Far over past Carmarthen, where the rivers flow in gorges and the deciduous trees roll over the hillsides into the chopping water, I remember a tent on the green floodmeadow, and looking up, a mass of trees, then the sky, and soon the stars in a summer sky.
Serene it was, and grand in its simplicity of greenness. The way the road winds from side to side in the gorge, crissing and crossing the meanderings of the wayward river, with small stone bridges, craftsman-built and as strong as a forgehammer, leaping the flow; the trout in dark pools beneath the jutting grass-sods overhang, or flitting like waterbats across the web of light thrown through the water onto a sand and pebble riverbed. Like a tunnel the trees arch the road, and you are a rockdrill, twisting onwards through the stony shadows reaching down from the trees and scooping up the road, grim, rich in shades of brown and black-green.
The houses perch on the hill, inclearings in the trees, ladders of steps inviting a walking stranger up to the sky and chimneys, up the beech-boles and into their leafy umbrage; further than that, into the higher sky and float above the valley to see a splendid textural mapping, green and jungly; to drop in the fresh water with a splash, a mighty echo rippling through the liquid glass; and with a shudder return to the watching bridge to dry out in the sweeping thick air of summer evening.