31 AUGUST 1985, Page 26

Pinder

Ice clamps the tarn in its hollow, in the cove where the sun won't go; under their grey steel hatch, the blind white fish grow thinner.

Trees are where a nail has scratched the paint off black iron; past them Pinder's battered tractor bucks the rutted lane and judders to the flock. Again and again he's up the fell, arms spilling fodder, reeling his bitch on the string of his yell. This morning the beck was candlewax in the silent gill; the white hare's ghost broke trail, kicked mist across the snow on Pinder's Hill.

Mick North