I have come to a not-very famous mountain, which goes by the name of A'Chralaig. It's actually the highest mountain hereabouts, but not greatly frequented; most people visit once only. The reason is directly in front of me: a 600 metre-high (almost 2000 feet) uniformly steep wall of pathless, flattened yellow grass, peat, heather, and large stones. I know that at the top there is a ridge - I've been here before, one of the few -, but to get there means climbing this great south wall of A'Chralaig.
Herein lies the test. Conventional wisdom would have it that this is a relentless slog, devoid of joy and destined to erode your very will to live. Animistic shamanic consciousness knows different, though - 'knows', note, not 'believes'. Everything is holy, as the poet said. Every stone, every tuft of flattened yellow grass, brims with significance. The training consists of learning to experience this, in every situation and at every moment. Tell a piece of heather that it is somehow less significant because it happens to hang out on the uniform slopes of A'Chralaig rather than on a much-photographed hillside above Balmoral, and it will quiver with confusion. Just so.
I start to climb. The sun is shining, the wind is blowing in hard from the west, and the sky a ceiling of hazy blue. In order to encourage shamanic consciousness, various strategies are in place: 1/ Don't go too fast. Excess speed belies a sense of 'get this out of the way as quickly as possible.' 2/ Forget the goal. 'I'm here to get to the top of a mountain' is false thinking. Every moment is to be savoured. 3/ Don't look at the map. The hills are free of cloud, and I know where I am going. Frequent map gazing is all about seeing how far you've gone, how much height you've gained, how much torture still to go. Irrelevant distractions from the task at hand.
For reasons mysterious, I appear to be fairly fit. I climb steadily into the more rarified dimensions of mountain wildness. After a while, I'm stopping more frequently for short rests, but I take this as a natural part of the process.
There is still plenty of climbing to do once the ridge is attained, but it almost seems effortless. The spirits of the mountain tops are different, as I've written about before. Huge snowfields still cover the upper slopes, and the bizarrely huge cairn on the summit of A'Chralaig is half-buried. I continue kicking my way along the snowy ridge, then look back towards the summit reaching into the sky like a great spire. The graceful, white, serpentine curve of the ridge provokes a deep sense of, well, I don't know what. 'F*****g brilliant planet!' I yell spontaneously into the ethereal atmosphere.
The REAL test is coming off the mountain. Six hours on the hoof, beginning to feel weary and jagged round the edges: impeccable awareness is not easy to maintain. Incredibly, I stumble upon a path-of-sorts tumbling down the slopes, but it seems to follow a particularly steep section of the hillside. The outside of one knee begins to give trouble: mild iliotibial band syndrome. It's not the first time. I had it two years ago, when descending one of the most isolated mountains in Scotland, six hours' walk from the nearest road (eight hours with iliotibial band...). A rhythm is soon established, however: descend for a short distance, exclaim 'ouch' loudly, wiggle and extend knee, then repeat process. Maybe it's some god or spirit speaking:'Slow down, slow down. Tune into the everpresent satori, expand into interconnectedness.' Who knows?
A shaft of sunlight cuts across a hillside, briefly lights up the loch below, and is gone....
