17 October | Hike to Grasmere and Back

Today, the whole class hiked to the town of Grasmere, via Rydell Mount and Dove Cottage, two of poet William Wordsworth’s homes. We arrived at Rydell Mount first, and Wordsworth’s garden was unexpectedly gorgeous: long sloping hillside forest, lake at the bottom, but all shaped into a garden harmonizing with the surroundings. Our guide Jason said that if Wordsworth hadn’t been a poet, he would have been a 18^th century version of a landscape architect—evident in the thoughtfully placed benches, shaded grassy spaces, purposefully overgrown hedges. Planned carefully, but definitely not the same ordered planning as Regents Park; this place was dictated by the landscape itself.

part of the garden at Rydell Mount house

We hiked on to Dove Cottage, where we were rushed through a tour by a woman who sounded like a recorded message. Creepy little house, actually—built in the 1600s with low ceilings, small windows, a feeling of suffocation from the smoking coal-burning fire. I was glad to leave. 

The hikes there and back were the best part of the day—going out from Ambleside we took the Coffin Road trail, where the deceased used to be carried through the woods if they were to be buried in Grasmere. On foot, not by carriage. I can’t imagine carrying a coffin over these dirt paths in the hills for 3 miles. The walk back passed two perfect lakes, and we also went into a cave that was once used as a stone quarry. Eerie place: a huge gaping mouth on a hillside, pools of water, black slate with bright green moss under clear, still water.

I took so many pictures, feeling frustrated the whole time, because in a few years’ time, I will look at these photos and the picture of a lake will be just some lake. I want to capture more than that—the feeling too. But I can’t quite seem to transfer that onto film, or into the right words. It’s times like these that I am quite aware of the failure of language, but sometimes it is comforting to know that not everything can be named, and that these experiences will have to live, to some extent, solely as memories that only I can know.

thanks for the jacket, Dad!