To Share an October
There is a blear of gloom hanging on the hills ahead and filling the valley of the River Dyfi, coming in pushes of breeze flecked silver by a thin drisle. That Sun who had gifted a quick rainbow to the sky is now blotted over, more clouds seeming to climb out of the horison and hurry the evening along. It is 17:00, and I am heading out of Machynlleth, not into it.
It had been fine as any mid-October day could be in Wales, when I was down in Machynlleth earlier. Craft shops, cosy pubs, and cottages bordered the few streets of the town, and I passed a happy hour or so strolling through. I visited the Senedd-dŷ (allegedly where Owain Glyndŵr held the first Welsh parliament after being crowned Prince of Wales, though likely not), and took in the Victorian clock tower that rises elegantly from the midst of the town. But I chose to come to Wales not for its clock towers but its countryside, and the hills that rose north of Machynlleth were calling.
Across the old stone bridge on the Dyfi, crossing from the county of Powys to Gwynedd. I did not have much of an idea of where I should be going, but I figured that if I walked out into the country I would find something. I noticed a sign marked ‘Wales Coast Path’ on a steep track that led up to higher ground, and chose it. Ten minutes later the clouds pulled their wool over the sky, a grey wind picking up. I pressed onward as the rain began, and a few huffs and puffs later came to a line of old hazel trees that bent over the way. Nuts and rotten leaves lay under them, and I paused here to find my breath. A gap in the hedges gave a view of a lone ewe in a quiet pasture, unruffled by the showers that were now pouring from the clouds with a roaring force. We stood for a time looking at each other, the old trees around looking on too. The world was hushed, despite (or because of) the washes of rainfall. Contentment cracked over me like a warm egg, and I stood happily there as the minutes passed. There is worse company than oaks and sheep to share an October with.
I began snooping about the boles of the hazel-trees, on a hunt for a handful of filberts—but paused. I had stumbled upon something else … a flicker of sun sprinkled across the grass? Chanterelles. Dozens of them.
I start to harvest, trying to temper my gleeful eagerness at this discovery with a reminder to not pick too many. I pack my camera bag full of them, and there are still countless more for the next lucky traveller. I continue up the hill, the deepened darkness hanging lightly on me and my elation. Already I am thinking of the recipes these chanterelles can be used in, and I thank the rain, mother to mushrooms.
Now I am at the top of the climb; an hour has come and gone with too much quickness. Faded ferns of a rusty colour lie hunched around the hilltop. Bald apart from a few trees and more sheep, the rise I am on lends me the ability to view the lands about like a bird. Mottled mountains in the South, Machynlleth disappearing into shadow below them.
I should return to the town soon, and I worry about missing the last bus back to Aberystwyth—but I am held rooted. It is not my wet-heavy coat that weighs me here, not the mushrooms I’ve stuffed in my bag. It is the feeling of this land that has come into me, having threaded up from the earth itself and passed through the story of Glyndŵr, the old buildings of Machynlleth, the ivy-grown graveyard that I glimpsed there. And I wonder now how many Octobers the sheep, trees, clouds and breeze have shared here without me, in centuries lost.
