On a bright day, quiet and a little hazy, the smooth chalk hills exude mystery. Sculptural in their simplicity, they are beautiful. Beneath the superficial works of man lingers timelessness. Their slopes and curves are those gazed upon by countless generations.
The bare harrowed chalk glows a soft misty milky white, strange and other-worldly in a land that ought to be green. Here is a little of the luminosity that attracted the Pre-Raphaelites to Tuscany.
A thin path across a beet field marks the trail. On the path goes, across a broad rounded hill open and spare, and then dives amidst beech and hawthorn to form a grassy alley.
One spring the slope lies soft and green beneath the first shoots of wheat, huge and unmarked like virgin prairie at the beginning of time.
Another year it is furred by leaf, tactile, textured like a huge homogeneous bank.
Sometimes the path is marked, other times the farmer is tardy. (The law obliges him to define the trail.) The latter is the most exciting, for one sets out alone into a sea of green, intrepid as an explorer. (But I know the trail, down to the way-mark on the horizon to head for.) It feels good to ride that hill.
As for the grassy alley between bush and bole, that too is a playground. It's straight and smooth, simply an invitation to go fast. Of course we "opened the taps" along there. Brena sped along with enthusiasm for the going was perfect, neither hard nor slippery.
Only at the end did we slow to a walk for there were two people with a dog, and surprised to see us as if the countryside was theirs. It was, and mine too, for each sees his or her own vision of the land.
Each lover of this land has a personal vision. Everyone with imagination will find something here. Different things we discover, and yet related however distantly. The meanings that we find are separated just as the banks of trees divide the slopes into compartments. Yet those windbreaks are permeable to the eye, admitting of a view to the next lovely vista. Thus also with the visions of those who love this place.
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