THE TOP OF PEN Y FAN

I crouched to the snow and kicked footholds with my walking boots. My gloved fingers were buried half-an-inch into the white, freezing mountain. Wind whistled and flapped my hood, blowing tiny flakes into my face as I lowered my centre of gravity, and twisted into a seated position. My rucksack thumped into the snow and I came to rest.

In summer, I have no doubt that the view from the top of Pen y Fan is spectacular. In winter, the white clouds of sleet, snow, and rain, hide the rest of Wales from view, and envelope you with blankness. Everything, from ground to sky, was white. Blank white.

I understand why polar explorers wear sunglasses. Even on the greyest of days, the scenery seemed blinding, sending my eyes into swirls of dots and squiggles that only a blink could rescue me from. If I had been wearing all white, I would probably have doubted my reality altogether. I’d have been a floating consciousness, just a pair of eyes at the top of a mountain.

This, this was the pinnacle of my retreat. I had climbed a mountain. And there I sat, gradually contemplating life, human potential, my own future, and a damp bottom. So much for waterproof trousers.

I closed my eyes and breathed in the wind. The world is a strange place. I’d lost my wager that the last day of March would be shorts-and-t-shirts weather. It made me chuckle how spectacularly badly, sitting up there in the freezing snow, but I didn’t mind. I didn’t really mind about anything up there: the heady vertigo of seeing steep slopes converging, the danger of slipping, the polar conditions - I had made it. And I was loving it.

-

I’m back now. The next day, when my toes had thawed out and I’d processed everything from the experience, I drove home. There is much more to say, but I hope that all the things I have to do will work themselves out in the next few weeks. I was right about the next season being hard work, but I think I have a few things to help me not to burn up or burn out. 

On the way down, I stopped just above the snow line. The cloud swept by, swirling and dispersing. Like a developing photograph, the white began to fade into greens and sparkling silvers as the rest of the world came into focus. Within a second, a panorama appeared out of nowhere - mountains, waterfalls, glistening lakes in the distance, even distant sunlit hills and other snow caps wrapped in clouds of their own. It was a breathtaking moment, as though the veil had been taken away, and everything in the world was suddenly clear. 

That was a real moment.