Chasing Light

I have no plan to be here. I simply turn left instead of right, hoping for somewhere quiet to make rest for the night. It is quiet – very much so. No people. No cars. Just an empty road beneath an exposed ridge.

My knees complain of the stress they’ve already endured, my stomach lets its unfed appetite be known. I feign ignorance of their calls.

I cast my eyes to the ridge. Rocks cut sharp into the afternoon air – acute vertices that crosshatch in grey and gold. Above, the sky looks to clear. The last of the day’s clouds are being blown with haste to the east, away from the setting sun. My phone says seven o’clock, and there is little time to linger. In minutes I’m at full stride, gaining ground on the peak.

It’s not an intimidating hike. A gritstone-chip path wanders up the incline for me to follow. At first, I’m meandering through mostly open heathland. The occasional rounded boulder lays at rest beside the walkway. But heather is what dominates on the lower slopes, its pink flowers softly breaking the uniformity of green hillside grasses. Ahead, the heather gives way to a thin strip of woodland. The sun is already transforming leaves from green to flaxen.

I step into shade and the silence is no more. My breath is heavy, and the songbirds are in full chorus. It sounds like Chaffinch. A male comes to perch on the low branches of a sycamore a few trees to my right. I stop in stride to watch him forage for insects. Aware of my presence, he cocks his head, but quickly continues to browse the bark for food. Its soothing to not be an intruder here, to just be an audience and spectate the happenings of nature.

A pastel palette of evening warmth blanketing the countryside below

I spend another minute listening to the birds and watching them hop from sycamore to pine, then it’s time to move on. A gentler path swings off to the right, seemingly looking to circle the fragmented ridge face up to the top. Between the trees, I see the sun fall further in the sky, and I want to keep it in view as I climb higher. I look to summit another way.

I divert left until I see a fresh trail cut straight towards the rockface. I follow the scarcely trodden earth in search of a vertical scramble to the open air above. Hope is rewarded.

Lumps of sandstone rocks layer like nature’s stairway up towards a stone archway. Beyond, just the emptiness of sky.

I make the first step with confidence, still holding my camera in hand rather than using both to climb. The gritstone feels clingy underfoot, my trail runners gripping the rockface. I step again. And again. And again. The severity of the incline takes me higher with pace. Another five lunges up and I’m already abreast with the pines. Their crowns are now fully aglow, an ethereal veil cast across the woodland canopy.

The end of the ascent is effortless. Flatter ground carries me the final few meters, and at last my head rises above the ridge. The prevailing wind is belligerent but welcome, and I drop my pack to cool the sweat that licks my back.

Colours bleed from the sky to the west – a pastel palette of evening warmth blanketing the countryside below. Verdant greens are all but bleached. Golden hour is here.

I roam with camera in hand, skipping from rock to rock in service of the innumerable compositions. I stoop for some and stretch for others. Hilltop heathers make for appealing foregrounds in my frames. Great rocks surge and plunge in the distances, the rise and fall of a ridgeline shaped by water and wind.