In April and May I never felt lonely, for the birds were cheerful companions. But when the summer quiet fell on them I used to have fits of panic in the silence and solitude. The worst places for this were the glens where there was no heather...Greenness, utter, absolute greenness, has all my life seemed to me uncanny...Take the Devil's Beef Tub, the green pit in the hills...Rudyard Kipling once told me that...this uncanny hollow seemed more than any other spot to be consecrated to the old gods...It was in such green 'hopes,' as we called them, that sometimes I came to the edge of fear. If...there were no sheep about, and a shoulder of hill shut out the world, I became conscious that I was alone in an enclosed place without the company of bird or beast. Then the terror of solitude laid hold of me, and I fled incontinent until I reached a herd's cottage. (emphasis in original)
-Lord Tweedsmuir, Pilgrim's Way
I have always hated the color green. Never feared it, though, sheesh. Tweedsmuir related another flight in terror that happened to him, and a guide, in the Bavarian Alps. I looked up the particular Alpine peak in question some years ago and didn't see any images that would evoke terror. I don't remember if I looked up Devil's Beef Tub previously. Many times as I've read this book I have not been able to get from Tweedsmuir's description what it is that triggers this panic. The key elements are 1) summer, 2) silent, 3) enclosed, 4) alone, 5) green. Enclosed and green especially. I tried to picture in my mind a landscape of "greenness, utter, absolute greenness," that didn't seem too hard to do, and I didn't get why those factors, would induce terror. So tonight I looked up Devil's Beef Tub and searched using combinations of "hopes" "Scotland," "glens" "green" "utter," "solitude," "terror." And I saw. And I felt. And I don't know why I felt.
The Wikipedia image for Devil's Beef Tub was odd...weird...something, but it didn't induce terror. I looked at other images of Devil's Beef Tub and the more I looked the more it looked like an anus, an asshole, to me, gross, odd, but no panic. This one did.
After I had seen these it occurred to me that I had never been in such a landscape before. It seemed easy to conjure but I wasn't picturing the same thing. Sure, in Barnesboro, hills, trees, acid mine
drainage, yada-yada. But there were other colors, there were flowers, there were sounds: birds, squirrels, deer—Rusty chasing deer (fucking idiot dog); I had never been alone, in a treeless, silent, utterly green, asshole before.
-Lord Tweedsmuir, Pilgrim's Way
I have always hated the color green. Never feared it, though, sheesh. Tweedsmuir related another flight in terror that happened to him, and a guide, in the Bavarian Alps. I looked up the particular Alpine peak in question some years ago and didn't see any images that would evoke terror. I don't remember if I looked up Devil's Beef Tub previously. Many times as I've read this book I have not been able to get from Tweedsmuir's description what it is that triggers this panic. The key elements are 1) summer, 2) silent, 3) enclosed, 4) alone, 5) green. Enclosed and green especially. I tried to picture in my mind a landscape of "greenness, utter, absolute greenness," that didn't seem too hard to do, and I didn't get why those factors, would induce terror. So tonight I looked up Devil's Beef Tub and searched using combinations of "hopes" "Scotland," "glens" "green" "utter," "solitude," "terror." And I saw. And I felt. And I don't know why I felt.
That one really unnerved me. Dude, there is not another sentient creature in that whole fucking landscape!!!!!! You can hear the silence. That one gave me butterflies in the stomach and the more often I came back to it the closer to running away I got.
This one struck me also but I wouldn't have felt as "enclosed" as in the one immediately above.
If I was alone, unlike these cowards, I would have been incontinent:
I cannot explain...I cannot explain any of this, but specifically I don't know why this one didn't give me the green shits. Maybe the fern in the foreground. Maybe the distant water.
drainage, yada-yada. But there were other colors, there were flowers, there were sounds: birds, squirrels, deer—Rusty chasing deer (fucking idiot dog); I had never been alone, in a treeless, silent, utterly green, asshole before.
Is it that it is alien-like? It does not look like anything I have ever seen, or been in, previously. But Tweedsmuir had. Familiarity did not innoculate against terror. How common was Tweedsmuir's feeling, Kipling's feeling, my vicarious feeling at glen #1? I don't know the answer to that...Basically I don't know anything...but about halfway through my searching I ran across this:
When I was seven or eight, we started going there on summer holidays. We parked our caravan somewhere – usually somewhere beset by midges – and set off for the hills. To say that those walks were exhilarating would be an understatement; the power implicit in the landscape affected me in a profound way. I was quickly frightened. I still remember the utter terror that overwhelmed me as we scrambled through dark fog up the vertiginous, scree-laden side of one mountain, unable to see the precipice ahead.
https://www.theguardian.com/travel/2017/sep/09/walking-cairngorms-scottish-highlands-scotland-worlds-most-beautiful-country
I will be a son of a bitch. That makes at least four of us. We are not alone.
When I was seven or eight, we started going there on summer holidays. We parked our caravan somewhere – usually somewhere beset by midges – and set off for the hills. To say that those walks were exhilarating would be an understatement; the power implicit in the landscape affected me in a profound way. I was quickly frightened. I still remember the utter terror that overwhelmed me as we scrambled through dark fog up the vertiginous, scree-laden side of one mountain, unable to see the precipice ahead.
https://www.theguardian.com/travel/2017/sep/09/walking-cairngorms-scottish-highlands-scotland-worlds-most-beautiful-country
I will be a son of a bitch. That makes at least four of us. We are not alone.
