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🎨 Artwork Journey
Artwork Journey is a section of the Emily Lupita ❤️🔥 Creativity Series featuring new Lupita paintings I made while reflecting on my world journey - with accompanying short travel essays.
🌎 Lupita Yr Wyddfa, Mt. Snowdon, Wales, UK
By Emily Lupita
Mt. Snowdon, Wales, UK, 1999
About the Painting:
My journey to the peak of Yr Wyddfa was a sacred pilgrimage. My Grandma Rosella was Welsh and I went to Wales in 1999 as part of a quest to touch the spirit-land of my ancestor Grandparents. I used my scholarship to college to study abroad for four of my eight semesters, taking courses and traveling at the same time. I chose my study locations based on the places my grandparents came from: Mexico, Spain, and Wales.
Grandma Rosella had died five years before I went to Wales. I missed her terribly. I grew up seeing her several times a week and she was my special person in life. That person who always greeted me with a smile, delicious cookies, and as I got older, words of encouragement. When she became ill, I helped care for her after school. I was seventeen and holding her hand when she died. I felt her squeeze my hand as her spirit left her body. What better place, I thought, to reach out to her than the top of the holy mountain of Yr Wyddfa in her motherland.
I remember walking around the shore of the lake. The morning was crisp and cool. I looked up to the peak, but it was covered in clouds. I was with my college classmates and they were, quite reasonably, disappointed about the clouds. But I was delighted because Grandma had a sign in her home that read, “The sun is always shining. Just because you cannot see it, doesn’t mean it isn’t there.” (My cousins are all nodding their heads…they remember this sign, too.) And I took the clouds to be a sign from Grandma that she knew I was on my way.
Yr Wyddfa, pronounced “er with-va” is the Welsh name for Mt. Snowdon and means “grave.” Legend has it that the giant Rhita Gawr, King of Wales, is buried under a mound of stones at the summit, placed there after a battle with King Arthur. Our group made it to this legendary mound at the summit several hours later. The sky had cleared up and we could see this absolutely magnificent view across the rolling hills of Wales. I made the sign of the cross and cast my prayer into the wind, watched as it made it’s way up to Grandma Rosella.
Mr. D., our teacher and guide, asked us a question as we sat looking out from spot in the sky.
“Why do we climb mountains?” We didn’t answer, just kept looking. Each of us immersed in our own minds, trying to absorb as much of the beauty as we could. “For the view, my dear students. For the view.”
I’ve thought about this moment, and this question, many times over the twenty-four years that have passed between my journey to Yr Wyddfa and today. I’m still processing my answer. I agree that we climb for the view. But also, I think we climb for the climb. And for the companionship of those who walk with us into the clouds. And for fresh air. And to push ourselves beyond all measure. And to release prayers we’ve held in our bodies for many long years, at last, into the sky.
Good journey,
❤️🔥Emily Lupita
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