bordeaux

slept in a field on the broken wheat

with the stars turning above me

dreamt of someone i'd wronged long ago

who'd died & i didn't know why

woke by a stag's bark, fear of farmer's dogs

my head wet with dew & my legs wet with sweat

wondered whether it was my fate to be chased across the world by a feeling

and with the sun i made coffee and wanted to write everything that'd ever happened

packed up my gypsy shit & hopped on my bike

listening to the songs where they say it just how it happened

rode to bordeaux for a cigarette without regret

& in the garden the memories slowed and faded

fed the braver birds and bought a homeless breakfast

is the hate there is for me balanced out by love

felt the root of my life through my feet

gave thanks & prayed for forgiveness in the morning sun

saint-malo

525

An island in the mouth of a river

founded Malo a monk fleeing the fall of an empire

brothers of the word walled the cliffs, rose up a thicket of spires

that twist like a peak to rupture the Gaelic sky

Caves were her harbours and her heart unassailable

sent out the Malouin fleets, with sails like knives, wringing fire and blood, singing of spices & iron & gold, disappearing into shadow

while the tide claimed & released the shore twice a day

they ate oysters & mussels & limpets

& the children learnt the waves and wind from their fathers

they knew cold and solitude, and the salt wind bit their lips / and they knew pride for fierce Malo, an empire unto herself

1525

Ni français, ni bretons, suis malouin

innumerable creatures had come and gone, leaving their calcium to be compressed in the deep time, to rise from the sea floor as chalk islands and cliffs

On which the malouin built their theocracy of navigators, pirate bones mixed into brick for their churches, walls, and harbours

Malo shone with gold from six continents, her sails cut the boundary of the known/ found a new world/ and the republic of sailors were first through the breach

bringing word to the antipodes, standing beneath crosses on pebble shores and proclaiming to bewildered peoples, as they brought the wheel, the book, the telescope, relishing in the unconditional violence and sanctified destruction, in the name of gold, and spices, and malo, her ships multiplied as the cargo grew and as the ancients faded, the island in the mouth of the river on the periphery of the world became a pole, the hunted, the hunter

2025

a maze of streets/rain sheets the stone like skin

the walls are captive to their own history/cannons

loaded with memory

arched doorway of a church/

with a crater where the navel was

I saw a man before it with the ages of the world clipping through his mind

they rebuilt it from memory/a rendition betrayed only by perfection

reinforced for the next war/how soon before the Malouins recall their strength

the gates are sated now/the stone called for blood/and the bombs answered

island of slate, defiant in time/adrift upon annihilation of the past

buoyant only for the hope that we can remember

champs de ble normand

sheet of gold, backdrop of blue

the dusk sweeps grey amongst the green

the eye is busy between

the tufts of grain & the brushes of the wind

a masterpiece, complete intent

& absolute execution. I imagine

the man who stands master of the field

or is it the field who masters him

how many loaves could this field feed

and fill the hunger of cities

the life of the wheat, mown season to season

generation by generation

fingers heavy with seed, reaped by machines

the grain is grown of need, sown and ground to flour

tryfan, 28th may

I stood at the bottom of the mountain and looked up. Like a great prehistoric beast, an arched spine extending into the landscape, it’s pinnacles dominating the Ogden valley. A high-kneed first step and I was on my way. Walking along a track, chalk cut into the grass, there was a high-wall to climb, built to prevent rock-fall. A ladder spanned one side and dropped me down the other. From there the soil thinned out and track became stairs cut into rock. Flowers broke out of cracks and fists of bright grey rock loomed.

In the beginning of earth’s time, a volcanic eruption breathed this rock into life. Inconceivable millennia separate my footsteps from this rock’s inception. Thousands of hands and feet had worn the footholds smooth. I hauled myself up stairs cut into the immemorial stone. The gradient was growing. Knees raised, elbows extended. Feet point out for balance. The stairs began to wind, gave me purchase on the slope. The rock looms and then it stands and then I am face to face with a cliff, broken into patterns by eons of wind and water and ice.

Quick breath and then we are heaving ourselves over humps, lifting legs and stretched out against surfaces as we pivot around them. We become a choreography of fingers gripping, knees bending, toes slamming into cracks. Breathes fast, deep. We face a bluff and have to choose a way around. There’s no hint of any path now. I have to choose between a steep long slope or a short sharp vertical. I take the vertical rock face. There is clear hand holds eroded by thousands of gripped fingers. It lifts me up around the bluff and then we are suspended. A deep silence. Muscle tense, bouncing slightly, I need to reach for the ledge and when I do my feet have to keep me from falling. A pulse lifts me, time stops briefly as my hand catches the ledge. Feet scrape against the rock for new holds as my other hand comes up and then my whole body tips over and I stand up whilst the sun smashes a cloud apart and splinters in my eyes and a small wind blowing over my sweat wet forehead is the breath of god.

I squint up at the ridge. The peak is just there. I scramble round a thin ledge and then there is a steep plate leading up to the top. My boots barely stick to the ledge. I kick them into a crack and then launch up and grab a shrub to pull myself up.

Then two more stone plates run a corner up to a ridge. I start up, the wind is yawning. I jam my foot into a ferny pocket and my hand into a smoothed hold reach up and am exposed onto the bulk of the outcrop. The valley began to clear into views of the valleys beyond, undulating like sound waves. I pull up, the corner is beginning to overhang, and then it is lidded by a tongue of rock. I have to reach round to pull myself over. I know it would suspend me over the abyss. I stopped. Then kicked up, time slowed, my fingers scrabbled, and connected, I test it, then my body follows through then I am laying on the tongue breathing, an electric feeling lighting me up. I stand up to a fake summit. The ridge continues, the real summit further on.

The mountain has become a porcupine of rock, grey spines, a smashed landscape, billions of years of ice and wind had broken the domes of rock into a sea of spines. I saw the summit again. But were there not three ridges? the second I skirted around. I caught a goat looking down on me from a ledge, overlooking the valley. The goat family at 800m was absolutely the best thing I had ever seen. I made a video of the goats and sent it with my expressions of joy at the mad lives of these masters.

On the opposite side you could see the wall which had built to enclose livestock on the slope half way up the mountain. The top half was patchy with scrub and rock but the enclosed half was a homogenous sheet of pasture. I thought about what the Odgen valley would have looked like as the glaciers retreated 20,000 years ago, as the rivers of ice sliced apart the earth and broke these mountains down, as the fauna moved back in, and I wondered how high up the tree line would have been until the humans returned.

I walked a thin line of rock leading over a crevasse, I went this way and that, I begun to trust myself in all this, i caught the path again, there on the top was two square rocks, a duolith marking the summit. I dashed through tall shards and caught air as I reached the top. A couple approached from the south, and I threw them my phone from the top for a picture.

mt. perdido, 30th, 31st oct

We woke up at dawn in Torla and everything was packed, we heaved bags to the kitchen in the basement of the hostel and set to eat breakfast. I robbed the noisy spainards in the room opposite of their coffee. I made bacon egg and cheese sandwiches but chorizo instead of bacon and Esteban although generally skeptical of anything I cook ate his after a couple of shifty bites. The spainards came in and saw their coffee all over the counter and were outraged but were disarmed the prospect of arguing with us in English. By then it was day and I hauled the rucksack to my shoulders for the first shift carrying.

We set off down the road, a strip of tarmac heaved onto the shoulder of the valley. The Ara running turquoise in the V beneath, noted for being the only river left in Spain that hadn’t been dammed or diverted. The tarmac rose gently and up ahead the valley lifted green and red with pine, above, sandstone plateaus, and then, the cloud clearedsx d a moment, revealing white peaks. We stared up, Esteban gulped for comic effect. Seemed implausible that a couple of days ago we were wandering about up there.

We got finished ignoring each other and started chatting shit about the people who drove past without giving us a ride. There was an old lady she drives past us and parks up ahead, gets out, we give her a story, she lives in the valley, she’s got no clue, doesn’t even know who she is anymore, we wave at her, she gives a stare like death, we laugh and wave some more.

There are small beetles wandering out into the road every few metres to their inevitable death. The tarmac is strewn with their bodies. I wonder why they are drawn out into the road, instinct is leading them astray. I pick up a few and watch them crawl on my hand until returning them to the grass. The Ara is becoming a roar in the V beneath, she has cut a gorge deep into the rock and the tarmac begins to wind as it climbs. We reach the bridge that traverses her and I stare down fifty feet or so where she has sculpted a deep channel strewn with boulders out of the limestone. I stand back on the bridge’s wall and turn back towards Torla and take this photo.

We’ve reached the end of the Torla valley and turn east into a new valley with a river whose name I don’t know yet. I look it up with the last of the signal. Arazas. A car stops for us, it’s a young couple I climb in the back with the dog and Esteban refuses to speak for me so we have a good laugh at my pitiful attempts to introduce myself. They are out from the city for the weekend and the wife is a teacher like me.

I prod Esteban to get over his awkwardness because he needs to recover his stick and to do so he needs to explain to them to stop in the middle of the road. The day before on our recee we found two sticks in the forest that were leaning against a tree as if waiting for us. We’d been searching for two appropriate sticks for days and were overjoyed to find them. On our way back from the recee though we got a ride from an elderly couple who asked us to throw the sticks out before getting in the car. Esteban with his characteristic impulsivity threw his stick into the forest whereas I said ce and then slid mine beneath the seats. He lamented his action immediately and recognized that casting away his stick could bring misfortune to our expedition. We hitched a plan to recover the stick.

Esteban shook with reluctance “tell them!” He related our situation and they listened and found our tale unsurprising. We scanned the pines and hills for the place where he cast his stick away. “There” there was a dell that looked familiar. They pulled in and we tumbled out saying goodbyes and thanks. Esteban cast off into the trees and came back a moment with his stick, waving it in celebration. We marched on six legged as the light gathered in the branches and the valley opened before us.

We reached the car park and cafe which signalled the beginning of the trail and we filled up our water bottles. The Arazas, rain full, ran close to the path. The valley had been made a national park a hundred years ago and they’d built a splendid yellow brick road. It began to rain and wisened from getting absolutely soaked the days before we put our waterproofs on. Esteban put the poncho over his head and I laughed at him. We’d cut waterproofs from the back which made for amusing viewing from the behind. The path winded back and forth up the valley sides and we trudged through the dripping pines.

We were resting on a rock wall by a waterfall when we spotted our man going past. He was going grey and beared and dressed all in red camouflage and I nodded my head in greeting. He held up his first finger at us. Indicating god.

“That” we were already laughing “is a total fucking maniac”. Ex-military, with a deep past of horror, self-betrayal and tragedy. There was a man who felt things no one would ever know. We saw him again further up the trail. He was sharpening his machete on a rock. I waved at him again. He stared back blankly. Shivers went down my spine. We spent the next thirty minutes developing our strategy if we had to fight him in the wilderness.

“why did you have to wave mate”

Esteban would go for the head and I would go for the groin.

“you know we’d have to kill him though man, once started he wouldn’t stop until he was dead”

We agreed. Once injured we would find a rock to finish him off. Neither of us had knifes. “What the fuck do you need a knife for in the wild apart from cutting cheese and fighting maniacs, name me one thing you actually need a knife for” We had cutlery which served us fine.

The valley opened up now, we were above the tree line. At the far end of the cirque - the glacier size circle that had been bulldozed through the rock - here was a fucking massive waterfall as the river pitched itself off the top of the valley. Next to that was a sheer cliff face. The echo was madness. Perfectly round and booming way above our heads. There were people about. By the river there was a hut and on the porch there was a man and his dog. Esteban got chatting with him and we sat a while, drinking water and resting. The man was explaining to Esteban the way ahead. Our companion traced his finger up the cliff and told us there was a path. We set off and he announced his intention to see us to the face. On the way I climbed an enormous erratic, the size of a large house, that had been deposited by the glacier thousands of years ago.

We followed behind the man and his jack russell as the path became gravel and started to pitch up the cliff face. We planted our sticks into the gravel and dug a foot in before stepping forward. Then we were before solid stone and our man was waving goodbye and good luck. I had agreed to take the bag up. Luckily there was a metal chain hanging in lanes up the face. All we had to do was hold on while our feet scrabbled on the wet stone for a foot-up. The bag made it difficult to balance and half way up I let myself hang backwards and stare at the drop below.

We scrambled up onto the top of the cirque and panted a while, we were in a high altitude valley above a valley that was a bleak wasteland of scrub and loose rock with water pitching off mountain sides and collecting in the hollow. Three eagles spun around above my head. A thunder cloud rolled into us and we couldn’t see but a few metres ahead as we followed a winding stone path leading up, pressing ourselves against the rock face and very soon soaked. The thunder happened just above our heads and made the earth shake and we pressed our hands to our eyes, it was terrifying and I laughed in an attempt to fight the fear.

The refuge appeared in a hollow of rock. It looked like a bunker designed to survive nuclear attack. There was no signal. Indeed, civilisation could disappear and we would be none the wiser. It was late afternoon by the time we stumbled in, soaking wet and covered in mud, eyes bright with mischief.

The next morning we were looking up at the peaks, perdido was still shrouded in cloud. We been at it for days and hadn’t even seen the fucker. It was, as they say, now or never. We agreed to go as far as we could with no expectations.

A shoulder of black stone rose vertical before us. We cut back and forth across it’s surface, limbs still stiff from sleep, breath catching up with the work. The steps were hard until all our days clambering rose up in us and we craned our necks to see the peak above.

The grey momentarily gave way to deep, endless blue, the earth undulating into the distance, ridges of mountains creasing like skin. The air was perfectly, bracingly fresh, and we breathed with relish, feeling the crack of snow beneath our feet. The purple Bear’s ear dotted the white.

We clambered up onto the plateau. A wind slanted through the hills and the clouds wrapped and unwrapped the knives of black rock above. Our hill, nameless and arbitrary, lay ahead, calling us. A river cut a gorge from it’s height and rattled down towards us, cascading over elbows of basalt, we pitched down beside a cascade and plotted a route up. Two hills lay at the foot of the peak, with a ravine in between. We stashed the bag behind a rock as the rain came and caught in our hair and our necks behind polythene hoods.

We criss crossed between outcrops and emerged onto a steep snow plain , leant into the step, our feet digging steps now as we hauled ourselves up. The ravine was now just ahead and we could see that a waterfall had frozen in it’s cusp and the rock was covered in a metre of snow.

We pitched from side to side to avoid the vertical, digging in our boot-clad feet with the lavender coloured and scented bags as socks.

“three advantages of this footwear mate. One, keeps your feet dry. Two, stylish as fuck mate. I mean, who could resist us with these bin bag socks? Third, I don’t have to smell your feet anymore, the lavender scent covers it up”

We tacked up into the snow and we were soon digging deep holds for each step. Digging through the ice looking for rock to hold onto, heaving ourselves up. The picturesque frozen waterfall had become vertical and exposed and we were hanging off rock looking for a way up.

I dug my foot through and felt the ice pack and then I stepped into it but then I felt my feet give way and heard the rock move beneath me and then I was falling. I slid about a metre and cut my leg open on a rock before I managed to get a hold. “There we go” Esteban said from beneath, yeah I mean, it was going to happen wasn’t it. It was a small fall but my leg hurt and I was pretty shaken and had to stop and calm myself down. For a moment there I only felt anger that I was clinging to some rock at two thousand metres, the fear washed all the wonder out of me and I had to reset. I was fully aware that I had escaped very luckily because I’d managed to arrest the fall. We were in the middle of fucking nowhere and the thought of breaking a limb was intolerable. My desire to go on on was gone. But yeah we took a few more steps and then we were presented with a vertical face of razor sharp frozen rock. Esteban sized it up a moment or two and then shrugged his shoulders.

“now this is something else”

“next time mate”

We’d done all right, considering that we had been making it up the whole time. It was the end of one journey, it felt alright. We turned around and walked back towards the world.

are men moved as the earth is

to collide with ourselves & be driven to height

knifes of stone, pitching cloud and tearing sky.

These mountains

bleed rivers & storms are their beating hearts

they have no fear to contend with.

they have driven seas of ice

time itself is rent by their hands, and the immutable stars cry their approval

how can something so incremental/be so unspeakably redolent with splendour

our own spark

serves only to underline our limits. here

we are candles in an insatiable darkness, they

swallow our audacity mindlessly,

outstrip us, leaving my mind blank & naked, hypnotised by their silence

mt. perdido, 28th oct

There is vigorous scholarly debate surrounding the etymology of the word Pyrenees. Pyrene was a Gaulic princess who was raped by a drunken Hercules after regrettably offering him refuge during his labours. Then, we have the historian Siculus, who claims that a fire consumed the entire range, anointing them from then on the Pyrenees.

The rational tradition tells us that the mountains were formed 100 million years ago, when the Iberian peninsula slammed into the Eurasian plate. The collision lasted millennia, and raised the Pyrenees into the roof of Europe.

We took a winding gravel path up the valleyside through the autumn red trees and the white peaks above. The rain washed down the mountain sides and gathered in the gulleys of the valleys as cascades - water flowed over the paths & we had to jump over stones to ford the waterfalls. Ahead, the range dominated the horizon.

We reached the end of the Gavarnie valley and the path lifted us above the tree line into a meadow scattered with rocks. To the west a dome of rock lifted the path up & before us the Pic des Serradets was a jagged white expanse blocking out the sun. Our plan was to cross the river & pass by the shoulder of the Serradets to reach the stone refuge hidden behind it’s peak. After that, our aim was the Mt. Perdido.

‘‘I bet it’s looked the same since the last ice age’’

Sometime in the Pleistocene a glacier had bulldozed a circular hole in the mountain side. We could see a waterfall pitch off the precipice and fall 1km to the valley floor.

We had to address Esteban’s shoes. They were soaked, and we hadn’t even reached the snow line. He sat on an outcrop overlooking the cirque de Gavarnie, smoking a rollup. He prised the wet leather from his feet while hopped up the step, momentarily free of my bag, gazing up at the dome of rock, into the eye shaped cave in it’s face. We laid out his feet on the poncho & cut squares around them & lifted the shoelaces from the tarp & voila he had galoshes.

‘‘These are surprisingly good mate’’

The path lifted up the shoulder of the valley driven by the rushing blue rock strewn river beneath. We spotted a lone tree on an outcrop leaning into the sky & laughed at it.

‘‘Stubborn like you man’’

The path became wetter & we began to hop from stone to stone to keep our feet dry, & the snow descended to cover the grass & rock. It had rained for three days torrentially until that morning & the water rushed off the bare stone wiping out the paths. As we crossed from one mountains shoulder to another a river blocked our way, rushing from above. We climbed along it’s bank looking for a way across. There were two boulders edging into it with about a metre & a half between them. We couldn’t hear each other over the torrent. I mimed - pointing & thumbs up -

‘‘here?’’

Esteban held his thumb up. I hopped onto the first boulder & took my bag off & swung to throw it & as the weight left my arms it pulled me forward onto a wet patch & I slipped & my arms windmilled I was falling into the river.

‘‘Oh shit!”

Jump now or fall. I jumped. My feet connected with the otherside and I threw myself forward. Esteban was wide eyed & i was laughed.

“that was not good, there is a path down there” - “y didn’t you tell me?” - “thought you knew” - “we need to work on our communication my man”/s’agir avec une esprit d’respect pour les montagnes et bien reflechir avec des prendre des decisions.

The path on the otherside became a river flanked with snow banks. We alternated between walking in snow and stepping from stone to stone. An arm of rock ahead blocked the valley & that was the path south into the high mountains. We threw our bags off & stared up, tracing potential routes.

The arm led to a steep face that gave onto overhanging muscles of stone. We would have to detour around & climb the flattest part. After that was miles of vertical in deep snow to cross between two peaks Our bags were unbalanced and overpacked. Even my boots were beginning to get wet and Esteban was wearing plastic bags with no grip. It looked like we would have to approach Mt. Perdido from the otherside.

“I have zero desire to do that”

“yes”

We could have potentially survived the journey to the refuge between the two peaks but after that was the high mountains and our supplies were already dwindling.

The other route into Spain was a pass to the west. It looked about 5k with a steep rise to the col, a thin collar between two peaks, but otherwise flat with a path faintly traceable through the snow. There was a stone cabin ‘cabin de soldats’ about half way.

We made our way up the valley. The bags were heavy & we were sweating in the middle & freezing at the exterior. Coming up with ways to cross rivers and over outcrops of stone was taking as much energy as the walking itself. Walking in the snow was often easier than hopping from to rock to rock, but it was beginning to bunch in the top of my boots. Arriving at the cabin was welcome.

‘‘Cabin de soldats’’ conjured images of soldiers returning from war & tired of domesticity heading into the mountains for solitude & exertion & building this cabin, lugging boulders and rending them with concrete, building an improbable roof and fireplace in the desolation, proof of their valeur. The walls were tagged with the names of montagnairds who had passed this way. We took off our shoes & got to boiling snow to drink. The saucisson and goat’s cheese was almost gone & we finished the nuts. Not much left now, Esteban went to smoke in the snow & I stretched a little & wrote my journal. The window was a metal plate that opened onto the blinding white valley we had traversed all morning.

Acutely aware of every muscle, every breath, each moment was a dynamic between fear & whatever you could call the volition to climb higher. I repeated to myself ‘franchir les limits des tes peurs’ & followed the motif that whenever I felt the fuzzy uncertainty the fear was itself an invitation to push & to give because I would not spent another day of my life frozen in inaction. Amen. It was time to take the pass. We were at about 2000m, we wondered if it would affect our bodies, I had never been this high before. There was a corrie (the space a glacier has eroded) at the high end of the valley which we had to climb,.

Time came & we set out for the collar which would take us into Spain. The path was a river which eventually froze entirely. The bags weighed us down into the snow & the tent tied onto mine made balancing difficult. Balance is in the mountains and we hadn’t considered this at all when we packed. The way got steeper and steeper. Concentrating on each step, we lost the path. Then we were looking up a frozen ravine. We’d missed the path which lay tantalisingly above us on the shoulder of the mountain. We stopped a while and had to halt the temptation to sit in the snow to rest, strategising our way up the steep. We discussed going back but eventually decided to go up. It didn’t look far.

Each time we took a step our feet had to travel through a metre of snow before connecting with rock, at times we had to plunge our arms in to connect with a surface. Each movement was a tactical decision. I was pretty soon soaked while simultaneously boiling hot. “this is insane” shouted Esteban from beneath. We were having to pause every metre to regain our breaths, my heart was hammering from the effort of kicking footholds in the snow and pulling myself and the rucksack up the incline. Doubt flickered and it was difficult to tell how far up we were, I was aching all over. And then, I could see the top. I hurried the next step and slipped and fell and reached out and caught myself before coming off the side. I swore alot and Esteban laughed at me from beneath.

Unbelievably, we were pulling ourselves onto the ridge. The path gave to the col, just there up ahead. We could see four people coming the opposite way. They marched in file, kitted out in cutting edge mountain clothing, two poles each, like a centipede, pretty soon they were passing us, with looks of absolute disgust on their faces, as we traipsed past with plastic bags wrapped around our feet & soaking wet jeans & stuff haphazardly hanging off our rucksacks. They could barely bring themselves to say bonjour. We laughed at them. They had cut an avenue through the snow, though, of which we availed ourselves. Then we passed between the two peaks, over the col, and we were in Spain. There was a signpost sticking out of the snow. ‘Puerto de Bujeruelo, 2273m’. It wasn’t Mt. Perdido but it felt like an achievement. Esteban took my profile with the sign. With little regret, we began to descend. The valley opened up before us, vistas of white peaks in layered, mountain sides dressed in red forests, the waterfalls were turquoise as they struck the valley floors.

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