The Moors of Brecknock

    I’ve never been to the moors of England but whenever I hear the word, I immediately conjure up a vision of some unwelcome foreboding landscape in want of cultivation and sunlight as in Sir Arthur Conan Doyle’s “The Hound of the Baskervilles” or some other mystery Sherlock Holmes might have been involved in.

    On Tuesday I was called to deliver freight to eastern Pennsylvania and shortly after beginning the trip I came upon an area of open land in which the browned dead grass and leafless trees were swathed in a low, slowly swirling mist which, had it been a degree colder, would have been hoarfrost.

    The trees close to the highway at the edge of this “moor” were stretching their naked limbs skyward as if in supplication, “Please, leave us again. We’ve been bare too long.”

    I shivered a bit at the sight and shortly after welcomed the relative elevation of mist-free Berks county and pleasant thoughts of activities planned for later that day.

    Patience. Imbolc is past. It won’t be long now. Re-leaf is on its way.

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