Ask people to think of respect and reverence for the natural world and the chances are they will conjure images of folk hugging trees and dancing naked in the forest. Good old Mother Earth: benign, nurturing and caring, looking after us all. Very nice. The reality is far more complex than this idealised fantasy of smiley-smiley paganism. Love for, and spending time in, the natural world is neither inherently good or bad, pleasant or painful, nice or nasty. It is a case of reconnecting with the wider matrix of which we are all part. Time spent in the wild is, for me, a matter of purification, of disentanglement from the artificial, the synthetic, and a reassertion of personal authenticity. In my experience, this can involve, in high places especially, the possibility of strange things happening. And while this may sound like entering paradise, it is just as likely to manifest as mockery - the universe laughs at us darkly, pouring cold water over all our cherished human hopes, desires, inclinations and infatuations, all our frenzied and oh-so-important human activities. One such day occurred only recently.......
I went out by myself. The specialist mountain weather forecast was pretty good: possibly a little drizzle early on, but soon clearing up to leave a fine day. Alighting from the train mid-morning in good spirits, I followed the way that is fairly familiar to me by now: up the side road by a small river, down the path through the woods to eventually cross the water by a wooden bridge, follow the estate road up past the estate lodge and onto the wild land. The magnificent roar of a stag greeted me as I headed up the glen. It being autumn, a profusion of fungal entities lined the sides of the track, including a number with undoubted psychotropic attributes.
My heels began to hurt. I've had these walking boots for a year now. In many respects they are excellent, offering plenty of support and instilling confidence for crossing rough and rocky terrain. The problem is that the heels rub like hell. This kind of thing is supposed to disappear with use, but in this instance it just hasn't happened. They have got worse.
There is, I know, a grove of trees ahead - a little oasis before abandoning oneself to the upland heather and moor -, and I decide to stop there for a snack and foot repair. I am walking increasingly gingerly, however, and the trees are getting closer very slowly. I find that I'm stopping frequently to move my feet around in the boots to alleviate the pain. I finally hobble my way to the trees, where I shuffle myself onto a fallen log. I spy more of the psychotropic-type mushrooms nearby; is this a message? On closer inspection, however, they reveal themselves to be 'lookalikes'. My attention returns to my feet.
One of modern technology's brightest creations is Compeed. This is a magic blister plaster, which works by forming a kind-of second skin over the wound. I have always found it miraculously effective. However, today, it fails to work its usual wonders. I set off, but immediately am in pain. I wiggle my feet around. Pain. I try a variety of ways of tying up the bootlaces. No go. I remove and put back in a variety of insoles. Nothing's making the slightest difference. I hobble along for a couple more minutes before succumbing to a fit of despair that would do Basil Fawlty proud (one of the good things about going to isolated places is that you can fall apart in ways that would be totally unacceptable in social situations. The rocks and heather just don't care).
I descend to a bridge crossing a river in a shallow gorge in crisis. What do I do? I can't continue like this. When even Compeed doesn't work, it's like running out of gears in a car on a steep slope. I consider turning back, but what's the point? That still entails walking for a couple of hours. I continue onward and upward, rudely punctuating the silence with groans and curses.
Soon, though, I'm over 600 metres above sea level. This is when things normally begin to get interesting. Two pairs of ptarmigan, their underwings and belly white in readiness for the winter, fly out in front of me, providing a change from the omnipresent grouse that come screeching out of the heather at frequent intervals. A mountain hare appears on the track in front of me, nonplussed by my presence. Three more lope closely by.
By now, the cairn on top of the hill is in clear sight. Then it starts to rain. I can see it raining on lots of hills around. I recall the mountain weather forecast, and a song by Lou Reed plays itself through my mind: 'You can't depend on a lot of things/ You need a busload of faith to get by.' By the time I reach the rounded summit, the rain is quite hard, and the cloud is right down. Committed lowlanders do not get to experience the unique type of precipitation characteristic of Scottish hills and mountains. Cold, rock-hard pellets of icy hail blown almost horizontally in a stiff, blustery wind, lashing the skin on the face and rendering it numb.
'The wonderful view from the top of the hill': another cherished human dream mocked into nothingness by the Dark Jester. Any reason to linger on the top now eludes me, and I am soon heading along the ridge. Downhill is not too bad; any climbing, however, sends sharp pain shooting along the lower back regions of my legs. Suddenly, out of the fog, appears a mountain hare. Then another. And another. About fifteen come out of the heather in quick succession, taking their time, some standing for a moment on their hind legs before moving on.
I'm in the Monadhliath. These are not spiky mountains, more like rolling whalebacks, covered in vast swathes of heather and peat. Some people seem to find them tedious, but they need to be experienced with a different mindset than the dramatic, rocky peaks elsewhere. They offer a deep sense of space and solitude. Go now, though, if you want the full Monadhliath experience. Emissaries of the Dark Cabal are in the process of converting them into an obscene industrial windfarm park. As I reach the end of the ridge, the clouds part for a moment, and in the distance I glimpse the flailing arms of a windfarm. Closer to hand, I look down on the site of another proposed act of wanton vandalism, Allt Duinne. I can hear the ugly laugh of the Dark Cabal ringing in my ears; unlike the Jester's laughter, it serves no higher function. It is laughter without a sense of humour.
Coming off the hill, showers continue to dapple the landscape. Strange truncated rainbow segments stretch vertically into the sky, like ladders to the clouds. I find the courage to look at my heels; in all my years on the mountains, I have never seen such a sight before. The sun comes out; I begin to write......
Photo: Dax Wasser
