We are on a slope. The kind you almost feel you need to cling to. We’re nestled into the pale, yellow green more-than grass to look up close, trouserknees dampening. I enjoy the thought that from a distance this heath gets its colouring from lichen and moss too. Frothing in many large patches all over the ground is the reindeer lichen my friend brought me to see. Some is surprisingly brittle, moisture has made others springy and soft. We study the branching lifeforms, growing alongside other species from the same family: hands with hands with hands, powdery cups, bright bright red fruiting bodies.

I draw myself out from tiny lens world and look up. Birds are being chipped off the crags and blown, filling the storm blue sky with dark specks and the tchack! tchack! of their voices that could be a hammer hitting. They swirl, take over, then settle again.

I want to run to the rocks and climb, put my hands on them and remember my body and aliveness through theirs. The steepness tricks me into feeling they’re within reach but it takes so long.

“Are you just going to scramble?” Rowan says, starting on the gentler, winding path.

“Maybe!” I beam, assuredly stumbling in my welly feet and grabbing clumps of grass for a precious amount of time before following them.

Arriving at the rocks from above, cold wind biting and pushing, my head clouds with hazy fear.