10 March '07

A trailing fleece of Atlantic cloud scrapes the mountain's upper layers. Soft flakes of rain come, felt against the skin. A hooked raven slides the sky. Umber slopes ramp into cloud. The light glooms, the cirque walls bulge, and water slaps at Llyn Cau's northwest margin. The tiered, slabby walls are painted darkly, yet seem to possess a light of their own. Water splashes downwards. All is inevitable and of the moment. In the cwm-head under the cloud, pipits swirl like squeaking motes. A fleeting luminance comes through the flying flag of wind. Rocks lie at rest in their fallen places as the blathered air rocks the grass and heath. It is like this, it is like this.

28 April '07

Fern green, butter green, parasols of trees. Wrapping breath of east wind and a strong, bold light. Llyn Cau glossily corrugated. Dog violet and tormentil provide dense pouches of colour in the spider-scurried mountain grass. In a rocky niche flower roseroot and wood anemone. Crusty grey lichens bristle; dangled globes of bilberry flowers are wind-quivered on their leafy stems. Parsley fern sprouts. A crawling beetle on a rock is suddenly whisked away by the wind. Minute human dromedaries traverse a skyline, pausing at a notch. Voices carry against the wind. Broad Water's blank sheet backs the faded bay. The undulating plateau of Mid Wales fills the S-E horizon, some of its foreground slopes draped with conifer plantation. Pale streamers flare along the crinkled malachite of Llyn Cau; before the headwall of crags hung with shadow, an amber bird rises in a lift of air to vanish against the dazzled sky. The Craig y Cau buttress shadow darkens the water between the two boulder islands, coruscations winking around its outline. Ravens soar, or hook on air in descending glides above onion domes of pillow lava; one repeats a triple croak. Back down wheateared grounds, the water of Llyn Cau slaps and ruckles, shadows make presences of boulders, and hawthorn trees are greenly bright. Valley floor rushes are clumped, burnished spears against the stained-glass light

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