Well, apart from my shadow, it's very peaceful up here, it's very quiet and
it's very empty and it's kept very car-free, but still an immense wasteland, and
it's a man-made wasteland too because this was once covered in trees. They
cleared the trees for the sheep. Now there aren't any sheep - well, hardly any
sheep, and they haven't planted the trees.
What a immense forest this would make, immense, rich.
Trying to get outof the. Can I I get out of the wind? If I crouch down?
Look at my shadow! It's a friendly shadow because it's waving. It actually looks
like a headless shadow doesn't it? Even more sinister. I'm standing up here. It's
only - it's getting on for seven o'clock, and I am sweating like a cheese in a hothouse.
If there were trees here, a great forest, it wouldn't be silent; it would be filled
with the conversation of millions of birds.
Good morning. I wonder what he's looking at me for.
I don't think he's looking at me to throw something for him, do you? You can't see it I
You can't see it, I think, but over there is the sea. The sea.
And beyond, the Lakes - well, Barrow, really I suppose. Grange-Over-Sands and what-have-you. And we are
looking down between Barbon Low Fell and Middleton Fell towards the Lune
Valley. And while the Lune Valley is more prosperous and verdant and hospitable
it's also suburbanized. I can see it from here. I don't suppose the camera will show it up.
Lots and lots, like somebody, a large
person, a giant person, has been walking there,
scattering litter: lots of buildings.
It is said, I have heard it said that the government is planning to plant quick growing trees and quick growing grasses
to soak up carbon. But they're not planning to plant the great forest.
There's a lark. And what it means is that these are gestures and sops.
They are not - they are not the act of will which is necessary to save our lives.
Like the alcoholic: he can talk about what he's going to do to - you know - cut
down or not increase. But you know that he has not got the will to act;
that he has in fact given up on life and that he will die as a result of his
inability to change the way he lives. He has chosen the way of death, and he has
surrendered to it. After the window of opportunity which comes to many
alcoholics in which he at last acknowledges to himself that he has a
problem he can't deal with in the ordinary way, if he does not go on to the
great act of will that is the rebirth of him, the window of opportunity of the
knowledge that he's got this problem will fade away. And all those talking to
him and all those listening to him will know that they're listening to a dead
man talking. And so it is: there is no will, no sign of a real will to take the
steps necessary to reverse global warming and save the life of this Earth
and all the species on it. Man has given himself up to death. And all he has that
is flourishing now is evil: hate, rage and an insatiable greed, the greed of a pimp
to sell and make money; the greed of a glutton to stuff his void with something
to comfort him;
And if this shopping trip won't do it, well, tomorrow's shopping trip will.
How swiftly Man has arrived at his end. When I was young there was a joke about old
chaps with placards in the street, holding up the placards upon which was
written, 'Repent, repent! The end of the world is nigh!' Now it's true: the end of
the world is nigh. You cannot shake the foundations and the
roof and the supporting walls of your house without it crashing down on you.
Oh look at this dog, honestly, patient and impatient. Go on, then.
I don't know whether you can see it, there's been a frost up here: on top of those mounds of - little mounds of -
little hummocks of - well, I don't know what they are - moss, I suppose. But really you get a better glimpse of the sheer extent of the waste.
Wasteland. Wasteland. And for 33 years we've been warned about the need to
stop putting it out and start fixing it back in. Carbon, that is. That there should
still be nothing here at all is a sign of despair.
I don't know whether the camera will show, but down there is - it's a hell
of a long way down, a hell of a long way down. This is Bullpot. It flows down - ooh,
I don't know how many feet that is, but it's a long long way down.
And that's the way we go. It becomes two cliffs, and I can't see a stile. Anyway we'll find it.
Out of the sunlight into the shadow, but the camera adjusts, and into the gorge.
Well, we better get on, it's clearly the path.
The trees that should be everywhere
But here we step back in amazement: there's a tormented ash tree.
See how it's growing: it's coming out of the rock, then the trunk goes at
right angles. It goes horizontally and then it goes up again. And I'm not sure where the
path goes. I have a horrid suspicion that it goes up the side, t'other side, crosses
over and goes up the other side. 'Which way's the path, Bounce? Go find the way.'
I think it does. Blasted nuisance, more clambering
I'll try and hold the camera steady, try not to trip up on all these rocks. Blasted nuisance, I don't want to have to go all the way up. it's quite
steep. Impassible if it's full of water.
It's a great ghyll this, isn't it? That was a raven a moment ago. But let's switch the camera off.
He's following the path. He's a good Pathfinder is this dog. Well, get on with it then.
I do hope my heavy breathing, my wheezing, isn't too obvious.
There's the Raven.
Oops, don't want to go tumbling down.
Oh, well, they've gone that way. There's a parth going along there, and this is a path
going on here: does it matter?
Have to switch off.
Tops of the trees.
We are on a level almost. Look down there: it's a long way down.
I don't want you going down there; now
you be careful.
There's a cave.
And along here is our precipitous track. And up there somewhere is the raven.
No, that's not a raven: that's a pheasant.
We will proceed.
Well, I suppose I'm looking at it, the shiny rock, the silver rock. Amongst the silver birches, the silver rock.
Well, I don't know because the sun is shining.
Hello, shadow, ominous shadow.
Well, we may have lost the path, but it's certainly an
interesting way.
As far as plantings are concerned, there, the silver birch: that's how it should be;
there, Christmas trees of a gigantic sort: that's how it shouldn't be. We swing
around; Silver Birch: how it should be; Christmas trees: how it shouldn't be. And
over there indeed is how it should be.
That's how it should be.
Hello.
That's where we've come.
The ancient woodland.
And here's the gate. And there - good heavens - looking rather dull, are fields.
Amazing, the first fields we've seen for hours. It's taken us a heck of a long time.
I can't even see it on this. Oh yes, I can just. If you ignore the field and
you ignore the sky and you look at the skyline, right in the middle there's a
bushy top tree between an oak and ash without a leaves, and there's a wall and
there is a gate. On my screen I can't actually see it. I can see it in real life,
and it is sending out a spell of summoning, saying, 'You want to come up
here and walk through that gateway and see what lies beyond'. I'm not going to
but I should hate to see that and not think, not feel that spell of summoning,
summoning to adventure, even if I am an old idiot.
And here Satan
turns Eden into Hell. It was a field, it grew food to feed humans, but not anymore,
because we have fallen into the satanic psychosis: we need anything but food, and
so the fate of this country in the not-too-distant future
is starvation we are so utterly dependent on forces absolutely beyond
our control, nice foreigners whose names we do not
know, where they are we do not know, to supply us with food. We don't need to
grow food, we just need to build houses and increase the population and drive
our cars, drive our cars, drive and drive and drive and drive and drive and drive
our cars.
Hell is here, Hell is here,
Hell and Hell.
Nothing is to be spared: 'Development Opportunity' - Satan speaks - 'Four cottages
for refurbishment, and planning permission for two houses: the slum in-
filling of village and town until they are
shoulder to shoulder, crushed and crowded, but nobody will notice because they
don't notice the slow slide down into an ever-lower standard of living.
And there's the road and there's the new houses with their
stone torn out of the earth at a quarry. What a hell this is; what a hell, hell.
Every one of these is an Earth-Killer.
Ceaselessly by day and by night the Earth-Killers go about their business.
In every one of these mobile coffins is a zombie:
the body lives but it's dead inside.
Mad because their destruction is guaranteed.
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