Just when we were starting to despair, the clouds parted and the sun began to shine. We are now on the fourth day of dry and already it is though it has never rained; walking in the garden this morning, the promise of the noontime heat is already present in the air.
When I lived in the Netherlands, there was a particular quality to the light, a subtle hue formed by a land reclaimed from water, casting a brown hue over the landscape, the land of Rembrandt and Vermeer.
If the Netherlands has its Hollandse licht then Dartmoor draws its own paint palette from greys and slate, a cool spectrum of desaturated light reflected by granite and water. Even in the vibrancy of summer, the moors are muted but never soft.
Even now, in this rare stretch of warmth, the sharpness of the granite never quite lets the colours tip into brightness. It withholds, the peat dark water and ancient stone held just beneath its surface, an indifferent landscape that does not seek to impress but rather endure.
There are mornings here when the light is so thin the skies are the palest washed blue, but mostly the clouds move quickly over the hills, casting you from shadow to light, from chill to warmth, never allowing complacency to take root.
Dartmoor gives you shift and shade. It demands that you keep looking, keep noticing, keep returning, but it will never fully reveal itself. Perhaps some places ask only that you learn to see differently.
