Walking through silence
Harriet Hart shares her experience of walking worship
As soon as I could walk my parents gathered their patience about them and refused to carry or push me. I was brought up pattering through puddles and stomping through leaf mould. All of our holidays took us to wild places and, with two outdoor instructors caring for me, I was encouraged to develop a love of the land and all that grows on it.
This relationship has a great bearing upon my world view. It gives me a connection to simplicity and a broadening of perspective. I find a connection out on the open moor that I also find in Meeting for Worship. There is a familiarity there that allows me to settle, that brings me back to the centre. While all landscapes speak to me on some level, the moorland of my upbringing remains powerfully uplifting.
Setting out
Leaving the village, heading for the moors, the path at first is muddy. Shaded by the trees, it passes the plinth of the old market cross and runs behind the church yard to enter the first of two tunnels. A brief patch of sky is visible as I follow the track into the second.
The walls are high on either side, moss covered and damp. These tunnels are a recent addition to an ancient road, built from a desire to shut out the lower classes. To the right of the path, behind the wall, sits the ornate, Victorian hunting lodge, Ingleborough Hall. Between 1807 and 1845 the Farrer family, owners of the Hall, dammed the river to create an ornamental lake and had the tunnels constructed so that they could access their estate without crossing the road or encountering its varied traffic. As a child these tunnels were always exciting to me. I stumbled on small legs, looking for the light, knowing that there would be an end to the pitfalls and rocks, and that soon we would find ourselves on the smooth cobbles of the ascent into the woodland.
The soul of the land
The path that climbs through deciduous trees is always damp and frequented by pheasants. When I finally break out of the trees I am greeted by drystone walls, open fields, a puddle that stretches long and grey and a junction. Looking east, Thwaite Lane traces a rocky line towards Austwick and Settle with the wide stretch of the upper Wenning Valley to the right. Turning north, Long Lane descends to a stream and climbs again to level out, stretching all the way up the valley to the open moorland. Enclosed by drystone walls on each side, it lies unpaved, pale and rocky, pocked with puddles and patches of mud. It is solid and dependable. It has stories to tell of many travellers.
Originally it was used by drovers ushering livestock across the country, by farmers reaching moorland pastures, by monks travelling to monasteries in the north, by tradesmen carrying charcoal and salt and by thieves, pedlars and peasants. It is ages old, following the limestone for a drier passage connecting Roman roads and old settlements. As I walk I feel the stones through my boots, I consider those who have stepped here and I am touched by the deep connection of the sole and the land, of the soul and the land.
Uplifted
There is a gathered history embedded in this place that gives me a feeling similar to that I find in my local Meeting house. These are the traces of lives lived close to the land, close to the silence.
Moving on, I climb a stile and follow the path up to a knoll named Long Scar. Pausing to look all around I am uplifted. In the distance lies Pendle Hill, Pen-y-ghent is closer and to my back Ingleborough rises noble and silent.
Every time I do this walk I am awed by the mountain. It is so great and solid, and yet so silent. The browns and greens of its sedge-covered slopes are soft on the eye, the colours of earth. The sky spreads itself wide and blue above. It is out here that I feel most alive. I am part of this great existence, this silence that lies under and beyond all words. To me there is no greater church than this. While our Meeting houses become idolised and fussed over, while we wrap ourselves in semantic struggles, all of this goes on existing, living, breathing, in utter silence. While we construct a world based on thought and language, this land goes on. It was never a concept before it came into being; it was never a thought.
True communion
As I hold the earth in my palm, I know that I am also a handful of dust, that my body goes on dying, rebuilding, breathing and knowing without a single syllable passing my lips. This is the wordlessness of being that envelopes me in Meeting for Worship, that rises from every blade of grass and is reflected in every puddle. This is true communion. This is what I call God, in a constant struggle to remember it as the ground of our being.
Turning I follow the path across limestone pavements, eroded by the rain, exposing their fishy fossils to the glare of daylight. I cross soft bogs and scuff the sandy path as I turn left to face the final ascent.
At the summit I find myself immersed once more in the history of this land. I look out towards Morecambe Bay and the Lake District while stood in the doorway of an iron age hut circle and I am once more filled with the sensation that nothing else really matters. Nothing matters apart from the greatness of the land and its silence that answers the silence in me. This is all that there is.
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