Blots on the landscape

On a walking holiday in France a couple of weeks ago, I was making my way along the ridge that forms the very edge of the plateau of the Vercors when I heard a whooshing, rushing sound behind me that made me jump. When I turned, I jumped again, for there, less than 100 yards away and level with me, was a glider sailing through the sky, so close that I could see the pilot’s face as he gracefully rode the thermals that rose from the valley bottom, a thousand feet below.

As the plane flew away, some words flew into my head: ‘Then off, off forth on swing,/ As a skate’s heel sweeps smooth on a bow-bend: the hurl and gliding/ Rebuffed the big wind.’

I had had a ‘Windhover’ moment; I had ‘caught’ that morning, something remarkable, even if it wasn’t quite the epiphany experienced by Gerard Manley Hopkins, when he had been transfixed by the way a falcon’s flight fused with the air to express the glory of God’s creation.