Walking into the Moor I pull my coat tight around me and tug my hat down over my ears, the wind bites through my clothes and chills me. The sky is an intense blue, that cold, clear bottomless blue you get on an icy but sunny day in early Spring.  I stop at a gate to pull on my gators for the land looks wet. A Red Kite is circling high up majestically riding the wind. She swoops down and lands for a second disappearing from view then soars up effortlessly seeming to want to accompany me as I walk on through the gorse lined lane.  I start to climb and the sun comes out I’m hot now from the exertion and take off my hat letting the warm rays touch and caress my face that is starved from sunlight after a long wet winter indoors. I drink it in greedily I’m parched desperate for its nourishing goodness.

The higher moor air is alive with bird song. The lapwings crying and swooping their eerie other worldly calling echoing over the moor. Red grouse playful, timing it to perfection, burst out of the gorse just feet away startling us, I scream every time exhilarated, joyful. There’s the gift of a Golden plover pausing for us to admire him in his finery, a buzzard circles high above mewing melancholy and of course scampering rabbits by the dozen. It’s so beautiful up here. I think when I die maybe a little bit of me could be scattered here to remain forever as part of this land. Today this is Heaven I can’t imagine anything more beautiful, the bird calls the voices of angels, the wind and the sunlight the manna on which I feast.

Out of nowhere a shower of hail, sunlight and hail and wind it’s intoxicating after so long indoors in the dark.

Reflecting the next day I think how subjective heaven must be. For surly my legs ache from the climbing and I know the moorland is a wild rugged place not to everyone’s liking. I think that my Heaven might be someone else’s Hell.