Junction 24: thanks for the high places

Nine miles walk from Brighouse to Huddersfield today, via Elland, and the highlight: Junction 24 at Ainley Top, familiar to M62 drivers as the high edge on which sits a works unit with large windows facing the hills and towns of the north across a wide, open valley. The building looks like a 1960s hotel or a Bond movie penthouse and the views from there must be phenomenal. I sat in a wild field just below this junction on an afternoon clear enough to pick out the details of the towns and landscapes beyond and identify them on the OS map, an engrossingly enjoyable way to while away an hour or so.

It’s a cinematic cliche that characters from Northern mill towns always do their thinking, make their life-changing decisions, on hilltops overlooking their homes. Just like Liverpudlians always go to the waterfront for that purpose. Well, they’re cliches; but they carry deep truths.

Prayer at Junction 24

Thanks for the high places
where it is possible to take a long view
- through the long grass,
- over high fields,
of the temporarily tiny towns below.

Thanks for the high places
where monuments to human folly
- pompous pillars ennobling their donors,
- failed mills,
- churches deifying their buried benefactors,
are reduced to scratches and smudges on a vast canvas.

Thanks for the high places
where the geography of the roads and railways
- and clusters of homes,
- and industrial sites,
connects and clutches, resonates and reveals.

Thanks for the high places
where even the random shambles of industrial detritus
- abandoned works,
- stacked storage units,
- grassed-up quarries and ripped-up concrete yards,
take on shape, pattern, shade and colour.

Thanks for the high places
which stop you in your steps,
give cause for reflection,
permit you to turn your back on the rushing traffic
- to face your Elland, to face your Halifax,
- to face the grass covering your feet,
- to face yourself.