MAGAZINE
Emerging from the shadows
Stephen Gregory finds more than a glimmer of hope thanks to a rare Brocken spectre in the Snowdonia mountains…
In these difficult and challenging times, especially now in
take in something of the history and culture of
the darkest months of the winter, we’re all looking forward to
Wales. Despite the gathering gloom, she
lighter, brighter days… when the restrictions might be eased,
was inexhaustibly upbeat, a force of
when the pandemic is controlled… or simply the coming of
youthful energy whose company
spring.
we were enjoying. She was talking and talking, in softly
One of the commonest metaphors bandied about over the
whispered French, not to
past couple of years is the idea of ‘light at the end of the
herself but to the little dog
tunnel’, a glimmer of hope. A pessimist might say it’s a train
she’d brought with her, a
hurtling horribly towards us, and our hopes will be dashed
terrier called Fitou.
into an even greater disaster. But I’m an optimist. For me, and millions of like-minded people, the idea of striving forwards
A dismal afternoon. My wife,
and upwards towards the light has a literally life-giving
who’d been a rock climber
importance.
in Snowdonia and in the Alps for many years and knew the
It was a grey and misty Sunday afternoon. Deep midwinter,
odd colloquialisms of life in the
when sunset was supposed to be around four o’clock, a dreary
mountains, said it was ‘claggy’. And
prospect of dusk and twilight. And we were driving through
indeed it was a claggy afternoon, a Sunday
Nantlle, under the looming masses of the abandoned and
smothered in mist and drizzle, as we nosed through the
derelict slate quarries. The mist clung like cobwebs, dirty
narrowness of Drws y Coed and up the steep road towards
and dark, to the scrubby forests of rowan and alder which
Llyn Dwyarchen at the higher end of the pass.
had somehow managed to colonise the heaps of spoil. It was a place of long-forgotten ghosts.
And yes, the sky was a little bit lighter. Up and up, towards a lightening in the grey sky… as though we might defy the
We drove onwards and upwards, me and my wife in the front
darkening day and break into sunlight before the sun itself
of the car, and Alix in the back. She was a thirteen-year-old
might slip below the horizon. As though we might dare
French girl, funny and fey and flippant, who had come to
to race the sun, and win something of its light and energy
stay with us for a few weeks and improve her English and
before it set…
Page 24 NWM 2022
