To Conquer the Mountain

“Out of the night that covers me,

Black as the Pit from pole to pole,”

 

                Whenever I hear that opening line from William Henley’s “Invictus”, I think about Cader Idris. Not because I came across the fabled Welsh mountain in the dead of night, nor even that it was once believed to be the gateway to the Underworld. It is the very stone of the place; black, jagged, sombre. The stone has the effect to appear night made solid, a darkness of the earth. It was easy for Brad and I to see why it was thought to be a place of dark magic and sombre dead souls.

                It was a bit of a long shot that we had made it to the mountain at all. The day before, we had slept in a farmer’s field just outside of Hereford, and had intended to go on to Shrewsbury, skirting Wales along the Welsh Marches. But as our train rolled into the Shrewsbury station, we looked out over a grim city, all unwashed stone, and soot filled air. It was a dirty, hard place. We decided to keep moving. As a descendent of a Welsh bloodline, I had a hankering to see the land of my forebears. It had been a bastion of Celtic civilization, and a thorn in the side of the English for centuries. As such it was a place that really leant itself to the imagination. Knowing something of the mountain from doing a lot of reading on the Celts, and also from books as fanciful as the Prydain Chronicles and Susan Cooper’s “The Dark is Rising” series, it seemed to be a natural destination for a young man in search of a little known heritage.

                The desire to reach the mountain, and the reality of getting to it were not exactly conducive to one another, however. In Aberystwyth, the resort town on the seaside, we took a bus into the mountains. There was some confusion on the part of the driver as to where exactly this particular mountain was. In modern times, when it was discovered that Snowdon was actually the taller peak in Wales, Cader Idris seemed to lose some of its mojo. He made inquiries on our behalf, and informed us that we needed to depart the bus in the tiny village of Mynffordd, which sat at the foot of the (not as famous as we thought) mountain. It was evening, with a rain threatened sky. And there, cloud-shouldered, black as the sins of man, was the mountain. The bus rumbled on, the driver waving as he went. Brad and I hoisted our packs, and set off into Mynffordd looking for a bed. Silence seemed to be a part of the place, a certain indescribable eeriness hanging on the branches of the trees.  The local inn and the B&B proved insufficient to our needs, in so far as they were priced well beyond our meagre daily budget. We wandered back towards the main road and the mountain. There, at the foot, lay a farmer’s sheep paddock, with a sign advertising camping. We looked to the sky and the promise of rain, and then to our wallets. Our wallets won. Amongst the sheep, we found a sheltered spot under a tree, which kept some of the now falling rain off of us as we cooked our dinner of spaghetti and canned minced beef.

                The following day dawned glumly. The sky was low, a ceiling of dark cloud which spilled rain down on us heavily. It made no matter, today was the day we were to conquer the mountain. Rain gear keeping the worst of the wet off our skin, we reached the trailhead, and began our ascent. The trail wended its way through forest and blasted dark stone, the air heavy with the smell of rain and wet loamy earth. Sheep bleated all around us, and some brave few skittered before us on the trail. Brad and I began to think that rain and sheep were omnipresent in this land. Coming up out of the trees, we found ourselves in a long hanging valley. The peak of Idris entered the cloud above us, its dark face hidden from view. Ahead lay a lake, shockingly clear, deep and still. Llyn Cau, full of brooding watchfulness, disturbed only by the falling rain. The trail came to the shoreline, and then petered out. A lone brazen lamb ran towards and then away from us. It seemed to be following a path of sorts, and so we followed, skirting the lake, looking for a way upwards. At the far end of the water, we stood puzzled, not seeing a route forward. The sky was lowering, and the mist was thick. I looked up from where we were, knowing that if we just went that way, we would reach the summit we were longing for. I made a suggestion, to which Brad agreed. We began to climb. It was not a sheer cliff face, but it was steep, steeper than we had anticipated. We made our way doggedly, on hands and feet, clinging to grassy hummocks to keep from toppling over backwards. Brad cursed me roundly the higher we got. The Llyn Cau lay below, looking cold and clear, reflecting the low clouds. Soon it and its valley were lost to view as we entered the shroud. Stumbling on, we sensed the lessening of the slope. The summit was near. Our route intersected the trail, and we followed it, safe now on level ground. Nothing could be seen beyond the deathly black rock immediately to hand. Finally, wet and tired, we saw a cairn ahead which marked the summit of the mountain. Placing our own stones, we yelled our triumph into the wind. The mountain responded. The rain increased on the instant, and the wind howled with a thousand angry voices. The mist became thicker, and as we went forward, we soon lost the trail yet again. We stuck to the ridge line, knowing that it would descend eventually. Despite our gear, which was of good quality, we were soon sodden to our bones. We experienced fear that, if we didn’t get down soon, we could be in danger.

                Eventually, the ridge line dipped noticeably, and we knew that we were heading down. We made it, about five miles away from where we had begun our ascent, but safely, if wet. Bedraggled, we hung our clothes under the tree beside our tent, not really very hopeful that they would dry in any way. A voice called to us, and we turned. While we had been out playing mountaineers, a caravan had pulled into the camp, and a kindly looking elderly couple beckoned us over. They offered to hang our clothes in their camper, and gave us hot tea to drink. The Pipers were the best sort of people, offering kindness to a couple of drowned rats as we were. Mrs. Piper laced our tea with healthy tots of whiskey, which warmed our bones.

                Dry, warm, and fortified, we decided to treat ourselves to a meal at the inn. The rain had stopped, but the sky was still full of the threat of a further deluge. Without the sun, which had set, and with the absence of moon or stars, the night was dark, made greater by the hulking presence of menace that was the mountain. Not a religious man by nature, I sensed that this was a font of spirituality, older and sterner by far than Father Christmas and the Easter Bunny. Damp silence pervaded. It would not have shocked me had some manner of Fey creature bounded into our path. Perhaps it had been our experience with nature’s fickle whims on the climb, or the physical dark of the rock that played on my mind, but I felt an other-worldliness in the night. It was the first such quasi-religious experience I had ever had. Something deep in the fabric of that sombre Welsh landscape struck a chord within me. And although buses and trains soon carried us away to other places and other experiences, that sense of being humbled by some unknown thing has stayed with me. It may be a resonance of old bloodlines. That or an over-active imagination.

                Needless to say, I “thank[ed] whatever gods may be for my unconquerable soul.”