I didn’t see the Tor at its best that evening. Dusk was coming on but the weather was a little drappy — a Somerset word I’d recently learned, which means ‘starting to rain slightly’. Even without the benefit of one of its legendary sunsets, the view from the top pushed you back onto your heels, opening the world’s mouth and allowing you to see humblingly down its throat. [loc. 146]
Read by the author, so it felt almost like going for a long walk with Tom Cox and listening to him talk -- about moving house with plants and cats, about hares and the lack of them in the West Country as compared to Norfolk, about life on the Dartington estate in Devon, about his cats (I teared up hearing him talk about the deaths of two elderly felines).
The book is (notionally) based around hills: Glastonbury Tor, the hill in Derbyshire where he lived one winter, the hills of Dartmoor, et cetera. But Cox rambles in prose as well as in the countryside, so he might be walking up a hill and thinking about a pheasant named Clarence (though the pheasant does not know his name, of course). Ring the Hill -- the title is from a medieval text about nicknames for hares -- was gentle and funny, gorgeously written and endlessly intriguing. It made me want to get out in the countryside and walk for miles, preferably alone. And then go to the beach and swim in the sea*.
*Assuming no sewage alerts :(
No comments:
Post a Comment