“It’s a bad place, the Grimpen Mire.” –Stapleton I had never seen anything like it–mud, quagmires, swamp, water, potholes, and the like. A dangerous place if I ever saw one. Of course, if you knew your way around it, it was no more dangerous than, say, the streets of New York or London. The entire place, however, smelled of decay and rot, and I wondered how people could live around here without being completely and utterly depressed about the the entire experience of life. Yet, it also occurred to me that the people of the moor were used to the bad weather, the cold winds, the rocky landscape, the misshapen trees, the crooked paths, the meloncholy atmosphere, the rainy weather, and the dank, moldy smell of the mire. Primitive, prehistoric, this is probably what most of the countryside looked like before man started developing it for farming, building cities, carving it into pieces. The Grimpen Mire could resist all of that and maintain its primordial condition of untamed and uncivilized wilderness. The local inhabitants, though few, seem to carve out a living, doing a bit of grazing and farming, but nothing of much use really grows around here. The entire place radiates a gloomy, if not Gothic, ethos of decay and danger. From time to time, it has been said, that tourists, hikers, have entered the Grimpen Mire in order to chase away the demons, to dispel its odd history of ominous disappearances and strange occurrences. This strange collection of smelly, swampy potholes and watery green blotches has nothing inherently sinister about it–or does it. I mean, just because we humans give a place horrific attributes, does that mean that the place is really evil? Stapleton seems to think so, although he amazed me the other day by running into the mess without a second thought. He claims to know his way through the maze of sink holes, small streams, small slews, and swampy areas. I wish Holmes were here. And now I have also heard a howling animal. It makes your blood run cold. The Mire, the moor, the desolation, the inclement weather and the loneliness of the place is truly depressing. I yearn to be back in my rooms in London, a fire in the grate, sitting in my chair with a good book in my lap. Yet, here I stand on the edge of the Grimpen Mire, rain in my face, meloncholy in my soul, a strange collection of characters arrayed around me, no one seems to be who he says he is, and Holmes is still stuck up in London reading some enigmatic palimpsest from a fifteenth-century English abbey. This is one of those times when I would like to throw in the towel, return to London, and say, “To hell with all you crazy people!” No, I can’t do that. Holmes needs me here, on the edge of the Grimpen Mire, and yes, it is a very bad place.