"Last summer I was out
alone, "hiking" myself, in the Northumberland
hills, on the
moors above Chesters, near Tower Ty. I had left the
road and
struck across
country in the grey keen
air, and among the boulders and bright wet
grass, the
drip of
water running underground and the
debris of the wall, with innumerable
curlews for company, I caught myself
glancing back over my shoulder, as if something which I had hardly ever noticed in myself was
awake at some
touch, and telling a
different part of me to look out. There was
everything to see and nothing much to look out for, until I
remembered that I was on the Picts' side of the
wall, in the wolf-country and the
country of little men who had much to
fear from wolves. And I knew that until I had brought it to
light, I had been living in the fear of a
past age. Wolves spring at your shoulder, break it, and pull you down from behind. I was
alone with wolf-memories and shapes. A little
further on, a tall
weathered countryman appeared from nowhere. We said good day pleasantly, and he looked hard at me, and in his
eyes there was an extraordinary reassurance. I
went on over a long bony ledge."
Mary Butts, "Warning to Hikers,"
Ashe of Rings and Other Writings, NY: McPherson & Company, 1998, 285-6.
