hour later I take it out… needs a few more minutes. And a few more. I knock on the bottom, and it’s done. Maybe. It sits out on the kitchen counter, filling the house with its warm smell. The crust crunches as I slice into it. Butter melts. It’s good. I stand at the back door to eat it, looking out at the sky.

The garage called back, and offered to take a third of what I have left in my bank account for a replacement part that I have never heard of, but can’t do without. All those days of walling I just arranged will only just bring me back to square one. But that’s ok. I have good bread, and the sky over the hedges lies quietly over the village.

Between the city and the rest of our lives, these are our fallow years.

__________

Sixteen months.

I’m working in the rain, in the woods. Yesterday it was cold, and the crunch of my footsteps in the morning frost startled the deer from their grazing as I walked across the fields to the trees. Ears pricked up and heads snapped round, then swiftly bounded away. Later, the frost rose up into a thick cloaking mist, and I startled them all again on my retreat down the track. Today it’s all rain, and I’ve rigged up a tarp to work under. There are no cars to be heard or people to be seen up here. I’m doing some good work in the wall, the joints tight and the stones lying snugly far into its core. If I’ve done it right, nobody alive today will ever see my best work; the unshakable guts of the thing. Even the face of it will age out of sight of any but the occasional farmer and stray walker.

Once I’ve put the very last stone in place, I stand there for a while. I like to spend a few minutes with it; standing near, and standing back, patrolling its length, staring at it intently. I need to wait and watch for a moment, before leaving the wall to its fate, as if to check whether or not the pieces have accepted their new place in the world. After a few minutes of indefatigable mineral indifference, I’m reassured that I can leave them alone without them leaping unbidden from their positions.

Dry stone walling is honest work. Stand in the field and will it up as much as you like, not a stone will budge until you put hand to earth. It cannot be avoided, or exaggerated, or talked away. You either crack on with the job and succeed, or do nothing and fail.

People tell me I’m too bright to be moving rocks for money. I think they might be suggesting that it's a job for dim people. Only dim people would want to be outside all day, taking the weather as it comes and filling their lungs with fresh air. To have their mind free to wander while their hands do the work, instead of being instructed what to think. To be able to listen to whatever they like, or nothing at all. To have toads and buzzards and inquisitive cattle for company, instead of tiresome colleagues and irksome supervisors. To be able to set their own days, and choose their own work. To be able to take time for themselves when they need it, and time for other things when they want it. To have to earn their business through the quality of their work and the price they can offer. To turn up and to use nothing but gravity and the stones that were first used generations ago to build the wall; just one turn in an endless cycle of re-use, a maintainer of the very character of the place they live in, and love. To know that every time they do the work, they're developing a skill that they can use for a short time, or a lifetime. To be able to stand back and see - and step forward and feel - the day’s work. Something useful and reliable, that should stand above the ground when they're long-since under it. And to know at the day’s end that they're not tired because they're stressed, but that they're tired because walling is hard graft, and that that's ok.

Kneeling in the mud, in the wind and rain, keeps me grounded. I'll not be doing this and nothing else for the rest of my time, but I'm doing it now, and it folk think that’s dim, then that’s ok too.

In my heart, there’s no way back from this, to the entrapment of placeholder employment; no way to unlearn the freedom of providing myself a living through personal craftsmanship. When I consider the paths behind and ahead of me, I don’t think of a tiresome job and a handful of hobbies. This walling is work, and it fills many days. But I am not living my life in the margins of days dominated by a job of dreary necessity. I am filling page after page with living, on those days spent walling as much as those spent otherwise. There needn’t be artificial division between work, play and growth, if our work is playful and nourishing.

No matter how cannily they’ve been taught to respect being a cog in the company machine, I think it’s the unsettling experience of every reflective person in the employ of those in the business of business that they are being used. Back when I worked with people, for others, I felt like a tool. Now I work for myself, with tools, I feel like a person.

__________

Eighteen months.

‘Tea!?’

I’m peeking through the banisters on my way down stairs at Rose, who’s tucked up under the duvet. It’s been six years of us together. Before these past two, we knew that we wanted to build a burrow in the earth of our most shared place, and that we have done. Every day now that we’re still making that happen is a day to wallow in it. When I’m out in the fields and it’s blowing a hoolie all around, I chuckle inwards at its futile attempts to wash away my spirits. As long as I have a burrow to go back to, lights aglow and dinner on the stove as I trudge up the yard, all is well.

‘Yuh!’ she grins, completing the morning ritual. I go and make the tea.

__________

Twenty months.

I crunch upwards through the snow. It’s knee deep, formed of gentle layers draped over the fell by days of clouds. Crampons and ice axe have already been put to good use on the ascent of the ridge, the three of us moving like spiders on a breadknife blade. The heat pushes out from our chests from the slow effort of walking over the laden land, even as our noses run with cold. These fellsides are far quieter, far harsher, far further places now than they are in the summer months, and we have them to ourselves.

I turn from the peak, to look out across the hills and valleys below us, suddenly unveiled to me by a parting in the whiteout. My friend and Rose are moving towards me, framed by whirls of spindrift glitter that are being whipped up from the slope, twinkling in the glare of the distant sun. A view to take the breath away, if the freezing climb hadn’t already seen to that.

A long descent in the dark awaits us, stiff boots and damp socks, and a low gear struggle for the car back home over the pass. But for now, we are just three awe-struck insects, crawling on the back of Helvellyn’s white cap; clean wesh’t and bleach’t, as white as drip. An icy crown for the pretender to Scafell’s throne in the old Cumberland rhyme of The Fell King.

__________

Twenty-one months.

My hands can feel the spring coming. Through the cold months they’ve worked away, deep splits next to their fingernails and mean cracks along their creases. Specks of dry blood on cold-riven knuckles, fingertips unearthly smooth from constant abrasion, and dirt in the base of their palms that will not budge. But they’re flexing now, with a renewed grip, days of sunshine promising a busy summer to come.

Vocations do not exist. People do not naturally gravitate towards a conveniently specialised life-role by dint of some innate quality. We are just siloed into skillsets and information cultures so early in life by the systems we have created, that we become discouraged from exploring the other paths that we might have taken. ‘High achievers’ are channelled ever more forcefully throughout their upbringing into niches where it becomes a shock to meet those who are supposedly of a different ‘type’ to them, and vice versa. But an active mind does not need to be ‘stimulated’ by a stressful job, any more than it wants to be enslaved all day to a never-ending quest for other people’s concerns. It would rather be set free to roam the high plains of imagination. So it should come as no surprise that a reflective brain may conclude that the things society considers most impressive are not in fact much worth bothering with.

The division between ‘Practical’ people and ‘Academic’ people is complete bollocks, in any case. Practical work is not mindless, any more than thoughtful work is impractical. The apparent simplicity of putting up a wall belies the complexity of all its possible permutations, which only experience and intelligence can answer to, just as the apparent complexity of social policy can be broken down into mundane constituent parts.

Why shouldn’t a plumbing apprentice read Shakespeare or Nietzsche? Why shouldn’t somebody with an interest in macroeconomics also be interested in sheep shearing? No reason at all.

__________

Twenty-two months.

My feet are moving quickly through the heather, skipping past stray rocks and ankle-snapping divots. I’m on the moor, and it’s a fresh wind that snaps up at me from the coast. I glance up at the path ahead, and the brow of a hill to my right. On a whim I leave the path and forge on up the incline, drawing deep breaths as I go. I always follow my nose on a run. You never know where its curiosity will take you.

It’s just another heathery top this time. But from it, I look out on a subtly new angle to the familiar view of the sands below, and the fells rising up in the distance.

__________

Twenty-three months.

I am lying on my back in the long grass, drifting in and out of an afternoon nap in the early summer sunshine. The wall is half done through a morning’s effort, and the sandwiches all gone. An errant ant tickles its way across my arm. I close my eyes and watch the little dust scratches on my corneas darting back and forth as I chase them around the dark box of my vision. Each one is damage, like the purple scars on my knees from a bad racing fall are, and the black toenail on my left foot from a long run weeks ago is. But each damage is a mark of self, a reminder that my life is not lived in my head, but in the world, and identity emerges from that living, chosen or otherwise. Three years in the city gave me some self, and two years here have given me some more.

__________

Twenty-six months.

It’s been nine seasons since we came here.

Nine seasons of canoe paddles gliding through choppy lake waters, of legs kicking and lungs gasping in freezing cold tarns, pints in the sun and boots by the fire. Of ice on the windscreen, steaming pies from the oven and cups of tea staring out at the lashing rain. Of pub quizzes, sprint finishes, summer-brown skin and winter-blue skies. Of sheep on the road, footy in the park, bleary eyes from bothy nights, and evening laughter with friends, camping out beneath pine smoke bonfires. Inside, outside, all here.

And we’re leaving.

Leaving this life, with all of its promise. Leaving what we’ve built, and that yet to build; work undone. Leaving the fells, the lakes, the traditions, the people. The days of quiet habit. Our home together, whole, calm and safe.

I feel the impending loss, but I know that I have only glimpsed the wilderness until now, and that for all my love of place and identity, it is all just part of the veneer of purpose that humans cling to above an unforgiving abyss of reality, and I feel drawn to go a step closer to that truth. We’re leaving because we do want all of this. Because we do want to live here for a long time, and not disappear across the world in years to come. And to do that, and to do it without regrets of paths untraveled, to have no voices calling to us in our minds that we need to spend a lifetime of treading the same soil blocking out, we need to listen to them now. It is the way of youth, to explore at the edges. There are whole other lives of friluftsliv and community out there, and we are going to go and live at least one of them, before we come home again.

For two years, I knew that this, here, was what I needed. It wasn’t all fun, but it was all good. There was no need for anything else. But now, there is. Not because I doubt the truths this place helps me to see, but because there are other places to see which speak in a different ways to those same truths.

Maybe not garn yam just yet after all.

Vanya yam, for now.

Bobby Gard-Storry
Cumbria, 2019