So a lot of us do stuff in the outdoors, dog walking, hiking, climbing, biking, riding etc. We spend days immersed in nature, but how many of us really take notice of what’s around us? What the trees are, what plants are in flower, what species that hawk is above you. Do you really connect with nature and the mountains in a way that goes deeper than just being a visitor?
I used to be obsessed with bagging summits, Munros, Corbetts, Wainwrights, Marilyns, Grahams, Hewitts, Nuttals… blah blah blah. I’d keep spreadsheets and notebooks to tick them off, obsessed with the ones I hadn’t achieved yet. Granted it made me go to areas I probably wouldn’t have visited otherwise, but I would never go there again as the sole reason was to tick that hill off.
The Here and Now
Then I had cancer and everything changed. In 2015 I was diagnosed with kidney cancer, early enough that it hadn’t spread, but aggressive enough to require the removal of a kidney. Annoying really as I had earmarked one of those organs to sell if I got a bit short at any point, but ho hum. Now this is usually the kind of event that drives people to want to achieve more, to find a sense of purpose, to run those marathons, climb Everest etc. But it had a different effect on me. The realisation that we only ever have the here and now hit me like a bus, yesterday is only memory and the future hasn’t happened. We fill the future with plans and targets which can all be swept away by fate. But right here, right now is all yours.
The first walking trip after my op was to the Isle of Wight with my wife. We walked along the coast in the pouring rain and had the most wonderful day ever, soaked to the skin with poor visibility, but stupidly happy in the moment. It made me look back at memories of hills and mountains and I was a little shocked to realise that I couldn’t actually remember getting to the top of any of them. There is a whole treasure trove of recollections about dodgy descents, laughs with mates, dreadful campsites and things that went wrong. But not really any of the summits, and thinking about it they are just places to pass by, maybe have a brew at, but your destination is actually wherever you parked the car or are camping for the night. The summits, for me at least, were just a tick on a list as you passed them by.
Connections With Nature
The things that have really stuck in my mind are the deeper conections with nature, there’s a whole slide show in my head of events. A stag staring at me one Scottish dawn as I opened the tent flap, about 10 metres away, he snorted and ambled off. It was nothing to him but it is etched in my memory against the dawn light. A woodland in Wales, primeval in its moss draped emerald wonder. My son tickling a small brown trout from the Taf Fechan below the shoulder of Pen y Fan. A kingfisher in the Lake District, oblivious to my presence. Mist rising from the river Dove in the Peak District on a summer dawn. Ghostly abandoned buildings appearing from the mist in the slate mines of Cwmorthin.
These, and countless other recollections, are the thing that have remained with me. Not the summits or how many I’ve ticked off and noted in a spreadsheet. So now I’ve discarded the lists and changed my focus when planning trips. The world opens up when you start to research places that you think you already know, looking into the geography, geology, flora and fauna, human history and, unfortunately, what’s happening today with climate change.
There’s no True Wilderness Left in the UK
Everywhere we look we see a man made landscape, since the first Neolithic farmers started to cut down trees to clear land for crops and grazing we have been altering and moulding every square metre of these islands. Livestock, from sheep and cattle grazing to moorland managed for grouse shooting has shaped the moorland we see today.
Even in the Scottish Highlands, where the deer pictured at the top of this page dwell, the landscape is under pressure. Deer have no natural predators left so they can breed and multiply without constraint. This puts huge pressure on the land, bark stripped from trees, shoots being eaten before trees can gain a toehold and animals dying of starvation because the land won’t support their numbers. Most estates manage the deer population through shooting the weaker animals, whether by gamekeepers or paying guests stalking.
Understanding these issues is a fascinating pursuit, it’s not a case of ‘farming is bad’, after all it is an essential companion to everything the human race has achieved. Tourists come and go, but the upland farming communities are the ones that maintain our beloved landscapes. If you truly want to get to know a place talk to the farmer, I have learnt more from a twenty minute chat with a shepherd on a quad bike than I’d ever learn in a visitor centre.
History Defines Us
Every square mile of these islands are soaked in history, ancient barrows and hill-forts, industrial remains of mining and manufacturing, sites of battles and sieges, grim days of Highland clearance and social upheaval. All of this is there to be discovered and make days in the hills so much richer. Don’t forget the mountaineering history either, the Scottish Mountaineering Press have produced some stunning books on the history of Scottish Mountaineering, they have a biography of Tom Patey out in December 2022, Patey was one of Scotland’s foremost climbers and mountaineers and I can’t wait to read it.
So do a little digging into the history and natural history of the places you walk and climb in, I guarantee it will enrich your travels.
