Listen: When you hide, the pain hides with you.



I was halfway up the hill when I noticed him. I don’t know if I heard the sound of steel scudding into the dry earth first, or if I saw the shovel flailing above his bony head as he scattered the flakes of soil all around. But suddenly there he was, in my senses and looming above me. Long, wiry arms. Old and bent, but clearly possessing a hard, core strength.

And he was on my hill, in my spot.

I tacked left, walking a wider path across the soft grass so I could take a better look before I approached. The man apparently didn’t notice me at all as I climbed nearer. The July sun beat through my t-shirt. He wore a blue cotton jacket and faded jeans, but didn’t seem to be bothered by the heat as he toiled.

“Good morning”, I said. The shovel rocketed down again and lodged in the shallow pit he was digging. Two sharp eyes flipped up at me.

“I don’t normally see anyone up here” I blurted, stumbling through his assured silence. “I mean, I, er, I come here quite a bit in the summer. Most days, really. It’s so... so calm. This spot” - I gestured at the tree he stood under - “I sometimes just sit here and look across those fields and think...and think...” I trailed, off, unsure what it was I wanted to tell him. I tried another thought.

“Um, what are you doing?”

“Same as you”. His voice was leathery, solid. “I’m looking for something.”

“Something - buried?”

“Maybe. Hard to say.”

“Oh. What is it? Have you lost something?”

The spade snicked out of the dirt and whizzed up again, arcing wildly round and down. “No.”

Snick; swing; dive. “Found something.”

Snick; swing; dive. He kept up the rhythm, punctuating the fall of the spade with his gruff answers. “Looking for a place to put it”.

The steady whoosh and crunch took over. There was a gentle breeze and the sounds mixed with birdsong from the woods below.

Suddenly he stopped, stood upright and gazed over my shoulder. I turned, gazing too at the glorious, green land rolling away beneath us. I felt the same little skip in my heart I always did when I saw the sun shafting over the woods, church spires poking up from villages dotted beyond.

"Been all over them woods" he said behind me. "Up on all them hills. Always feels so... comforting. Like I could leave it here and it would stay and I could walk way."

I heard the spade hit the earth again.

"But it always comes back. Don't it."

I turned towards him and recognised the heave of the shoulders, the sigh of his strong frame as the earth sucked him down. I knew I shouldn't stay.

I turned slowly, then walked down towards the woods, leaving the man on the hill, still trying to find somewhere to bury his sadness.



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