Yesterday, with many hundred others, I attended the funeral at St Asaph cathedral of Michael Griffith, a great Welsh patriot and a man hugely liked, respected and admired by most people who knew him.
Michael’s achievements are well known and too many to relate, but it cannot be disputed that he made one of the greatest contributions of anyone to Welsh public life over the last 40 years.
He was a great walker and one of my happiest memories since election to Parliament (which I blogged about at the time) is of the afternoon Sara and I spent with him, Helen Mrowiec and Fiona Gale on an expedition to the iron age enclosure of Penycloddiau on the summit of Moel Arthur, in the Clwydians. Michael was chairman of the Heather and Hillforts Landscape Partnership and was keen to show me that remarkable conservation project from one of its highest vantage points. If anything is to be a memorial to him, it would be hard to find a better one.
Michael Griffith died as perhaps he would have wished, walking in the heart of Snowdonia. His funeral service sheet contained a quotation that says a great deal about him and about the human spirit. It is from Mount Analogue, by René Daumal:
You cannot stay on the summit forever: You have to come down again… So why bother in the first place? Just this: What is above knows what is below, But what is below does not know what is above. One climbs, one sees, one descends, one sees no longer. But one has seen. There is an art of conducting oneself in the lower regions by The memory of what one has seen higher up. When one can no longer see, one can at least still know.
