Dinosaurs in the Hills

So much of the appeal of dinosaurs is their scale. Walking through the Lake District recently, I was taken with the prehistoric shape of the hills, their scaling and reptilian textures. With that grandness comes a respect, the respect of something that you fear. Something older, better established than you.

Pooley Bridge Hills from www.paulbeal.com

I'm always thinking about what is buried beneath the surface. All those giant bones buried in those hills between layers of time-made rock. Things to be unpicked. The hills themselves became the long bodies of sleeping dinosaurs, backbones I'd walked across just the day before. Rhythms emerged alongside flashes of the claw happy poses of the skeletal arrangements in the British Museum, lit to make long shadows on the walls. The sun drew out the shadows of distant telegraph poles, trees and walls along the lengths of the green.