How the light lands differently when you finally arrive in your own presence.
The Sky Within the Hill.
The morning path climbed through the last of the bracken, lifting me above the small familiarity of field walls and dark hedgerows, as the valley began to open beneath a sky that seemed to promise something ethereal beyond the land's reach.How the light lands differently when you finally arrive in your own presence.
How readily the distant places call to us.The ridge gathered light above the shifting clouds, the pale horizon withdrawing whenever I moved toward it, always suggesting that somewhere further on the world might yield just a little more of its mystery.
I had followed that persuasion upwards, the hillside rising to meet each steady step, while the valley slowly gathered itself into a single view.Yet the climb had its own intimacy.
The softened earth pressed into the soles of my shoes, holding the memory of yesterday's rain and the promise of today’s storm.A loose stone turned beneath my heel, sending a small uncertainty through my body, while breath, warmed within me, entered the cool morning and briefly became visible before the wind swiftly carried it away.
Beneath the bracken, unseen water whispered along the roots, following the long descent towards the lake.I could hear it whenever the wind fell still, a small, persistent voice from the hillside, finding its way through the dark loam.
And somewhere in the widening sky, the clouds that had seemed so far away were beginning to lower, drawing the distant ridge into their folds.
Rain arrived gently at first, touching my face, gathering in the fine hairs on my hands, slipping beneath my raised collar.The hillside darkened around me, each blade of grass bending beneath its small inheritance of water.
I held out my palm.
A single drop rested there, trembling with the movement of my hand, carrying for a moment the pale reflection of the sky I had climbed so far to reach.Then it slipped along the fine lines of years etched into my skin and disappeared beneath my sleeve.
The ridge remained distant, half lost in cloud, while the rain continued its quiet, determined arrival across the hillside.