Housman’s Blue Remembered Hills
Exploring the corner of South Shropshire that World War 1 British troops carried with them to the trenches.
The elongated mew of a buzzard caresses my ears as the originator soars high in the evening skies. Ethereal moisture molecules gather into wispy fronds high in the stratosphere above, attempting to hold back the night clouds.
Before me, stretches the undulating, rolling landscape of South Shropshire, not flat and pristine like a newly ironed sheet, but wrinkled and creased like a duvet after the best night’s restorative sleep ever.
As the sun begins its final descent to the other side of the world, I marvel at what I’m witnessing — a scene that inspired a collection of poems that have not been out of print since they were first published in 1896.
Photographers often talk about the Golden Hour. But before then, comes what I call the Shropshire Blue Moment.
A blue sky completely transforms the landscape, as Laura-Liisa Klaas mentions in her piece, Blue blue electric blue.
