Effort, reward… and the aftermath.

It may be a bit of a moralistic stance, but I do actually enjoy a view more if I had to work for it. Perhaps it stems from a childhood spent scaling the Black Mountains in Wales. Perhaps that conditioned me to love what I fought for more than what came easily.

Or maybe it’s just the contrast: the sweat and the strain of walking uphill, and then the cool calm of sitting down and enjoying the fruits of your labour.

Me with a dead tree sticking out of my chest (AKA composition is tricky).

But after that? The trek doesn’t end on the hilltop. As climbers of Mount Everest will tell you, the return to base camp is at least as dangerous and strenuous as the uphill climb. You have to save some energy for the aftermath, the summing up, the winding down.

The going home.