They say that in the dying days of winter, just before the spring, hikers on the Moors often find themselves engulfed by a silencing fog. Their mouths open, words are spoken, but there is no reverberation. Just a hollow thud as the words hit the damp air, slackened by the fog. You can clap your hands and all you'll get back is a shy slap as flesh meets flesh. Nothing echoes.
And they also say that to camp upon the Moors in that white veil is to invite a strange sleep. Dreams without visions. Slumber without rest. The imagination turns numb. Some pack their things in the dead of night and try to hike out of there, such is the eeriness of the foggy night.
A few folk hold it that those that stay all night wake to see the pin-prick eye of the pale sun rising over the Moors. As it's light pierces the veil of fog, there is a cacophony of noise dire and vicious. It is as if all the sound held by the fog over those long winter months is all at once released back into the world. But it is just a fleeting moment of trauma in a cosmos of unending time, so few can claim that they have heard it. Those that have, say they never heard anything else ever again.
Paddy Dobson
31st January 2022