Pit Valleys

In parts of Derbyshire and Yorkshire there are still pit-valleys, where industry and nature collide, marry, and have their natural born children. The earth once gouged, raped and laid desolate, is landscaped by those who once despoiled. Time plays its part, plants its seeds, it up-roots high piled slagheaps, softens broken mountains of concrete. I have walked these valleys, in some I had to stumble over the fractured bones of abandoned and rusting machinery; the fire scorched detritus of coal mines. I have also strolled through resurrected Eden's, vales recreated out of the unspeakable into the bright eloquence of beauty. The hands of men and the wings of gardening angels have covered-up all self-made wounds, have put to bed the deeply trammeled. The Lord of daisies and daffodils strolls unmolested once more, through the worst and the best that good intentions can do.