Ημερολόγιο της/του melindacreech

15 July 2017
We have travelled to Grasmere, UK, to participate in a course entitled “Wordsworth, Poetry, and Ecology,” sponsored by Baylor University, Waco, Texas. The purpose of the course is to develop the language and multi-faceted perspective necessary for responding to environmental degradation and climate change by studying the poems of William Wordsworth in critical dialogue with the contexts and places in which he wrote them. This project will identify the flora that William’s sister Dorothy mentions in her journals, and attempt to locate those flowers in the current ecology of Grasmere. For these two weeks I will be researching the books and manuscripts of the Wordsworth Trust to identify the Wordsworth’s flora and wandering about in the Grasmere landscape to photograph examples of that flora. Dorothy kept a journal for the years 1800-1803, the first four years she lived in Grasmere. She provided many beautiful accounts of her attentive observations of the natural world in those journals, mentioning flowers, mosses, shrubs, and trees more than 400 times. These two weeks I will be focused on learning more about the flora that Dorothy describes in the journals. I will also be making observations of other flora currently in Grasmere, providing a data base for the posts for other months. I will be posting the flora that Dorothy mentions in her Grasmere Journal by months in which she observed them, beginning this month, July. My hope is that other visitors to the Lake District will also submit observations to the project, Flora of Grasmere so that I can use as their observations as resources for the guide, Flora in Dorothy Wordsworth’s Grasmere Journal, after I return to Texas.

16 July 2017
Today we arrived at our home in Grasmere, at least for the next two weeks. We got here by van, plane, plane, train, train, bus, bus, and foot. When we got on the train, we began to experience the beauty of the flora of the area. The hydrangeas immediately caught my eye. The bus ride from Ambleside to Grasmere was beautiful. We arrived at the Grasmere Hostel just in time for supper and evening prayers.

17 July 2017
We walked to the Jerwood Center down a back road filled with all kinds of flora, fauna, quaint cottages, and meandering becks. It was all quite lovely. The weather was perfect. We picked raspberries alongside the road. The morning was spent getting acclimated to Dove Cottage and the Jerwood Center. We then began our first experience of “poetry in place,” walking to Mary’s Rock and Sarah’s Rock in the Bainrigg Woods for lunch and a poetry reading and discussion. We were back at the Jerwood Center to look at original manuscripts and first edition books in the afternoon, which was interrupted at the proper time by a most appropriate spot of tea and Grasmere gingerbread.

18 July 2017
We made our usual backroads trek to the Jerwood Center. Most of this day was spent in the archives discussing the Prelude. Stephen Bainbridge and Jeff Cowton led the discussion in the afternoon. At the end of the day we walked to John’s Wood to get familiar with the area where I was to lead a poetry in place discussion the following day. The large beech trees were inspiriting, although there were fir trees in the wood when the Wordsworths walked there. After our walk back to the hostel and supper, we walked up on the Fairfield fells as the sun went down.

19 July 2017
We spent the morning with Professor Sally Bushell discussing the poem “Michael,” and in the afternoon we walked (a rather sturdy walk) up Greenhead-Gill to visit an unfinished sheepfold similar to the one Wordsworth describes in his poem. Professor Sally Bushell lead us in our “poetry in place” discussion of “Michael.” I observed harebells, heather, mosses, and other unidentified flowers along the way. We had fish and chips supper at The Traveller’s Rest Inn, an historic inn that was in existence in Wordsworth’s day. In fact, it has been a pub for more than 500 years.

20 July 2017
We worked with archives at the Jerwood Center in the morning, and hiked to three “poetry in place” sites in the afternoon— White Moss, John’s Wood, and The Wishing Gate. The panorama from the top of White Moss was exquisite and the weather was perfect. The walk in John’s Wood among the tall beeches and firs was peaceful. We slow walked the track that Wordsworth may have walked as he composed his poems. We stood at The Wishing Gate, which may have been the same gate that Dorothy stood at and wished for William’s and John’s safe returns. We continued with our work in the archives in the afternoon and walked back home down the Easedale and Old Mill road. The flowers along that path are wonderful.

21 July 2017
Today I had the opportunity to look through the Wordsworths’ copy of A Botanical Arrangement of All the Vegetables Naturally Growing in Great Britain by William Withering. The four volumes contain several inscriptions written by Dorothy and several specimens of ferns, mosses, and flowers, preserved between the pages. I also has the opportunity to look through a book described as “A Book of Mosses gathered by Miss Hutchinson and Emmeline Fisher at Rydal Mount in 1841, the book having been presented to them for the purpose by the Poet. The names of the Mosses, are for the most part written by Mr. Herbert Hill who married Bertha Southey.” The book contained, mosses, ferns, and flowers, and ended with a poem by Emmeline Fisher, the Wordsworth’s niece.

22 July 2017
Today we travelled to Hawkshead where Dorothy’s brother attended school. Dorothy and William were separated when their mother died in 1778, William going to attend Hawkshead School and Dorothy going to live with her aunt, Elizabeth Threlkeld, in Halifax, West Yorkshire. Dorothy and William remained separated for 18 years, until 1795 when they were reunited at Racedown. After moving to Alfoxden and Goslar, William and Dorothy finally settle at Dove Cottage in Grasmere in 1799. She begins writing her journal in May 1800. Returning to Grasmere, we walked from the town center of Grasmere, by Alan Bank (one of the Wordsworths’ homes in Grasmere), along the Easedale Valley toward the waterfalls at the end of the valley, taking photos of flowers along the trail.

23 July 2017
This morning we went to church at St. Oswald’s Church, Wordsworth’s church. After church we visited the cemetery where William, Mary, and Dorothy are buried and read his poem, “Surprised by Joy.” After lunch at the Dove Cottage Tea Room, we walked to the edge of Lake Grasmere where Wordsworth set his poem “Point Rash Judgment.” We then continued walking around the lake between Grasmere and Rydal Water towards Loughrigg Fell. We paused to read the opening of “Home at Grasmere,” which describes William and Dorothy’s first approach to Grasmere, and Dorothy’s poem “Grasmere—A Fragment”

Peaceful our valley, fair and green,
And beautiful her cottages,
Each in its nook, its sheltered hold,
Or underneath its tuft of trees.
Many and beautiful they are;
But there is one that I love best,
A lowly shed, in truth, it is,
A brother of the rest.
Yet when I sit on rock or hill,
Down looking on the valley fair,
That Cottage with its clustering trees
Summons my heart; it settles there.
Others there are whose small domain
Of fertile fields and hedgerows green
Might more seduce a wanderer's mind
To wish that there his home had been.
Such wish be his! I blame him not,
My fancies they perchance are wild
--I love that house because it is
The very Mountains' child.
Fields hath it of its own, green fields,
But they are rocky steep and bare;
Their fence is of the mountain stone,
And moss and lichen flourish there.
And when the storm comes from the North
It lingers near that pastoral spot,
And, piping through the mossy walls,
It seems delighted with its lot.
And let it take its own delight;
And let it range the pastures bare;
Until it reach that group of trees,
--It may not enter there!
A green unfading grove it is,
Skirted with many a lesser tree,
Hazel and holly, beech and oak,
A bright and flourishing company.
Precious the shelter of those trees;
They screen the cottage that I love;
The sunshine pierces to the roof,
And the tall pine-trees tower above.
When first I saw that dear abode,
It was a lovely winter's day:
After a night of perilous storm
The west wind ruled with gentle sway;
A day so mild, it might have been
The first day of the gladsome spring;
The robins warbled, and I heard
One solitary throstle sing.
A Stranger, Grasmere, in thy Vale,
All faces then to me unknown,
I left my sole companion-friend
To wander out alone.
Lured by a little winding path,
I quitted soon the public road,
A smooth and tempting path it was,
By sheep and shepherds trod.
Eastward, toward the lofty hills,
This pathway led me on
Until I reached a stately Rock,
With velvet moss o'ergrown.
With russet oak and tufts of fern
Its top was richly garlanded;
Its sides adorned with eglantine
Bedropp'd with hips of glossy red.
There, too, in many a sheltered chink
The foxglove's broad leaves flourished fair,
And silver birch whose purple twigs
Bend to the softest breathing air.
Beneath that Rock my course I stayed,
And, looking to its summit high,
"Thou wear'st," said I, "a splendid garb,
Here winter keeps his revelry.
"Full long a dweller on the Plains,
I griev'd when summer days were gone;
No more I'll grieve; for Winter here
Hath pleasure gardens of his own.
"What need of flowers? The splendid moss
Is gayer than an April mead;
More rich its hues of various green,
Orange, and gold, & glittering red."
--Beside that gay and lovely Rock
There came with merry voice
A foaming streamlet glancing by;
It seemed to say "Rejoice!"
My youthful wishes all fulfill'd,
Wishes matured by thoughtful choice,
I stood an Inmate of this vale
How could I but rejoice?

We continued walking to the top of Loughrigg Fell, observing the flowers, mosses, and ferns on the fell. We returned to Grasmere and Broadbayne Farm Hostel in the misty rain that afternoon through the Redbank Woods, which, with its heavily mossed stone walls and huge old growth forests, was reminiscent of Tolkien’s Hobbitshire.

24 July 2017
Today I continued my research into the Flora mentioned in Dorothy Wordsworth’s journal at the Jerwood Center. At noon I met Dr. R. K. R. Thornton, with whom I have been collaborating on volume six of The Collected Works of Gerard Manley Hopkins. Professor Thornton very generously drove over from Newcastle to meet with me. We had lunch and four hours of delightful conversation about Gerard Manley Hopkins, John Clare, poetry, nature, flowers, and the Lake District. He gave me A John Clare Flora by M. M. Mahood, which I think may be quite helpful in determining the scientific names of some of the flowers in Dorothy’s journal. In the evening the group met with the Grasmere Historical Society and introduced them to the projects we are working on. Several members expressed an interest in helping with the identification of the flora of Grasmere. I am very thankful and appreciative of their offer to help.