Is it morbid to talk about dying? The reason I ask is that, every now and then, as age creeps up on me, I wonder gloomily about how and where I might be laid to rest. I struggle with the concept of lying in a box six feet under, my earthly bonds securing me to the ground as only my spirit breaks free. How much simpler to be scattered to the wind in a place that I love – no headstone, no epitaph, no flowers, just the whisper of a memory for those who know and those who care.
That place would be a mountaintop in Wales . I could almost say that any Welsh mountain would do but, really, there is only one. Rhinog Fach: a rocky peak in the Rhinogydd range of Snowdonia, the famous North Wales national park that was recently deanglicised to become Eryri.
From a distance, on the western side, Rhinog Fach looks like Cape Town’s Table Mountain, steep on each flank and with a distinctly flat top. This was the first Welsh mountain I ever scaled when my love affair with this wild, wet corner of Great Britain began 30-odd years ago. My husband’s family had been coming here for years – almost a century by the time I showed up – and if no Welsh blood flows through their veins, there’s no doubt that this land has carved a groove through their hearts.
And now mine – and, I should add, those of our three children, who have grown up glorying in and enduring the best and worst of a climate where the default setting is rain. In our farmhouse, backed by mountains and overlooking the bro.
