15 August 2008 – Sprinkling Tarn
Paul writes:
We looked full-faced into the abyss and it was stunning.
The reward of the hour and a half climb up to Sprinkling Tarn was eagerly anticipated. The cluster of peaks held the rain-filled climate, producing white clouds that formed below out altitude and which was blown up and over the ridges, across the tarn like bonfire smoke. Richard later recalled Seathwaite being the wettest point of the UK – 130 inches per annum. Eskdale Pike stands south of the tarn, protecting it from sunlight and warmth. Entry soon revealed how cold the slab of water was. We swam to the middle but solidifying muscles told us not to go any further. It was at this point we independently looked beneath the surface. Nothing. No light penetrating. It was so dark it could have been a mile deep. A strong sense of awe and fear heightened the cold we felt. Back on shore, we dressed, ate our food and drank hot chocolate with rum that Richard had thoughtfully carried up the mountain. Richard had also located a beautiful, vertical rock surface sliced by diagonal striations and hairline near vertical fissures. The rock face was also colonised by patches of tight black moss and acid green lichen. This was our canvas that we marked with earth-based pigment. In the rain, the paint spread and we knew that very soon the weather would return the rock face to its original condition, only emphasising the very limited temporal experience and inconsequentiality of human existence.
Richard writes:
A sombre day with showers – the shock of the colder-than-usual water as we enter Sprinkling Tarn – this time I have goggles and swimming out to the middle I, unintentionally, look down into the depths of the lake – what I see gives me the horrors – I pull my head back at once and look up at the sky as if looking for an antidote to the vision below – my back crawls and yet what have I really seen – absolutely nothing – a brown/green/ grey void – but the quality of this void makes me shudder – some blank visions below the surface say ‘come down and explore, see what you can find’ – but this vision speaks of endless nothing, of being lost, of never returning – a shiver of repulsion – later on dry land we wander through a maze of crags and find a large surface which invites paint – water-based paint so as not to pollute, so as not to be permanent, to say ‘just passing through’ – Paul says ‘lets just look at the surface first’ – ‘let it suggest the style’ – the painting finds the marks already there and develops them like putting make-up on a face, I imagine, or the way cave painters used features of the rock to suggest forms which they then elaborated – it rains as we paint and the painting changes and begins to disappear ……
