Walking back in the dark

The trouble with the ridge in October is that it always looks better from the next rise. I kept telling myself I would stop at the fence, then at the gap in the fence, then at the slightly higher bit beyond it. By the time I turned round, the sun was already below the line of the wood.

I did have a torch. It was at the bottom of the bag, under the spare jumper, with the strap arranged in a knot I could not have tied deliberately. For a while there was enough light to follow the pale stones in the path. Then there was not, and I sat on a dryish bank to sort the bag out.

The picture I kept was made before any of this. A strip of warm light caught the grass beyond the fence, while the hills further away had gone a dull violet. In the little screen on the back of the camera it looked far too ordinary. Looking at it the next morning, with cold hands no longer distracting me, I found exactly the bit I had been trying to remember.

Perhaps that is why I keep these notes. The picture does not explain that I had lost a glove, or that the wind stopped just as I pressed the button. The walk gets folded into it anyway. A day later I can hardly tell which parts are in the picture and which are only in my head.

I found the glove on the fence on the way down. Next time the torch goes in a side pocket. I have written that here because I said it last year too.