On a recent visit to the land of my birth (Lancashire, England), my family and I decided we would climb up Pendle Hill once again. I got to thinking that perhaps it will be the last time, I can climb up it (we tend to visit every ten years or so and I was approaching seventy, after all). Realising that I hadn’t written anything about this landmark which has such a special place in my heart, I began to see what other people had written about it. I discovered the old song, an excerpt of which features below, and then a poem on a poetry site drew my attention not because of the poem itself but because of a comment below it, coming from fellow poet, Milly Hayward.

“I think everyone should have a Pendle Hill growing up.”

Speaking to her, she confessed of not knowing much about Pendle Hill but recognised the need for a special place that meant so much to you throughout your life. It became kind of weird that when I looked back over the important events in my life that Pendle Hill always seemed to be present…almost overlooking them. I knew I could see Pendle from my first home, my school, the football fields I played on, the mill I met my wife in, the maternity unit my children were born in and Google-Earth proved to me that I can see Pendle from the cemetery my parents are buried in.

I was thirty-five years old when I left Lancashire to move to Sheffield but visits to family and occasional holidays in the Ribble Valley took us back and Pendle Hill would be there waiting for us. As with the title of this poem, Pendle is not a mountain, but because the land around it is nowhere near as high it dominates the countryside all around it. It is a special place…everyone should have one.

photo – visitnorthwest.com

“Pendle, old Pendle, by moorland and fell

In glory and loveliness ever to dwell.

On life’s faithful journey wherever I be

I’ll pause in my labours, and oft think of thee.”

Excerpt from an old song by Milton and Allen Lambert

THE NEARLY MOUNTAIN (PENDLE HILL)

You stand glorious in isolation;

Both comforting and comfortable

As you breathe with the seasons

Waxing and waning; constant yet inconstant.

Old humpback, sometime dark and brooding;

Ploughing through the verdurous launds,

Booths and parishes that encompass you.

Or, when snow-bedecked, Ahab’s nemesis,

Adrift and breaching the Arctic crests.

You are ‘the nearly mountain’.

Having failed the height qualification

To be one…by almost two hundred feet.

Folk would say, “Carry a stone up with you!”

No Sisyphean drudge this…just that we cared

Enough to carry a stone in our rucksacks

Along with the pop bottles, bread and jam;

In the hope of somehow contributing

To a cairn tall enough to make you

What you deserve to be – a mountain.

photo – thetraveltinker.com

I, like all those born beneath your skirts,

Have known and adored you all my life;

Greeting each other in the morning

After a drawback of badly-hung curtains

From the bay window of my childhood home.

And I, like a flower, reaching for sunlight,

Would grow tall enough to still see you 

Above the new-build bungalows across the road

And the ever-growing trees in the park.

When I heard of Gran’s death,

You watched over my heaving back

As, sat on a log, I sobbed at losing

My last remaining grandparent;

A woman I hardly knew, because back then

Geography was a serious subject.

My alma mater, no longer there to reflect

The sunlight back from post-war, iron-framed windows;

Once boasted its own green hinterland

A constant battlefield of the internecine feuds

Played out between two neighbouring schools.

As teens, on a perfect Good Friday,

Along with crowds of fellow Lancastrians,

We would make the pilgrimage

And crawl up your greensward gowns;

Always swiping right to take

The quick steep path to our Calvary.

You would watch me playing football

On the recreation grounds of Nelson and Colne;

None, I suspect, were hidden from your gaze.

I could glance your way, mid-game,

And spot you, not in the dugout,

But there for me high up in the stand.

Although unaware of your observance

(I presume you can still see in the dark),

At the al fresco fumblings of my future wife and I;

Born less than half a mile from each other,

And brought together in a cotton mill blessed

With an unobstructed view of your presence.

I would hold our first-born child aloft,

Our second too, from a third-floor window

Of the multi-storey maternity unit,

So they might wave their tiny hands at you;

Registering their births; receiving your blessing

From across the Calder and Pendle Waters.

In attendance at the church yard of St Paul’s

For my mother’s funeral (and later, my father’s)

You kept a respectful distance,

Not being immediate family,

But in reverence of one of your own.

On leaving the sphere of your influence

I missed you and vowed to always come back;

Pay you a visit like unto some dearly-loved great aunt.

Bringing the children with us so you can see

Just how much they had grown in the meantime.

Watching them write their initials in the stones,

Long-forgotten and cast down over the years.

Now, with three score and ten years behind me,

I climb up, perhaps for the last time; coming to recognise

That I might not make this cherished journey again.

Like you, oh treasured landmark and friend

I’m nearly there as well. Losing weight

Despite carrying those stones of old age;

Making it hard for me to reach the summit.

For the first and last time I swipe left

And take the gentler but longer path,

Stopping to rest along my Via Dolorosa;

My very own stations of the cross.

This nearly man…nearly there…nearly dead

(Yes, I know I still have life left to live!)

But will come to accept my limitations,

And marvel at what I have seen throughout my life.

Like you. You may never have been a mountain

But you witnessed the Catholic Recusants

Hounded, hunted and harshly dispatched.

Stood testimony to tales of 17th century witchcraft;

Women shackled by misogyny for whom

Justice was as likely as the sky above you

Being awash with broomstick contrails.

Setting myself at the Triangulation Point

557 metres above sea level (1827 feet);

At the very peak of this nearly mountain

I reach out with a steadying hand and point

Past those dark dull conifers of Fell Wood

Between the twin Ogden Reservoirs

And beyond to the once cotton-rich valleys

That were both my birth and upbringing.

©graylightfoot