If you can escape from the extraordinary funnel of hurting truth that surrounds you upon entry into into this wingaway land, what you see above the rooftops might play havoc with your senses. There is no limit to the sky and the sea, and both become one when conditions are apt, clinging to the spurs of the jagged storm-ridden cliffs.
The island juts out like a sleeping giant’s pillow, and his clasped knuckle hands rear upward and away over the moors of his stomach. He seems to be sleeping peacefully yet uncomfortably, for the folds of his rocky mattress knobble restlessly in the exposed places. His head is bird-shaped, wing-eared, and at the point of soaring into unknown cavities of sleep, the powerful majestic profile having the ancient feel of the Easter island giants.
This is the land of myth and oldness, of legend and ruggedness. It is easy to romanticize through the hanging thickets in the Gwaun valley, along the tunnels of stream in the fertile bottomland as it darkly moves with the knowing undulation of liquidity; even in the stranger’s earth by the shores the stories topple down the shaly cliffs and the air is full of whispers.
From behind the mountains the light strikes up a white-blue, and the sense of imminent sea is unavoidably present. You can find the sea from the crags of the shoreward Preselis and look across the boulders and bracken to the fringe of woods and cwms that frill their way down to the shingle and derelict boats, and thence slip under the advancing ripples of the deepgreen water. You might become a boat and float out over the foamy breakers, into the calm in the haven of the arching rocks, to splash and buck through the windy water, out where the race of the tide makes danger, far away out where the ships are specks.
Perhaps you will wander through the quiet cemeteries and feel that the rays of light do not shine from the sun, but from the white stones, the tenderness stealing up through your feet and emanating from the ground until the quietness is shattered by the ancient sounds drumming on the old trees, filling the skyward column of hallowed land. It is the intensity of these places, perhaps the old-time fervour of the faithful chapelgoers, or the paradoxical Welsh spirit, all-pervading.
Comments