Deep in a dream of thick snow
01 Feb 2006
It was the a morning that gave me hope until the spring popped
out of the ground again. None of this half-soaked weather that couldn’t
decide what it wanted to be. But instead limitless blue skies,
lung-crackingly cold air and an excuse to wear my favourite woolly hat,
the one that made strangers twitch.
The snow had melted in
Pontypridd. When I looked out of my window and across the valley the
only patches lay in the shrinking puddles of shadow. Leg-stretching,
cobweb-chasing, cheek-pinking weather. The perfect day to drive ten
miles north and embark upon the walk I had always loved, from the
village of Cefn Coed-y-Cymmer to Pontsticyll reservoir at the foot of
the Brecon Beacons.
I realised that Ponty may have given me a
false weather report as I hurtled towards Merthyr and saw those
shrinking patches of snow twisting and spreading. By the time I’d
parked up in the village they had spread all the way to the reservoir
and back, blanketing the countryside.
But being endowed with
silly amounts of stubbourness and determined to make the most of a rare
and beautiful day, I rooted through my skip of a car until I found
muck-encrusted Wellington boots. Abandoning the niffy Reeboks for
filthy rubber, I set off.
Until then, I’d never seen this walk
in anything but flickering shades of greens and reds, carried by the
songs of blackbirds, the sun high and hot or low and golden. And it
wasn’t until I’d followed the path out of Cefn, towards the heights of
the Brecon Beacons that this walk forever changed my definition of
winter.
As ever, the ruined remains of Morlais Castle teetered
on the cliff top to the right of the pathway. But today, instead of
being festooned with ropes and climbers, it was silent and abandoned,
deep in a dream of thick, white snow. Around its crags wind blasted
trees hunched in black tangles and as I stamped the bend of the path
the Brecon Beacons unveiled itself in all it’s snowy wonderness.
Ask me to picture winter and it’s those softly curled peaks that I see
now. And when I need deep and unending peace I just feel myself
awe-poised on that path. Because at that moment I caught my favourite
walk in an unexpected pose. No greens or reds, but draped in the most
pure and untouched white. No rustling or song, but silent as the
mountains gasped at my presence. Just then the startled world stopped
spinning and I was the only soul who saw it.
And that’s when I
giggled. Quietly at first, from my frost grazed throat. Then it gave
way to another bubble of mirth. And another, and another until I could
no longer stifle my merriment. My head thrown back, woolly hat slipping
over my hair, I stood alone in the snow and laughed high into the sky.
At the frosty freedom of the mountains and the moment I fell in love
with the Brecon Beacons all over again.