Letter from Y Gader, Cader Idris, Cadair Idris

Julie Brominicks 

It’s the Sunday between Christmas and New Year, and there she is above Dolgellau, fog rolling off her shoulders.

Walking west with the blue night draining away you see her riding the clouds. The mountain is some distance across the old land, so the whole north face is another stripe of rock like the unwinding road and drystone walls. The sky is coming up clean above the fog foaming over the ridge. I’m writing a book about the mountain. Every visit is different and today she is a woman in the bath. 

The land on this side feels quieter. Old pastures and woods have settled in the creases and folds of her cloak since she last shook it out. 

In a roadside field, a man is raking grass into piles where I saw a hare run last June. It’s Rhys Gwynn, the Eryri National Park warden for this area. He says he has collected wildflower seed from fields on this side of the mountain to create meadows at Dôl Idris on the other, and might sow some here this autumn.

He says primroses are coming up and he’s seen voles. Mae wastad llygod mewn caeau gwair. He sometimes finds little heaps of yellow-rattle seeds in established meadows and wonders if the voles have a role in distributing it. There are morgrug melyn y maes too – yellow meadow anthills. Surprisingly, the queen lays her eggs in winter. He is unsure of the ants’ role in the ecology, so will cut the grass around the nests and leave them be. He has heard the cnocell werdd – green woodpecker (which eats ants) here, because of the abundance of old fields and anthills. Caseg y gwanwyn is another name for it – spring mare – because they do sound like neighing horses. 

The cloud tsnuami topped with a bright line of light is still tumbling and tumbling over the mountain.

At Tŷ Nant the air is thick and cold like a fridge. I climb up its shelves. Bare birch, stone walls, green moss, white stream, through the hawthorns and into the sun, where I meet a man descending with a thumb stick. Morris Higham is an architect who lives at the bottom. How he came to be here is that he was working on a building at Mallwyd where a friend had a horse in foal, and he told his friend he’d have the foal if it was a male and it was, so he needed a stable and this place came up and that was thirty years ago. ‘When they had covid on,’ he says, ‘I was on me own up here. One day the swifts were up and there were hundreds of them. There must have been some insects. You don’t see them now.’ 

Because of the book I’m writing, I’ve spoken to many people. An archaeologist. Paraglider. Coldwater swimmers, shepherds, a Christmas-tree grower. Mach Loopers. Birders. Mountain Rescue. A moth man. A dancer. More. I’ve come up with a climber, a geologist, a runner. I’ve helped farmers gather sheep, botanists hunt for euphrasia cambrica and spent a day drystone walling. I’ve met hikers, a radio enthusiast, paddled a helicopter pilot’s pack-raft on Llyn Cau, and looked for salmon with a retired fisheries officer. But I’ve not yet found anyone to explain how the weather and mountain inter-relate. The waterfall of cloud is silently pouring down the north face. 

Mostly it’s just me and the mountain. The mountain is a ridge of several peaks, Penygader the highest. Cyfrwy is bathed in sun that’s defrosted the moss. I sit to watch the bathtub overflow. The cloud is about twenty metres deep and the sky above is blue. The cloud thins and thickens, revealing then disappearing, figures on Penygader. Their voices fall. The cloud is rolling down both sides of the ridge. It fragments as it rolls slowly, rolls silently, down the north face and wisps of it escape and drift back up. On the Dysynni side it drops fierce and white and racing, the top edge turbulent and fast. 

I go on in. Cloud, sky, rock, ice. So many Welsh speakers today! Jack a groundworker from Traws and Kyle from Penrhyn who deals with skips. Esyllt from Caerdydd. Dylan and Siân from Tremadog. Gethin from Hwlffordd with Holly who’s learning because she works in a hospital. The atmosphere is jaunty, what with the hoar frost and brocken spectres. 

When I say I’m writing a book, I mean I’ve swum in all the lakes and slept out enough times to tick all the possibilities; dead mad English poet. But I don’t even know what to call it! Cader (an old word for fortification) or cadair (chair). Idris of course, was a giant. It’s Cadair Idris for the Welsh Language Commission, NRW, Met Office and OS Maps, Cader Idris for Eryri National Park. Local people generally refer to ‘Y Gader’ in Cymraeg. The Dolgellau accent turns ‘a’ sounds into ‘e’ (defaid into defed, tu allan into tellen) so Cader is possibly a version of Cadair. I consult everyone. ‘You have to use Cadair or people will be very upset!’ ‘Definitely Cader. It is a very old word for a safe place, like in Bryn Cader Faner’. Most haven’t thought about it. ‘What does it say on the signs?’ ‘Google it.’ ‘Maybe say cader, write cadair?’ 

When I say I’m writing a book, I mean I’ve spent a fortune on bus fares and have accumulated 31 GB of photographs, audio and video files. I’ve filled eight notebooks but transcribed nothing yet, read no books or documents, nor written a word of my own. I’ve a great deal of work still to do, but that’s mountains for you. 

The rocks are frozen chickens waiting to be plucked. I walk on to Mynydd Mawr, through deep ringing silence. The cloud thins. Sunlight sluices the ridge and my body and soul. Dolgellau is down there just briefly, its windows tiny white bathroom tiles.