The very sounds of life--the whistle
of the curlew, the bleating of the mountain sheep--add to the sense of
primeval solitude. To these sounds the crags have echoed for a thousand and
ten thousand years; to these sounds and to the rushing of the winds and the
waters they will echo ten thousand years hence. It is as though you have
passed out of time into eternity, where a thousand years are as one day.
There is no calendar for this dateless world. The buzzard that you have
startled from its pool in the gully and that circles round with
wide-flapping wings has a lineage as ancient as the hills, and the vision
of the pikes of Langdale that bursts on you as you reach the summit of Esk
hause is the same vision that burst on the first savage who adventured into
these wild fastnesses of the mountains.
And then as the sun begins to slope to the west you remember that, if you
are among immortal things, you are only a mortal yourself, that you are
getting footsore, and that you need a night's lodging and the comforts of
an inn.
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