Searching for the Hound, or Lost on Dartmoor

by Karin Murray-Bergquist (Canada)

A leap into the unknown United Kingdom

The hard part, I was sure, was over. I had made it to town in spite of reckless drivers and narrow hedgerows, and I breathed a sigh of relief to see open country before me, just a brief walk from Chagford. I was already later than I’d hoped, and so I set off without stopping to ask for hiking directions, or to stock up on provisions. If the trail guide I had borrowed could be trusted, I’d only be about an hour. A few minutes down the trail, I stopped to consult said guide. It took a few confused turns of its sparse and stylised map before I realised that it was oriented east, not north. Even then, something seemed odd — I checked it against any landmarks that I could see. East or north aside, these were marked incorrectly. Not a good start. It wasn’t too late to turn back, I told myself, but then I looked back towards the moor. I’d been longing for this since I first opened a copy of The Hound of the Baskervilles — and besides, what was adventure about if not embracing the unknown? I decided to try my luck. Further along the trail, the moor opened around me, soft as the sea under the grey clouds. I tried to map it out in my head, but to no avail, as even my previous reading had only given tantalising hints. Names like Hound Tor conjured up Holmesian fantasies, while expanses of land without names affixed to it made me hungry to know more. (I was also hungry for lunch, but without provisions, I would have to go without.) I realised that I was steadily descending from high ground, the town disappearing behind the deceptively hilly moorland. Down in the hollow, there was a slight, silvery lacing of early frost. I could have turned back early. It might have been smart, given that I had no idea where I was going. However, I am stubborn, and the beauty of the scene had too much power over me to give up then. The path was becoming a path in name only, the slightly more trodden patches of grass. Stream crossings complicated things, as the path would sometimes disappear on one side, only to pick back up in unexpected places. The moor is full of illusions, but the most powerful one at that point was that of distance, as a sudden roll of the ground would reveal something that had previously seemed far away, or conceal a nearby object by which I had been steering. It was then that I saw the stone circle, no Stonehenge by any stretch, but a ring of deliberately placed standing stones that marked the landscape with no other human structure in sight. I was not alone, even if the only other people there were ancient or fictional, even if the stories that shaped this place were ones that I did not know. The sight of the stones reminded me of many things at once — of fairy rings, of ancient history, of reading landmarks. All at the edges of knowledge, all too vague to understand what I saw. I walked on, a trespasser. I could not have turned back even if I wanted to, by that point. The map had failed me, as I knew it would. I would be lost on the moor, failing to heed the book’s warning, tormented by the snap of a twig as I imagined the famous hound approaching. The light was falling, the wind was colder now and the path was gone. Too tired and hungry to panic, I could only walk on and trust to luck. If I made it back to the road now, it would be through no skill of my own. Which is exactly what happened. My feet found themselves back on a path, some seven hours after leaving it, and found the road back to Chagford as if by chance. Probably I had seen someone walking that way, or had recognised some landmark or other; I only remember the wave of warmth and light as I opened the door to the pub, and the sudden satisfaction of good food and hot chocolate.