Book extract: The Edge of Everything by Lottie Williams

Lottie Williams

An attempt to Stargaze from Twyn y Gaer, Bannau Brycheiniog

You find the outline of the gorse bush by way of someone else’s torch and you push your back against it, a shelterbelt of spiny green. You are only just below the summit of Twyn y Gaer, but here the wind is dulled as though you are cushioned within the eye of the storm. It’s the wrong time of year for the gorse to be in full flower, but if it were, it would treat you to a universe of bright suns, and you would smell the honeyed coconut flares. Above, the sky is matte black. There are no stars, not tonight, not within this yellow weather warning which flashed on your phone earlier today and threatened to call off your walk. Still it flashes now, in silver streaks cutting through your torch beam. It strobes a disco in the dark.

The wind pushed against you and stung your cheeks as you made your way up to the summit. You wore your hood tightened around your face to protect your ears and neck, grateful you decided to wear full waterproofs over several layers of clothing. Your socks are still dry, but you know your boots will eventually succumb to the wet of the bog underfoot. It’s deep in places and you squelch easily in, step by invisible step, and you roll back time to pretend you’re a child wearing wellies in the park.

Below you in the valley, car headlights speed like shooting stars, and you wonder if it’s the same road you crossed earlier on foot. Probably not, you’re sure you came from the opposite way, but at night, without the compass of natural light, directions and distance distort. Places become merry-go-rounds.

Alone

At the start of the walk, in a settling dusk, you found a standing stone. As you lay your hands upon it, a young buzzard lifted to the air, mewing loudly as it caught the chaotic wind. You felt the stone hard against your palms, millions of years pushing against mere months. You know you are not of the sky. You do not possess the beauty of feather or wing. Your bones are evolution-thick, your feet heavy. They follow the contours of Earth, lock you firmly to the land.

Some people say if you stand by this stone on the shortest day of the year, you can see the sun rising between the peaks of Pen y Fan and Corn Du. Others believe it is a five thousand year waymarker for an ancient track. But you look for what you want to see and you create meanings even when there are none to be found. A human habit, you look for patterns to make sense of this world, of this life, of your life. Who placed you here? Why? Where did you come from? Where is your place, your space? What are you made of?

Why does everything have to have an answer.

Conversation bubbles in the gorse shelter and you discover why a star twinkles. It’s a reaction of how light is bent through variations of air density and temperature. Like a diamond in the night. You are told that Jupiter and Venus do not twinkle because they are much closer, bigger, and so their light is not affected by the fluctuations in Earth’s atmosphere. You shake your head at the thought of Jupiter being so close. You find out that ‘planet’ is Greek for ‘wandering star’. You think of the Solar System poster which used to be stuck to your bedroom wall, and the one your children now have which states that Jupiter is 778.6 million km from the sun.

You wish it wasn’t so cloudy. On a clear night you would look for Orion’s belt because, apart from the Plough, it’s the only constellation you can ever easily find. Up above the world so high. If it were clear, you could count the number of stars within Orion’s body and then you would know how dark the sky here really is. Some people have reported over thirty stars but most will see less than ten, such is the level of light pollution in the UK. You could mention how Orion is quietly changing shape as the stars move apart through the galaxy. Every star in the sky is changing position, slowly, slowly, but you can’t see it. You’ll never be able to see it, this ‘proper motion’ as it is known. You find it hard to believe you are constantly on the move, even when you are standing still. You cannot believe that starlight can be hundreds of years old when it reaches your gaze, and you are looking at the past. You cannot believe you are a mother, and you are almost forty. You are told that Orion’s sword is in fact a nebula, a space womb birthing light, a star nursery. You think of your children sleeping in bed at home. Twinkle twinkle little stars, how I wonder what you are.

Thank goodness the sky is overcast tonight. You would never have remembered to say all this. You don’t even understand it properly anyway.

Polaris 

Another fact from someone else in the group – the North Star is called Polaris and it remains in the same place whilst everything else in the night sky rotates around it. You think about how your children rotate around you. You think about how you navigated around your mum when you were young. You re-name your mum Polaris.

But, in truth, it was the opposite. She navigated her life around you, always putting you first. She sacrificed her own wants, needs and desires for you. Instead you re-name your children Polaris and realise you only truly understand your mum now you are a parent. Your journeys are more tightly aligned than you thought.

Someone tells you that Polaris has not always been the North Star (that it used to be Thuban, and then Kochab, and the next one, in about a millennium, will be Errai). You are reminded of how the stars pull apart as the universe expands, and it makes sense. Life is a state of impermanence.

Another fact – the energy you are made from is billions of years old. The man opposite with a thick Welsh accent points at you and says you are made of stardust. He points to someone else. You are made of stardust. You and you and you are made of stardust.

Everything has an expiry date, and everything has an eternity.

Now it is the present.

Now that present is the past.

You walked up here, in the rain and the wind, in the past.

You realise how alive history is. You realise how little you know.

You accept you will never truly understand.

The Edge of Everything by Lottie Williams is published by The H’mm Foundation.