I look to the nearer hills and try to remember the little geology I know, and wish I knew more.
Below, in a valley of varying shades of green, I see church spires and the ochre roof tops of a small cluster of houses. I dwell for a moment on their history, but only long enough to realize that a lifetime could be spent in study and only a fraction understood.
I see animals in the fields and admit to myself I know nothing of their anatomy, or even husbandry.
The sky is beginning to fill with clouds. There's a front approaching, but that's all I can really say; I can't tell you a great deal about meteorology.
It's then that I look to the ground at my feet, to the grass that runs along the lay-by, and I see the plastic bottles, the fast-food wrappers and plastic bags discarded by god knows who, passing through, ignoring the mountains, valleys, villages and skies, while trashing the verges.
Perhaps it's our virtual existence, seeing life through a series of screens that does it. Travelling from television and computer, at home and at work, looking out at the world through a car's windscreen, or a bus window.
We seem to have lost contact with the real environment. Soon even the space between our eyes and screen will be eliminated by Google glasses.
Is knowing the real world that bad? According to most people it is. Almost all adults use one form of drug or other to alter their perception of life. Alcohol relaxes; cannabis makes you happy; cocaine, confident; ecstasy, chatty too; speed, full of energy; mephedrone, all of the above; and methamphetamine (ice) arouses.
But don't drugs, whether stimulant, depressant or hallucinogen, simply represent a way in which we choose to interact with the real world?
And what price do we pay for this maltreatment of life and environment? Drug abuse costs the English and Welsh tax payer about £19bn per year. Alcohol abuse about £6bn.
The environment Agency spends £10 million annually collecting roadside rubbish. In fact, 2.25 million pieces of litter are dropped in the UK everyday, apparently by 48% of the population.
As I drive down from the mountain I see a sign warning of ice - someone has daubed 'ice baby' across it. I wonder if, as they did so, they marvelled at the vast forest that lay behind the road, the mountains beyond, the history of this land, or the way it was formed.
It's a world I wish I knew better, in all its natural beauty.
