Where do you think best?

What changes such a hill for the worse? Earth moving equipment and explosives serving development would do it.

If those calamities stay away, the aged visitor who spent a childhood here would recognise the place if this had been an important or personally sacred site a lifetime ago. Or several lifetimes, if fanciful options like time travel, reincarnation or clairvoyance were possible.

As time goes on, stored photos may become the prosaic, yet attainable way of comparing what studied places on earth looked like at other times. Animals won’t move the rocks here. Dassies might discolour parts of them over time, the lines redrawn imperceptibly slowly in accordance with dassie habit or culture changes.

The seasons will show in the flowers and fruits borne by the prevailing vegetation. Other climatic cycles will impact as well, though often at a slower rate. The plant species mix might change naturally, or by the introduction of invaders.

Montane solitude has since biblical times been sought by individuals pushed to the edge by everyday life or frenzied crowds. Some seek a special place where a deep realisation had once dawned or a peak experience changed psyche and life. How does revisiting a loved spot become established?

Thinking productively at highest attainable level, or becoming attuned emotionally in a readiness and receptive sense, may be induced by revisiting such a revered personal spot with a view, a tree, a rock or silence. Others might turn it on easily in the bath at home or in a hotel with no need for sweating up a moutain.

The mindset in such a place may be passive, experiencing only the silence, sensing the universe in wonderment once the mundane disappears, or for soothing a singed self.

Active use of the quiet moment on the hill, mountain, desert, sea or arctic haunt may be about a big choice, life-changing step or deliberately reconfiguring beliefs or meaning.

People sometimes need nature for holding onto sanity. Fortunately, the silence on the rock or under the trees is usually sympathetic to such needs, particularly when there is patience.