Inside The Moorland Silence
I don’t recall the moment the landscape first found its way into me. It wasn’t loud or abrupt. It was quiet — the kind of quiet that seeps in slowly, like a low mist over the moor, curling into the folds of your mind without asking.
There I stand — or rather, float — my outline carved against the sky, filled not with flesh and bone, but moorland. Grasses, windswept and eternal, bend in a silent rhythm within me. My lone tent lies pitched at the heart of my silhouette, taut against the breeze, a fragile shell amid this sea of green. It is both a dwelling and a marker, a moment captured — here is where I let myself be still.
The clouds above me swell with mood, heavy with unspoken thoughts. They hang in my headspace like half-formed memories — soft, grey, shifting. Their weight is oddly comforting. I feel them move across the sky of my mind, casting shadows over hillocks of memory, over the texture of solitude I’ve come to know.
The moor has no need for conversation. It speaks in its own way — in sighs of wind that brushes through tall grass, in the hush between bird calls, in the distant drip of unseen rain. And I listen. Truly listen. Out here, the chatter of the world fades. Deadlines, noise, people — all retreat beyond the horizon of thought. What’s left is pure sensation. Damp boots, breath visible in the chill, the smell of bracken and peat.
There is something elemental about being alone in a place like this. It demands nothing from me. It doesn’t care who I am or what I’ve done. The moor simply exists, and in its vast indifference, I find peace. I become a silhouette filled with land and sky, no longer separate from it, no longer needing to be.
The tent — my small, temporary shelter — is the only sign of human presence, yet it doesn’t intrude. It belongs to the scene as much as the hills and clouds. Inside it, I’ve watched the weather roll in like thoughts, stormy and then still. I’ve written lines that never leave the pages of my journal, let coffee grow cold in my hands, stared at the ceiling of canvas as if it were the night sky.
Now, I am both outside and in. My form is a hollowed space filled with something far older and wilder than myself. The moor is inside me, and I am inside it — layered, tangled, peaceful.
And in this silence, I am whole.
Inside The Moorland Silence–a poem inspired by my story
I can’t recall the day or hour
The moorland took its quiet power.
It didn’t crash; it didn’t speak —
It moved in slow and soft and sleek.
A hush that drifted low and wide,
And found a hollow place inside.
No sudden step, no mighty sound,
Just wind that stroked the sleeping ground.
It filled me not with flesh or fire,
But dampened grass and sky’s desire.
Now I, a figure etched in air,
Hold hill and heather tangled there.
Within my heart, my tent is drawn —
A shape that waits from dusk till dawn.
It breathes against the moorland chill,
A fragile hush upon the hill.
No claim it makes, it does not strive —
Yet in its stillness, I’m alive.
Above, the clouds begin to swell,
With thoughts too soft and grey to tell.
They hang like questions left unsaid,
And drift across my weathered head.
Their shadows walk the turf and stone,
And make the solitude my own.
The moor does not require my name,
It plays no loud or clever game.
It speaks in gusts, in birds grown still,
In water’s drip beneath the hill.
And I, at last, can simply be —
Unburdened, quiet, listening free.
No need to run, no need to prove —
The moor accepts; it does not move.
It asks for nothing I can show,
Yet gives me more than I could know.
In peat and bracken, scent and sky,
I breathe, I watch the moments fly.
Inside the tent, I write and dream,
While mist curls round in threads of steam.
The canvas hums with thought and air —
The wind, the rain, the sky all there.
I sip cold coffee, trace a line,
And feel the wildness becoming mine.
Now I am part of moor and mist,
Of silence, sky, and all that’s kissed
By something older, deep and true —
A stillness pulling me right through.
No longer bound by shape or skin,
The moor is out — and I am in.
And so I stand — or seem to drift —
A silhouette, the grasses lift.
Not lost, not loud, but finally free —
The moorland lives inside of me.
And in this hush, where no one calls,
I am complete — and nothing falls.