Set off at half seven and were up above Wessenden Head by nine, which the notebook records, along with a steady wind from the west. The boot were off the path, ten yards into the heather — left, brown, the heavy sort, one lace missing and the other perished. Been out a while by the look of it. The leather had gone stiff and pale at the toe, which happens up there; the moor takes the colour out of things gradual.
I sat half an hour on the stool with it. Flask conditions are down as very good, and the last line of the entry reads 'a crackin' morning for it', which is not a word I spend often, so the morning must have earned it. I remember the light being the long sort you get in April before the haze comes, though that's memory talking, not the page.
Wessenden is favourite territory and always has been, and a brown boot in heather is about as central to the work as the work gets. Twelve years on from that first Marsden boot at that point, and only over the tops from where it all started, though I'll admit I only worked that out doing this transcribing. You don't see the shape of a thing while you're stood in it.
Written up August 2026, from the notebook.