The Journey – in the Shadow of the Hills

This is where my journey begins. At 5 am on a warm summer morning I packed my car ready for the day’s adventure ahead. Nuts, raisins and some sandwiches were hastily stuffed in my backpack, along with my mini-binoculars and some waterproof trousers, just the essentials. It may have been high summer but this is Wales in the UK after all!

I love to start early on day-trips. When the birds are lazily twittering, newly awoken, there is a brief hiatus of action even in the city, a stillness and surreal emptiness in the abandoned pavements. The roads are open, empty and it is a pleasure to speed down the motorway, windows open riding the crest of the rush hour wave. My friends all think I am mad for going so early, but when you arrive at a wild place at 7 or 8 in the morning there is a tranquillity that leads to a clarity of thought that can’t be grasped at any other time. When it is just you and the weary wind whispering up the valley, heavy silence opening out in the salient vista. This is the time I feel most alive! Every noise becomes a point of focus, you notice everything more keenly, times transience flows and the sharp cry of a buzzard rising on thermal currents in the air evokes a shiver down the spine.

A path less trodden – Finding Contentment

I arrived at Aber Falls nature reserve at 7.30am, parked my car and was on my way up to the falls by 8 o’clock. The soft lull of the early morning, mingled with the warm sunlight on my face washing away all trace of the sleep from my eyes as I walked briskly towards the falls and the fells some 4.5 miles distant.

Aber nature reserve is known for its wild horses which roam the woods and hillside fens. I was somewhat reticent about meeting these equine nomads, as I have had a bad experience with a horse as a young man when a gelding kicked me in the leg and head. The reserve is also home to weasels, polecat, stoat, badger and even otter have been spotted in the reserve's main river which winds down from the falls. Smaller mammals including bank vole and wood mouse and the woods are alive with birds such as the Treecreeper, Green and Great Spotted Woodpecker, Nuthatch, Redstart (summer visitor) and Siskin (source). If you look up the valley towards Aber Falls, you will see the granite bones of these hills, hollows and green hummocks that litter the slopes. This is where buzzard and sparrowhawk can be seen preying on both the woodland birds and smaller mammals.

I walked slowly and carefully along the trail, keeping to the grass verges to muffle my footfalls and was soon rewarded with a glimpse of what I think was a stoat. This whiskered marauder of nests was quick and lithe, darting into the undergrowth before I could even think of snapping it with my phone camera. The sheep were less camera shy and seemed to be a little nonplussed with this early morning wanderer, I got really close before they darted away, baaing dismay at me disturbing their dawn grazing.

As I walked on the sun rose in the sky burning away the early morning mist and the meadows opened out in sun-born bliss. This is where I find my quiet place, out in nature. Summertime in Wales is a brief explosion of viridity. The once rain-soaked fells come alive with insects and birds. The Hobbiton-esque landscape speaks of lazy days, meandering through the woods; recalls that special childhood wonder of exploring stream beds for dappled stones and playing hide’n’seek amongst the trunks of trees. It’s this sort of nostalgic mussing which keeps me returning to wild places as well as city parks, for me it’s a way to escape for a while from that adult mental chatter that I suffer from, to quiet the inner critic and just be! Although, I have to admit I do not regress into the exuberant wonder of a child playing hide’n’seek, it is the essence of that freedom that lingers in my thoughts at times like that. These echoes are why I find such spiritual nourishment exploring wild places.

The Lifeblood of the Hills

As I approached the falls I noticed the ruins of an iron age roundhouse just off the path. Aber Falls Nature reserve is famous for its iron age archaeological sites, which include both longhouses and roundhouses as well as an iron age hilll fort. The site is little more than a ring of stones with a larger stone standing where the doorway would have been. There is an undoubted timelessness about Coedydd Aber, as a lifelong fan of fantasy fiction, this place evokes in me feelings of adventure. You could envisage the woods filled with spying eyes, wolves howling in the hills and lonely giants lurking in caves on the slopes beside the waterfall.

As I approached Rhaeadr Fawr (Welsh for Great Falls) I could hear the rumble of the crashing water and I felt the thrill of visiting a new place and drinking it in. I quickened my pace and as I had been walking for about 2 hours I was looking forward to dipping my head in the falls and feeling the icy blast of the welsh water. The walk from the parking area to the falls is about 4.5 miles or 7.5 km, I was planning to scale the hill today, to stop for lunch above the falls looking out at the valley and the Menai Straits.

I stopped at the base of the falls and ate one of my sandwiches listening to the rhythms of the water on the rocks. As I ate this sound blended with the background bleats of sheep and the soft whistle of the breeze to create a kind of pulsing heartbeat. I remember thinking that it was like the pulse of the hills, measured in the weight of the water, their lifeblood. This is how my meditation at the foot of the falls felt and I sat for a good while drinking in these thoughts as I nibbled my sandwich and drank chilled peppermint tea. The sun was not yet high enough in the sky to crest the peaks of the hills and finally, the chill nudged me from my soporific state and I hoisted my backpack to continue on to the path and the climb.

Ascension

Now, this is where the adventure really began! All I had for navigation was a picture of the map, on my phone. As I skirted the hillside heading south I couldn’t see a path to the summit or any indication on the map where it might be. I had read online the day before that there were various paths to take but after an hour of steady hiking I could not see a clear path. As I approached a bridge which seemed to lead back down the valley I saw a stile to my left. The slope on the other side looked pathless but I decided to strike out. Bad decision! Being a little unfit, this was one of the longest slogs I have experienced in a long while as there was no path and I had to walk sideways up the slope using the well rooted in heather as support.

The ground was very wet and boggy and the heather was the only thing that made the ascent possible. I zig-zagged my way from patch to patch judging the solid ground by the proliferation of heather and mosses. Various streams wound their way down the side of the hill, veins of the hills crisscrossing the slopes in a chattering melody. I stopped to listen to their music at one point but by now I was pretty focused on cresting the ridge and finding an easier way. Perseverance finally paid off, and as my legs were screaming at me that enough was enough, I saw a way up along a ridge of rock. I clambered up, calves burning and stumbled onto a path.

I looked up then down and realised that the path led to the base of the next valley and if I had just carried on over the bridge and along the path for 20 minutes more I would have found it. I laughed at the sheer madness of it all and struck out along the small animal track along the side of the slope.

Alone in the Sky

It was around 11am now and I hadn’t seen another human in my trails and I was happy. This is part of the wonder of taking these hikes so early in the morning, you can reach the heights, scale hills in quiet thought far away from the tumults of human noise. I love the lonely song of the wind, calling through the valleys fringe to find peace alone in the sky. The path wound on, my day-dreams mingling with the calls of a lone buzzard circling high in the morning sun. I watched it for a time through my rather shoddy binoculars, catching a lift in the currents of my mussing, soaring on the wings of its song. The following quote by Jack Kerouac exemplifies how I feel about scaling the high places of the world. How the hills and mountains speak to me and nourish my souls.

To me a mountain is a buddha. think of the patience, hundreds of thousands of years just sittin there bein perfectly perfectly silent and like praying for all living creatures in that silence and just waitin for us to stop all our frettin and foolin.
– Jack Kerouac, The Dharma Bums

Although I am not a practising Buddhist I am definitely a practitioner of walking meditation. Or, to put it better, a practitioner of moving meditation, movement through nature. The journey is what’s important, getting away from manmade noise. All of these elements are what make up truly successful meditation for me, a quieting, allowing space to breathe, an exhalation!

The Peak of Summers Promise

The broken up path gained in gradient and it started to resemble a scramble at times, but my final destination was in sight. I could see the crest of the top of the hill jagged against the sky. As often happens at this point on a hike, I found my second wind and picked up the pace, my legs like pistons. As I reached the top I gazed out into the sun-bleached haze, the glaze of the midday heat shimmer made the valley dance in my sight and I sat down as I got that peculiar optical illusion which comes on when looking out from a high place after staring at the slope in front of your feet for so long.

I sat on a rock and watched the distances receding into itself as I let my eyes catch up with my brains depth perception. This unreality blended with my endorphins, and the sudden cool breeze from the upland moors, to create an exultant state of mind. I rested for a while breathing in the view and gazing out to sea and the horizons blue tint. I drank more peppermint tea and noticed a flock of mountain sheep a good distance away, eyeing me nervously near to the edge of the cliff. I decided this was to be my destination, the perfect place for lunch out on a rock at the edge of oblivion.

I wound my way down to the cliff edge, along sheep worn paths barely a foot wide. I made certain to approach the sheep from a direction which would herd them away from the edge and once I was certain they had fled to the nearby dell I walked straight to the edge. The drop was intimidating and as I settled to unpack my sandwiches I suffered a brief moment of vertigo.

I chewed on my now squashed sandwiches, snacking on nuts and raisins for the fuel that I would need for the return journey. I stared out and down as I ate, breathing in the immensity of the hills, their comparative permanency solid in my settling thoughts. I always feel this way when reaching the peak, the achievement lends a flighty uncaring speed to my thoughts and I try not to spend too long near the edge as it’s in these states of mind that I experience what the French call L’appel du vide. It’s a kind of fascination to jump, an instinctual longing to know what it’s like to plummet. There is no word for it in English and it has nothing to do with wanting to die, it’s more a yearning for unfettered freedom, the same feeling that an eagle must get just before it dives from its eerie. I longed for that unfettered freedom and in essence, the journey to that island in the sky was my human equivalent.

One man practicing kindness in the wilderness is worth all the temples this world pulls.
― Jack Kerouac, The Dharma Bums

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All images are my own property taken on my phone at Aber Falls nature reserve. Collage pictures were created using Fotor free to use software. If you have enjoyed this blog post you can check out my other work @raj808.