Note: While I gather myself and get ready for the more ‘official’ launch of Blue plus Green, I’ve pulled something from my archive to post. I guess I’m feeling a little nostalgic for places lost then found, and sometimes lost again. And for some of the people I’ve know along my way. And North Wales is a lovely place…
Nearly forty years after Tom’s father’s ashes were scattered on Moel Y Sensigl, Mair relayed in an e-mail to him that her husband Edward remembered that Tom’s father used to go there to sit. Tom had written to Mair to ask if she knew the correct spelling for the place because we were having no luck finding any references. It’s not the kind of place to get tagged on Google Earth or Google Maps is it? Standing stones and footpaths don’t exactly register. Although maybe the fewish people who remember them think it’s better that way…
But if you’ve been there, you can find it on the satellite images. It does help to have paid attention to what you passed on the winding ride up, like the crossroad where sheep jammed up the narrow road and the farm that advertised working holidays.
And if you’d walked to the top – with your dad or later with your uncle and the other men to scatter the ashes – and knew the view from there, you’d be able to pick it out.
The picture here of Tom on Moel Y Sensigl (pronounced Senagl) was taken in 1999 during one of our visits back. Coincidentally, Mair and Edward were planning a ride up there when they got Tom’s note. Mair said, “I do love to look down on the Morfa and across the Traeth (estuary).” This photograph gives you a sense of that I think, and you can also just see Harlech Castle over the bend of the hill before the dunes in the distance.
It’s good to keep walking the footpaths and taking in the views. Not so much to relive or recreate the past but simply to remember – and to carry on.
When people first pass away, they loom large in their absence. At some point…eventually…the edges of the space they leave soften, and life washes in and fills the hole. Then they linger in the stories we remember to tell and the places we remember to visit.
When people first pass away, they loom large in their absence. At some point…eventually…the edges of the space they leave soften, and life washes in and fills the hole. Then they linger in the stories we remember to tell and the places we remember to visit.
When the places go, we have to rely on the stories. When the people who know the stories all go – or forget – do the places remember? Do places have memories too? And if they do, does someone have to keep walking the tracks and taking in the views, whether or not they ever knew a soul who also walked and looked, lest the place memories drift away as well, finally and completely?