Paul Evans's Nature Watch from the Guardian, with the music 'Lyonesse' by Speckled Sussex
lyrics
Walking up the hogsback ridge of The Wrekin during the late afternoon, there was no indication that there might be a sunset. As we emerged across the trees into the open sky, the view across the Shropshire and Cheshire plain, from the northwest to the northeast, was a hazy grey sea with islands of darker, wooded ridges rising above it.
Through the double ring of the iron-age earthworks around the hilltop, the sky brightened perceptibly. But when we reached the top we stood awestruck. It was as if we had crawled from the wreckage of some dark, forgotten disaster and were experiencing the power of sunlight for the first time. Under a thick band of charcoal cloud the sky was clear above the South Shropshire hills and Welsh Marches. This space was filled with a golden light that poured over the hills and across the wide valleys filled with white mist.
At its centre the sunset was a syrupy gold, soft and luminous but intense. At its edges, against the lower flanks of hills and ridges, it was purple. The mist seemed to flow towards the sunset, following the lie of the land, but the rays, bolts and sheets of light radiated from a central point behind the hill Caer Caradoc and rushed headlong towards us. The numinous quality of the sunset changed a familiar landscape beyond recognition. The huge ball of the sun sank slowly from the clouds and behind the hills. It felt like it was a vision, an idyll, of the world as it could be. The reality was most astonishing: this was the world and, for a moment, I suppose that’s enough.
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