Manual Focus

Stepping out of the car, we’re met by a moderate rain. Mid-morning at Vaughn’s Café – again. This time, our plan is a circuit, taking in a slice of the Roddlesworth plantations, then up onto Darwen Moor. We have a new lens for the camera, which we were hoping to try out. It’s a super-wide format, the aim being to add a touch of drama to our lone trees and sky, but we’ve left the camera at home. The forecast just didn’t justify bringing it out.

The lens is an old one, and designed for use with my make of camera – though, it turns out, not my specific model. It still works as a lens, but it doesn’t automatically focus. Now, this should be no hardship since, once upon a time, all our focusing was done manually. We chose the subject, then turned the dial until it was sharp. I could have got the lens a lot cheaper from other sellers if I’d known. Anyway, that’s another story, but it has us thinking about focus and doing things automatically, in metaphorical ways, like sometimes how we roll from bed of a morning, draw back the curtains on yet another flake-white Lowry sky, before rolling automatically back in.

So, we click our imaginary lens from auto to manual, we pick our day, and just go for it. And here we are, the sky more the colour of lead than flake-white, cloud-base so low you can reach up and touch it, and then the rain. It’s never a good sign, having to pull on full waterproofs at the start of a walk, but may the rain wash us clean. I imagined I had found a way of stepping aside from the news cycle, of no longer being triggered by ‘events’, but the world has more recently caught onto me, changed tactics, and now I cannot look at it without feeling unclean.

The forest ways through Roddlesworth are heavy going, dark, and the trees dripping, the paths doubling as lively streams. The body warms quickly under several layers, though the fingers still ache from cold. I have a new waterproof outer which is performing well, the rain beading up and running off, at least for a time. But after a couple of hours, the fabric is starting to wet out and no longer breathable, so we begin to wet from the inside as condensation soaks back into the mid-layers.

We make our way over towards Darwen, through Sunnyhurst, then a brief rest and a stand-up lunch in the shelter of the lych gate, before tackling the climb onto the moor. There’s been no let-up in the rain, and a stiffening breeze now, as the landscape becomes more exposed. But the wind is to our backs, so it helps, rather than hinders. I’m still exercising the legs of a morning with a dumbbell – still not sure if it’s making a difference on the hill, but anything that gets the heart pumping is doing some good, so long as we’re not overdoing it.

There’s a forbidding bleakness to Darwen moor at the best of times, but on a day like this, it’s particularly challenging to the spirit. Interesting now, the proliferation of leaky dams and berms – the moor being engineered to hold water, of which there is plenty today. We make a somewhat bumbling return through the woods, past Sipper Lowe, back to Vaughn’s, slithering in mud as we go.

The car is a relief to see, though I’m almost too weary to pull the gear off. The waterproof trousers have leaked through the pocket slits leaving big cold patches on my thighs. And, as suspected, I’m wet down to the mid-layer from condensation. It was a longish walk, about eight miles at pace, not much by way of meditation, no messing about with photographs. I’m not sure if the day has washed me clean, but that cup of tea in Vaughn’s café was most welcome. We emerge from the steamy interior mid-afternoon to an already fading light, and the rain had stopped.

We’re feeling cold of a sudden, and in need of a hot bath. Back at the car, we set the heater on full and reach for the radio, then think better of it, and drive home in silence. It is plain now that, at a certain elevated – indeed stratospheric – level, the world has always been this dirty. Yet, I’m sure the majority of us bring our children up to believe in magic and kindness, and I still think that’s right. We imagine the damage comes only from the stranger, the predator, the one who lurks at the margins of society, yet some of them are also riding very high, indeed running and shaping the world in their own image.

Perhaps the rain did not wash us entirely clean then, but for a short time at least it has brought the world back into a cleaner focus. It’s shown us how it’s not always wise to go with what comes to us automatically, because it may not be trustworthy. And it reminds us that in order to see clearly, to choose what we look at, instead of having it chosen for us, we have to switch that imaginary lens back to manual. And if we can do that, then even splashing through the wet and the cold of a Lancashire upland in the depths of winter, carries its own form of innocent grace.