Wandering on Dartmoor

Nature doesn’t do straight lines.

Often what looks like an easy straight short cut uses far more energy than following the longer curving route.

Walking along leats, those tiny streams fed off rivers, is easy and comfortable. The leat has to follow the contours of the hill, so it seems you’re walking a much longer distance than if you cut across the top. But there’s a path by the leat, and where there isn’t a path on the hill there’s rough grass, rushes, gorse, bracken and heather. If you’re lucky you can follow animal tracks, but if there are none it can be hard going, especially if you encounter one of Dartmoor’s many boggy bits.

And walking beside steadily running water is extraordinarily restful. The water’s running faster than I am, but not that much faster. So I have a sense of it leading me. I’m lulled into a thought-free wakefulness, a moving meditation.