So picking up from last week’s musing, I had got clear that my energy was depleted because I am missing the high places. My soul is crying out to be in and among the mountains. It isn’t necessarily about climbing them, I’m a walker not a climber. It is about the power of them. And the smallness of us. It is about being embraced by the landscape, held in the arms of the planet. It is about being away from the visible audible tangible stuff of every day.
It is about the risk of getting lost.
It is about the joy of finding things. And self.
Having worked that much out, I had a clearer picture of the problem to be addressed. The solution would be: go to Scotland and get lost. It is not happening any time soon. I don’t drive. If I did then I might pack up a load of stuff, find a cottage to rent and head off hillwards. The idea of several hundred miles of buses and trains does not appeal right now. Indeed I’m not entirely sure it would be legal right now.
The alternative is to try to figure out how to get a taste of what it is I’m missing.
This invovles distilling it down, separating out the flavours, and getting creative about trying to fill those gaps in my suburban flatland home and the hinterland that I am willing and able to walk / train into.
I started by revisiting my photographs from the trek to Lo Manthang. That was the last seriously high-place holiday. Life has intervened since then. Six years ago. They were surveying for the road. I suspect it is a very different route now. I think about the routine on the trail, up and out early to be ensconced in the next tea house before the anabathic wind made the dust unbearable. I remember how cold the nights were. I remember Day 3 – a long hard-walking day and the end of which my achievement was sense of humour still intact. I remember a digestive system ill-prepared for so much garlic, and how my appetite failed in the altitude. I remember the quiet day, when Pete and I walked almost alone and shared the last few tales from our unconnected lives. I remember being given an opportunity to skip a day for pertinent reasons which (as it happens) track back to my first Nepal trip back in 2000, and replying that I really wanted to walk and besides, if I have to manage this, I’d rather do so on the trail than try to do so in the back of a jeep. My body behaved that day. Given how little I slept and how little I ate, and how unsuited it was to begin with, it held up pretty well for the whole trip. Mostly.
Shifting my routine to ‘mountain time’ might be a place to start. Early mornings and up and out, and settling in to afternoons in quiet places. Cold nights are coming.
Disconnecting from the electronics – and reading more.
Cooking and eating differently.
I remember another day in another country. Walking back down to the tree line. As the path wandered through the woods adjacent to the road, the place was suddenly alive with prayer flags. The wishes and blessings of the faithful being offered to the wind. Prayer flags are everywhere in Bhutan and Nepal, but that moment coming into the trees and into this forest of faith is the one I can still feel. My personal spirits were low that day, and I was glad to see the road and our transport, but what made me smile was fluttering from poles in among the trees. I have often wondered if there is a space for such flags in my garden, but I’m sure I read somewhere that one should not buy them, that they must be gifted.
This is when I realise that my cherished Katas were packed away when I moved house and haven’t been brought back into the light.
<< PAUSE >> while I rectify that.
I am sure that they are meant to adorn a portrait of a revered one, but as I don’t go in much for revering my gurus (respecting yes, reverance not so much, idolising definitinely not) I have redraped the scarves upon a misty mountain print of somewhere I have never been. Pasts and possible futures.
Blessings, memories, potentialities and mist and mysteries.
Maybes.
Memories are part of my re-setting…but we cannot live in our past. Leastways, I choose not to do so. Likewise we cannot wait upon a future that may never arrive, or may do so in a different guise to the one we’d want.
I have walked pretty much ever day since the on-set of the first lock down. I am not just grateful for, but astonished and delighted by the nature on my doorstep. I know I am lucky. I also know that these walks have been short and physically unchallenging. They have been mentally soothing, rather than stimulating…known routes, familiar paths, few enough miles.
If I want to satisfy my craving, I need to switch it up a gear. I will accept the landscape (she said, as if she had a choice) but I need to switch my movement up a gear: to walk further, to walk less familiar. While local rules still permit, I need to get over my public transport hesitancy and get back out there.
As I journalled about the idea of re-dedicating Saturdays to walking, I realised how often I have done this. Dragged out all the old route books and maps, and decided, yep, I’m getting back into this. It struck me how often those thoughts hit me at this time of year. I wondered why.
I confess, it has occurred to me that it’s armchair walking. I can decide at the beginning of November that this will be a brilliant thing to do, knowing that the weather is closing in and I will have ample excuses not to actually do it.
There is a point, though, when the excuses just don’t cut it, when you know you need to delete your get-out clauses, and…well…get out there.
Recent conversations suggest that the timing is linked to my nature, described in Chinese astrology as Water Tiger. Add that to my western astrological sign which is also a water sign, it follows that winter is my season – and I am probably longing for snow as much as I am for the hills. Is one the surrogate for the other? Or is it because of the snow that I Iong for the altitude?
Snow. Clouds. Whiteness. Cold. Purity. Otherness.
It is true that in the absence of height and snow, I would settle for skies that carry clouds that are other than universal gunmetal grey, which is where we have mostly been for weeks now.
I long for frost…but take substitute pleasure in overnight wet on the leaves lit by a brief early sunburst.
I could stop thinking of these things as poor echoes, and consider them as firm promises…of the world still out there…Or I could do better yet, and simply relish them for themselves.
As British Summer Time ends and (on one measure) we head back into winter and dark nights, I am gifted a golden day. Eight and a half flat miles isn’t very far at all, but I realise that it is further than I have regularly walked for over a year…and it takes me not just through the woods and along the river and the lake shore, but behind the village church and down onto the marsh. I walk among the cows, avoiding eye contact, because, well, me and large animals – not good, bite bruises remembered – and through the gates and on, and on. It’s strange walking in this direction which would have been homeward, but now is not. A reminder of ongoing change, and progress. My old friend tree still stands and I take a photograph for old times’ sake. I wonder if it knows I have new favourites now, or if it cares.
I relish the squelch of paths that won’t be passable in a week or two. I smile at finding my way blocked by fallen trees and having to work back and round, avoidng the river cuts and the deep water and – in this tiny way – being reminded of the ‘no promises’ of a planned route. I love the point at which I begin to feel the distance in my thighs and hips, gentle reminders to break back in slowly. I remember thinking, this is going to hurt tomorrow and as I now type, I realise it didn’t, so I can push myself harder. And I want to do so.
I watch something high and raptorish, scouting, and then flying away. And I remember sitting above Helmsdale, my back against the concrete base of a power pylon, watching an eagle quartering away across the other side of the valley. Fell-quartered eagle flight.
As I a type, I remember a Suffolk encounter with an owl, that cut through the hedge-break and had to slam on its breaks when it found me in is low flight path. The mountains don’t hold all the joy. I do well to remember that.
I’d do well to prepare for heading back to the hills, but better yet to do so by simply venturing further into the flat lands – pushing myself agains the landscape that is here at hand, as starting point.
I resolve to start.
~ / ~
Three days later, I learn that we are to be locked down again, and know that I am going to have to be even more creative about this.
