The walks in Helvellyn were chosen to challenge myself and capture the Lake District from Wordsworth’s perspective.  He had been climbing mountains all his life and getting up to the summit of Helvellyn seemed like the best way to be close to his poems.  After coming down from the summit and scrambling around on the rocks, I re-read Prelude. It suddenly made sense with its harrowing winds in his ear and as he hung on to the grass.  The whole landscape was covered by the threat of stormy clouds.  I was probably the luckiest poet on the mountain that day. I ascended with rain gear and found clear weather.  A couple was sitting on the top of Helvellyn comfortably and marvelling at the view of the clouds below, remarking that they had not seen it so clear and calm in 40 years!  The poem has lines of the sea, and it was not until I had reached the top that I had realized what Wordsworth was expressing.  I did feel the sea out in front of me there on the edge of the “Ether.” I took my time walking up to Red Tarn, a small glacier lake.  The moon was hanging low just over the edges.  I touched all the grasses and lichens, and plunged my hands into the iron red puddles.  I decided not to sketch with coloured pencils for most of the walk.  Instead I rubbed the plants and mud into my notebook.  Everywhere I looked there were sheep grazing, so I thought it was like a poetic grazing to press those colours into my sketch pad.