RAMBLES & SCRAMBLES IN THE ENGLISH LAKE DISTRICT

Like the great poet Wordsworth nearly two centuries before us, we’re heading to the lakes on “nature’s invitation.” Unfortunately, getting to her party is not quite as easy as getting invited…We cab to London’s Euston station for a British Rail journey to the Lake District hamlet of Windermere. The trip, scheduled for five hours, takes seven. The delay is because some English lads put themselves in jolly spirits by busting windows in our train…Meantime, I put myself jolly reading the British newspapers. Discover that the Duke of Argyll is accused of poaching salmon on a river near his castle. The Duke can’t understand all the fuss. “My family’s been taking those salmon with special dispensation for the last 486 years,” he says…Lads as bashers, dukes as poachers, it’s not the same old England. Taxes probably did in the duke, and as for the lads, could it be claustrophobia? A hundred years ago the Queen would have had them off somewhere making the world safe for tea and cucumber sandwiches…In any event, pondering the lamentable state of civilization does seem the time-tested prerequisite to entering nature. Wordsworth himself, on his way up to these lakes, was quilling lines about “what man has made of man.” In the unfathomable way that time churns the human experience, Wordsworth is as timely as ever. He advocated “plain living, high thinking”—a credo our civilization has managed to perfectly reverse, pass the goat cheese please…Wordsworth was the greatest poet of place in the English language. His place was this 900 square-mile northwest corner of England on the Irish Sea, where the country’s highest and craggiest peaks stretch out into gentle green hilly valleys dotted by moody lakes. Leader of a pack of literary lions known as the “Lake Poets” (including Coleridge, Southey, and others), he was also an early environmentalist who described his desk as an “instrument of torture.” He was mad about walking. According to Thoreau, the most famous literary walker on our side of the pond, when a traveler wanted to see Wordsworth’s study he was taken to a room with books and told, “Here is his library, but his study is out of doors.”…We’re not poets, but we are walkers. To us, a walk is food for the spirit. It’s a rare day when we don’t steal an hour or two to go off striding—sometimes together, sometimes alone—to clear the mind and free the body. Walking lures us deep into our inner and outer worlds at once; afterwards, the euphoria lingers for hours…Now we’re venturing into Wordsworth country to try (if only for a week) his way out of the madness—walking in the woods and writing poetry. This spot of earth so inspired him that he married it to the English language, forever affecting the way we all experience nature. Thanks to WW, every man can be a poet in the woods. Maybe we can’t look at a meadow of daffodils and utter, “Ten thousand saw I at a glance, tossing their heads in a spritely dance,” but we can open our experience to those flowers and take great pleasure in scribbling down a few words that move us…We also owe Wordsworth for elevating the importance of one’s walking companion. Walter Scott once trudged a few steps behind him to the craggy summit of Helvellyn, England’s second-highest peak, arriving with the news: “The torrents were roaring, the eagles were yelling…” WW’s more frequent walking companion and muse was his sister Dorothy, of whom he wrote, “Her voice was like a hidden bird that sang…My own bird (not so hidden, she’s always jumping in front) sings, “What I feel up here is nature’s power to inspire art in all of us. Inspire every form of creative expression—poetry, drawing, music. And once we create what it inspires, we’re changed. We never look at the world in quite the same way again.” Since Patricia has a penchant for nature in its wildest forms, she wondered whether these English lakes might not be a bit tame for her taste. Turns out, plenty wild. Sudden unexpected changes of weather, washed-out trails, slippery rocks, jagged peaks that crumble underfoot are among the causes of 250 annual deaths in England’s mountains…Today we set out to climb Skiddaw, England’s third highest peak. Don’t even get to a thousand feet before we stray from the trail and find ourselves lost in a yew forest, sludging through mud, brambles tearing our hands and pant legs. We have conflicting maps. Which way to turn explodes into a debate that goes well beyond whether the “stone wall” on my map is the “boundary marker” on hers. (“We always go your way!” “We never go m way!”) Finally, we give up and silently sit down to lunch. At this instant, the skies open and render our peanut butter sandwiches too soggy to eat….Somehow, two drenched, wretched specimens with tattered trousers, scratched arms, and bruised egos make it back to the inn. During dinner we recount our sad tale to some walkers at the next table, only to learn that what we were doing all day is in fact an honored English sport called “scrambling,” a term for off-path walking. Over the rocks, through the bushes, and hey look here’s an opening and down there’s the lake. Adds adventure. Come to think of it, it was our best day yet…Scrambling is more than mere “rambling,” but less than climbing. In the Queen’s English, “rambling” means following the path (if you can find it). Both are forms of “fellwalking.” A “fell” is a mountain…We’re not talking Himalayas, of course. The peaks are little more than 3,000 feet, but some rise quite precipitously to their elevation, with shoulders of jagged stone. It’s so lush that instant lawns seem to spring up all by themselves. The Wordsworthian vision of “perfect contentment, unity entire” is apparent in every eyeful…The Lake District is England before the ornamental gardeners got to it. In fairness, the English didn’t invent formal landscaping—that dubious honor goes to the Italians—and in fact are credited with “naturalizing” this otherwise unnatural act. But somehow, the sight of octagonal hedges under sculpted evergreens throughout this island strikes me as unregenerately imperial. Is it that the English believe, like the Duke, they have “special dispensation” to shape the world to their pleasure, from muggy countries to unruly conifers? Rule colonies, rule nature. The colonies are gone, but from the Scottish border to the Channel, the Englishman still literally rules the flora in his own backyard…We try without success to track down the elusive A. Wainwright, and accountant who more than thirty years ago turned in his green eyeshade and took up a walking stick. Today he is the most famous walker in England. Draws maps and writes about his walks in a series of lovingly created guidebooks that cover every corner of the Lake District. Along with a 2 1/2-inch Ordnance Survey map, a compass, a rainsuit, and a good pair of boots, the appropriate Wainwright guide is an essential for a day’s fellwalking. He’s an 80-year-old recluse, a mystery man who by his own description is “familiar with every boulder (especially those that can be comfortably sat upon). Every streamlet, every bog and every rash of stones along the way.” Nobody ever sees him because he walks “the secret places that must be searched for…the neglected packwood trails…the wild gullies and ravines that rarely see a two-legged visitor.” Mr. Wainwright is by no means the only elderly walker in these parts. On nearly every trail we see hardy men and women in their 70s, some in their 80s, striding along in their breeches, walking stick in hand, companion at their side…The English take to the moors the way Americans take to the malls. Here the government has set aside an astonishing 100,000 miles of public footpaths and bridleways. I hope some smart American politicians are reading this. It’s about time our public agencies turned their attention to making life more agreeable for walkers. To hell with highways—let’s start creating footpaths…
For the English, walking is a family affair, an integrated undertaking. Throughout the fells we see entire families traveling in packs, laughing, talking, kidding, enjoying one another in nature. The compulsiveness with which we Americans approach exercising seems utterly silly when you see the English on their rambles blending exercise with life, family, and leisure…A calm, cheerful spell envelops us as we board the train back to London. Experiencing the Lake District nearly as Wordsworth did (there’s as much of the last century evident here as the present one) has opened a new perspective on our lives back home. We return to America committed ramblers, anxious to explore hills we’ve been gazing at for years, but never before thought of entering…