Devon UK is dairy country. Here is the devon breed of milking cow. I was surprised to see the how now brown cow, with horns that look like forerunner to the Texas longhorn!

So, devonshire cream naturally follows this, or clotted cream: here's a recipe.

and here's afternoon tea and scones with cream…..

This gorgeous glen is also in Dartmoor area at Lydford Gorge. It looks like Giant City and many creeks found in Southern Illinois.

When last we left the ancestors a group had left from the Devon Coast. Seagoing people living on the coast village of Brixham. Several other families in the line emigrated from other Southern Uk coastal towns, which all have distinctive landscape.
Beginning with another view of Devon, one ancestor came from the great landscape of Dartmoor, a place of romance and ancient time, when I see these landscapes I think of Boediccia, warrior Queen, riding a Dartmoor pony, her long hair flying. They have put the Dartmoor wild ponies on birth control pills. Because there aren't any more wolves.

More on Scotland after this….. Irish Wolfhounds. see the previous post.

A memory of Scotland

A memory of Scotland and wolves. Clan MacLeod and the Isle of Skye. Loch Coruisk vicinity, the smell of sea and fresh water, mist hanging in the hills. We stay at a large and long dark old hotel. I walk into the foyer, a long grayish green hallway with large blackish paintings and arrays of faded furniture. It smells a bit damp, musty. There's a baroque mirror on my right and I am drawn to looking into it as I pass by. There's a half moon table under it for gloves, or mail and what have you. There's a slow movement coming from under the table and for an instant it feels like the table itself is rising and starting to walk off. As high as the table, long rough brindle-grey shaggy coat and a low slung head that resembles a craggy rock suspended in the air, long legs that keep unfolding. It begins a loping walk down the hallway, silently, quietly, thinking somehow itself invisible. I have stopped breathing, watching. " Oh, don't werry the innkeeper says blithely, warmly, "tha's Lewsy. wuhn't herta fly."  Wolfhound, my father says from behind me. I fall in love. Later in life I will have a dream I am standing on a castle rampart, two of the wolf hounds walking at my side. I lower my hand, run my fingers through their deep coats, and know I am safe.

   The question is is landscape and place encoded in us? Do we have genetic preferences for certain types of places due to our huge ancestral imprints?  D.H. Lawrence had a lot of whacky ideas about landscape and character- he was convinced it shaped human being's perspectives and their proclivities. He basically says it was the light and landscape of the coast and sea that shaped the culture and art of Ancient Greece. What I am interested in is our affinities and their reappearance through generations.

For example one family line way back came from Dartmoor in Devon.

Another family line comes from the Isle of Skye.

and Isle of Lewis

My greatgrandfather takes his family from Pictou, Nova Scotia and Durham, New Hampshire

and settles in Point Reyes, Northern California.

Meet Pierre Fauconnier of Tours, and London. Settled in New Rochelle,Ny- French Hugenot colony. Buys big tract of land in Dutchess county along the Hudson River. It ends up later as Hyde Park. Hmm. Does this make me a New Yorker?   New Rochelle seacoast…..Ile de Re-ish?

okay here is a cool weird thing. See those stones rimming the picture? They're diamonds, and they match exactly in the style of cut and shape a pair of earrings I inherited from my great grandmother.