Tree art by Stephen King
They say you can see farther from Snowdon than anywhere in Britain, but the summit is so enveloped in clouds, I can barely see the other hikers ahead, who may be sprites intent on leading me to a precipice if I'm not careful.
They say: If you can't see Snowdon, it's raining. If you can see it, it's still raining. On the trail, I'm between Snowdon and rain. For now it's dry, a bed of loose gravel soon giving way to carefully laid steppingstones, like a climb to some castle in the sky.
Snowdon: from the Old English for "snow hill." In Welsh it's Yr Wyddfa ("urr oo-ith-va"), meaning "the tumulus"—a possible reference to the cairn over the body of a giant who lost a battle with King Arthur, who lived many kings ago.
Many volcanoes ago, Snowdon's rocks were forged, and I climb them one step at a time.
What is time to a mountain, or a mountain to eternity?
The lakes are newcomers, scooped out by glaciers.
For a long time, the mountains were without lakes, or llyns, in Welsh, pronounced as if an ancient wind is blowing over the shores of your mouth.
Llyn ("thlin"), I practice with my mouth half-open, and come upon the first of several glacier-carved valleys, known as cwms. Like amphitheatres. Rhymes with tombs, I think.
A broad path winds around them like an enchanted tale.
The cwms are the audiences for the llyns.
The miners have come and gone, their ruined stone buildings, dormant for a century, recede back into the rock from which they were hewn.
From the Miner's Trail, I zigzag upwards to the ridge, the clouds, as if a secret is buried within me and only the summit can extract it. On the shrouded shoulder, I meet the Pyg path and glimpse the view over the other side—sunny below. I've entered a bardo, a transitional state, and must complete my journey before returning to the world of light.
On the ridge, I pass a maen hir, or standing stone, tall enough to be a man of stone, like some ancient wayfarer who met an untimely fate—I am the mountain and the mountain is me—marbled with barnacles of ice.
The ridge is a frosted wonderland. Snow on the boulders, slush on the path, icicles, icicles. Not steep, but with the snow underfoot, it sounds like I am trudging.
The sprites disappear ahead of me, engulfed by the mists. I have ascended to the ceiling of the country, an attic of mists and wind. Boulders along the path glisten in wind-whipped ice.
The wind is a tempest conjured by the Irish Sea. Now I really am trudging. Headlong into the gusty, milky air, into an ancient, elemental language. Immersed, I become a sprite to those behind me.
Once, at night, Wordsworth walked here, "with forehead bent/ Earthward, as if in opposition set/ Against an enemy," and was rewarded with a full moon high above the mists.
The mists. Always the myths. Like clouds of time, veils of unknowing. If they part, perhaps I'll see Wordsworth, bent forward, looking upon "the hundred hills their dusky backs upheaved." Or the sun. Even the moon.
A gap bares a steep slope plunging down. What summons us to the summit: the sublime or the terror? I'm on a precipice, a diffwys ("diff-oo-is"), in a squall.
My windbreaker snaps and snarls as I try to pull it on, like a wild animal needing to be tamed before the enemy slices right through me.
The wuthering heights. A dozen steps crawl to the top of the cairn, the actual summit; with each tempestuous step I'm nearly blown into another time zone. At the top, I hang onto the orientation plaque like a life-preserver.
Hold steady, ask your breathless questions, let the wind whisk them to the Seven Seas. Maybe one day you'll hear the whisper of an answer.
What were my questions and where are they now?
Windswept. Gwyntog. Winded. Whirled.
Where has Wordsworth's moon gone? His rising sun? Which part of me still lurks in the murk? I descend before my spirit is blown out of me.
Out of the misty, windy loft of the country, the hem of Merlin's cloak.
Into the lee of the summit, sudden relief.
Traipse down the trail that curls into slopes above the llyns, the cwms, a forgotten kingdom under the clouds just now remembered and longed for—the untranslatable hiraeth ("HEER-eyeth") that the Welsh talk about. My steps lighten, buoy up, elevate me into a new word. I can walk upright again. A patch of grass on a hillock above the path beckons. The calm expands, and I am lulled into it. As I recline, I watch the hikers far ahead round a shoulder of Yr Wyddfa. One by one, they disappear from view, as if walking around the very edge of the world.
