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Kindle Notes & Highlights
The wind at that height is chilling, though the late sun is still strong. Cottontails of bog-grass thrum in the wind, glowing like gas mantles. Four kestrels, strung in a ragged low line above the moor to my west, hold their positions with grace against the wind. I gorge on the glut of light, the fetch of space. Reaching a jumble of boulders I stand on the highest stone, face east and lean a little into the wind, feeling the push of its hand on my chest – holding me in part-flight, kestrelling me.
A long night drive on high moors and down over coastal plains, headlights sweeping heather on the corners, coning the sky on the uphills, and home at last after midnight to a house at the foot of a mountain. The sky is salted with stars.
Al Alvarez called ‘feeding the rat’, in his classic essay on climbing and fear.
