THE NORTH RIDING PROJECT

I seemed to live in a basin, wide and shallow like the milkpans in the dairy; but the even bed of it was checkered with pastures and cornfields, and the rims were the soft blues and purples of the moorlands.  This basin was my world, and I had no inkling of any larger world, for no strangers came to us out of it, and we never went into it.

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Mountains I have no love for; they are accidents of nature thrown up in volcanic agony.  But moors and fells are moulded by gentle forces, by rainwater and wind, and are human in their contours and proportions, inducing affection rather than awe.

Herbert Read, via Bunting/Acre