Stumbling with Sheep (and a really gross, true story)

Sitting at the farmhouse which supposedly
inspired the imagination of Emily Bronte
creating Wuthering Heights

So today I'm in York and I finally have WiFi again! We spent most of the day exploring Fountain Abbey which was lovely and very extensive. We were there for four hours and still could have seen more. While I was without WiFi I was exploring quite a few cities such as Haworth, Earby, and Malham. In Haworth, we saw the Bronte Parsonage which was as dreary as I expected it to be. The Brontes were brilliant and much of their works reflect the bleakness in which they lived. Their lives were coated with instances of death and harsh reality as can be seen in the novels of Jane Eyre and Wuthering Heights, both believed to be either somewhat autobiographical or a reflection of psychological state. One detail I'll mention about their home is one that I found to be particularly fascinating and (heads up) disgusting. The mortality rate in their little town of Haworth was devastatingly high. Many children died before the age of six and many adults before the age of twenty-five. When attempting to determine why so many were dying they found many problems with sanitation, but it wasn't until years later that they found what I believe to be the most disturbing discovery. Adjacent to the Bronte Parsonage is a small and overloaded graveyard (my picture doesn't do it justice but there is literally no room to walk amongst the graves as the hundreds of stones overlap each other). This graveyard now serves as the final resting place for some 42,000 bodies.

The bodies in this grave were disposed of by piling

A small section of the graveyard which sits next to the
Bronte Parsonage in the background (through the trees)

them on top of one another in a pit then being covered by a flat stone. The names of the dead were carved into this stone until it was full, then being turned over to carve more names. The problem with this besides the obvious is that the flat stone prohibits the access of air to the soil. Therefore, the bodies couldn't decompose either partially mummifying and rupturing from liquid and gas pressure. This, while already disturbing becomes revolting when we realize that the city's water supply ran directly under the graveyard and retained significant amounts of contaminated seepage from this process. Now that we are all thoroughly disgusted I think I will move on.

A view of the never-ending Moors

Anyway, so the Moors are as dangerous, never-ending, and wild as everyone has always said. Even now bodies are occasionally found of those un-cautious hikers who have paid the price. That was fun to hear literally right before we began our own excursion. But as you can tell from my current post all is well. So the Moors are composed of miles and miles of heather and heath rolled on the sky a dim, grey, stormy color and the wind blowing so as to wipe us from the face of the earth. It would hail on a whim and we were constantly avoiding marshy mounds and sunken ground. Every so often a small hare that couldn't survive the elements was lying on the side of the path and at every moment I felt the thudding of my heartbeat, the heavy breathing, and searing pain in my knee corresponding with the rushing warning present in the wind which swarmed around us. Unfortunately, the hike was some 18 miles long and so I had to cut out after a couple of miles due to pain but I was able to spend the afternoon with Pat's (my director's) little girls Dani (age 7) and Sarah (age 9). We had a tea party and talked about our adventures that day. It was my first tea party in England. We all enjoyed it immensely and Dani even spoke with a British accent.

On top of Malham's Cover standing where Hermione and Harry
stood amongst the Clints and Grikes

Before leaving the Malham (the town we hiked to via the Moors) we stopped by Janet's Foss and Malham's Cove. The cove is actually the site of one of the Harry Potter Seven scenes so it was really cool to be up amongst the fissures and cracks we recognized. The cove is actually limestone so the stone is called a Clint and the "spaces" the Grike. Once again it was raining but that added to the atmosphere. After we stopped by the waterfall (Foss is a Nordic word for Waterfall) believed to be home to the fairies of Queen Janet where many make wishes by leaving coins in the trees. It was almost disturbing to see the money which seemed to almost grow from the bark as a virus or unnatural plague of man. I can't quite describe it but it left me feeling eerie. So now for the next essay in what will become my portfolio for this trip. It is a descriptive essay based on an object. I picked sheep and for any who want some funny light reading, it resembles Beerbaums essay, "Going for a Walk." Enjoy.

Janet's Foss

The Money Tree

Stumbling with Sheep

I had never seen a sheep before coming to England. But now I have seen too many.

As you can tell these are sheep ;)

Whilst walking the public footpaths one cannot help but wonder how one of the most iconically lovable babies in the animal kingdom, the lamb, can grow into one of the least attractive animals in, no longer the animal kingdom, but the meat and clothes industries as mutton and wool. Before they are thus used each sheep looks much the same, their woolen coats whispy but shaggy, only those which are half-shaven standing out amongst the rest. These half-shaven sheep are of the group which seems to have contracted a strange form of woolen leprosy. The live illusion of deterioration is fixed by the fragmented patches of wrinkled pink skin and limp strips of dirty wool, twisting in the breeze as each sheep hobbles to its new grazing mound. As they hobble along one cannot help but notice the splotches of sprayed green, pink, or red on its coat which marks out its value and inevitable home on a plate of Haggis, Neeps, and Tatties. And, if one continually walks the countryside and its public footpaths this, besides the innumerable poop droppings, is all one will see in England's never-ending mass of sheep, pastures, and hedgerows.

Upon coming to England I was instructed to find inspiration in the landscape. But, as I quickly grew tired of sheep I also found the landscape to grow lackluster in inspiration. I suppose one could argue that there is much more to inspire than just sheep. And I suppose them to be right. But the point is not how much there is to inspire but whether or not it does. And frankly, it does not. For though the landscape is lovely, to be sure, it varies as much as one sheep to another.

Meditating at the stone circle in Keswick called Castlerigg

Though this assertion is quite contrary to the "Wordsworthian" ideal, I find that instead of waxing poetic or profound in a "spontaneous overflow of powerful emotion" I rather become as methodically concerned with where I step as a sheep does with nipping the next tuft of grass. With their black and white, oblong faces turned downward a sheep may spend its whole day in no other pursuit than to feed and bleat at those of us which come to near. And though loathe to compare myself to a sheep, I too find that nature serves to numb the creative brain as one's eyes become the primary instrument, continually peering and hoping to avoid the droppings, puddles, marshy patches, and muddy holes that plague the common English footpath. In this way nature, indeed, is entirely unsuitable in providing inspiration.

In one fatal moment, my argument could be entirely under-minded by the voice that says, with what I'm sure is great validity, "I have been inspired by nature, and in fact, it suits very well." Therefore, in an effort to avoid such a feeble folly in my own writing I will assert that Truth never was my opinions but rather the simple observations of my own meandering mind. And in such observations, I have discovered that nature is entirely unsuitable in providing inspiration. Nature may instead serve as a calm and sublime numbing for the pressing thoughts that have not yet received enough reflection, which I find requisite, to adopt words necessary for the expression of profound application. Whereas inspiration is best catered in the places that let thoughts race while the body is still, the nurturing of these thoughts is best attended to while the mind is quiet and the body invigorated.

Taking a moment to reflect at Wordsworth's home
Rydal Mount in his numerous gardens

Places of inspiration found on park benches, outdoor cafes, or one's fireplace allow the brain full capacity and free will. In such moments when one's energy is entirely dedicated to the mind, it is little wonder that thoughts begin to wander, musings meander, and ideas stumbled upon. Places of reflection such as English footpaths or pastures of grazing sheep give repose, allowing the mind time to move about in the world. And while thoughts lie dormant, connections between the outside world and our internal realities may be re-formed and re-discovered, this being rendered possible no matter how invariable or methodical the landscape may be.

When searching for inspiration I have found that nature and sheep, whether sublime or ugly, do very little for creativity. For no matter how one looks at their surroundings inspiration must stem from the internal workings of a comfortable mind. Nature may grant experience for some future musing or provide the mind-numbing stillness that incubates ideas, but it simply cannot provide original thought when its only tools are shaggy sheep and mossy stone walls.

It is true that this essay was derived from my disdain for sheep, which some may title Inspiration, but I would assert that it is rather a reflection, because though both are important they are not one in the same. And sheep do very little to inspire.

-Natalie Cherie