Things are different out here. Particularly in winter, when the days darken and time slows down until you’re almost certain it’s no longer moving at all. The mountains are all ragged ridges and unforgiving gullies, their summits shrouded in mist, leaving the vast valleys and sleepy villages below in shadow.
I grew up here, in a stone cottage with a stable door, a wild garden, and a rope swing in the woodland above. And I loved it, I really did, but I also couldn't wait to break out. I wanted to become a city girl, commuting by train, coffee cup in hand, shoes click-clacking on the concrete. For my sixth birthday, all I wanted was to be 'sixteen and a grown-up'; my brother complaining that I turned every adventure into a game of house. My weekends and summer holidays were spent canoeing and climbing mountains in Scotland, Europe, Scandinavia and Canada. Our Christmas Day tradition was a scramble up a snowy mountain with a rucksack full of cheese sandwiches and flasks of scalding hot tea. It was the childhood of dreams - always outdoors, always adventuring, with our very own playground of mountains, woodlands, lakes, rivers and waterfalls - but by the time I finished school, I felt like I needed something bigger.
I wanted to experience suburban avenues of trees in all their autumnal glory, to see what snow is like in a city, to spend my summers sipping drinks on sunny streets. Now, after two years in the south and nine in the north, I'm still in love with city life - Manchester life in particular - but I've learnt that in the traditional sense of the word where home is a place not a person or a feeling or a condition, that quiet valley is still, and will always be my home.
During winter in the city, I can hardly wait another day for everything to turn green again - I find the concrete and the traffic and all that grey mean and suffocating. At home in the hills, however, I could hide away in that familiar mist and mizzle forever. The wind rattling at weathered cottage windows, tendrils of woodsmoke curling up to meet the clouds; cosy toes in wooly socks and cold hands wrapped around a mug of something warm.
This small corner of north west Wales feels like the edge of the world, and without the clutter and distractions of city life, I find myself noticing details I would usually overlook. The network of dry stone walls linking the mountains to one another, crumbling bridges and winding roads. A thousand different shades of granite greys, muted greens and rusty bracken. The smell of damp wood and smoke; the sounds of our busy little lives, silenced.
And something about that silence makes me hope, and I make a quiet promise to myself that one day, I’ll call these hills home again.
