Romanticising

No essay, just updates from the mountains

Lisa and I spent four hours recounting all the ways love had failed us and then all the lessons we had learnt. It’s been a year since we saw each other, usually reunited in the summer to spend three days in the Welsh mountains. Love had not changed but perhaps we had, we reasoned. Later that night, over strands of spaghetti coated with fresh tomatoes and courgettes from Lisa’s allotment, we drew tarot cards and allowed fate to unfold in front of us.

We continued the discussions as we walked through woodlands, stopping every so often to marvel in the wonder of dappled light and ice cold waterfalls and the tram that once transported slate up and down the steepest hill. A near fall signalled to me that I must descend and so I scrambled down to the water’s edge, stripped off and dove in. Bracing cold water was a shock to the system but you always ease into the discomfort.

This morning we drank big enamel mugs of coffee and wolfed down leftover daal, rice, eggs and avocado. We are listening to Nick Drake’s Pink Moon, a record that causes me to dream of the cabin in the woods, the wraparound porch, the sound of silence, the steam rising from the coffee in the quiet of autumn. In this dream I’m alone but in love.

We are about to hike up Snowdon, via a magical lagoon that I visited ten years ago. Life is always romantic here.