DECEMBER 2023 · ADVENTURE

Dartmoor camp - Great Mis Tor

Central Dartmoor, England

Darkness comes at four and doesn't leave until eight. That's sixteen hours in a tent, in December, at 537 metres, with the temperature dropping to minus six by midnight. I had a sleeping bag rated for it and a foam mat and a flask of something hot. I was hoping for the Aurora. I didn't see it.

Rocky tor silhouetted against warm golden sunset, snow-dusted moorland below — Colour the sensor caught more faithfully than the eye

— Sixteen hours of darkness

What I got instead was a sunset that didn't look real. The sky went orange and deep gold across the entire western horizon, layering the hillsides in light that the camera's sensor caught more faithfully than my eyes did, because I kept assuming I was imagining it. Then the colour faded out and it was very dark and very quiet.

I kept assuming I was imagining it.
Great Mis Tor — December 2023

Yellow dome tent pitched beneath massive rocky tor at dusk, frozen ground — Pitched before the light went, glad to have done it

— Pitched at the tor

The tent went up in the lee of Great Mis Tor itself, a massive granite outcrop that shapes the wind and gives you a natural windbreak if you read it correctly. Yellow dome, frozen ground, the tor rising above it on three sides. I pitched before the light went entirely and was glad I did.

Icicles hanging from rocky face, frost-covered ground below — Eastern face of the tor, morning

White Dartmoor pony standing alert among frost and grass — Within four metres, then moved on

— The ponies arrive

The Dartmoor ponies arrived the next morning. Three or four of them, a brown-and-white one standing alert in the frost while the others grazed around icy patches in the grass. They are entirely unbothered. They've seen tents before. The white one walked to within four metres of me and assessed the situation before moving on. The golden hour light at that point was angled low across the frost and doing exactly what you'd want it to do.

Icicles hung from a rock face on the eastern side of the tor. The ground was crusted white. A moorland stream wound through the panorama, channelled between frozen banks, the stones visible through a thin skin of ice.

Figures silhouetted on rocky outcrop against bright sun at sunset — Two figures, sunrise, unknown origin

— Second morning

The sunrise on the second morning had the same quality as the sunset — the pink-and-gold light coming across the frost in a way that felt disproportionate to the grey day that followed. Two figures appeared on a distant rocky outcrop, silhouetted against the sun. I don't know who they were or where they came from. The tor cast long shadows behind them across the moorland.