Mountains of Mystery

Photos one and two: on Beinn a'Ghlo. Photos three and four: wild camp on Ben Macdui

Beinn a'Ghlo: hill of the mist, or hill of the veil. The literature surrounding this Scottish mountain abounds in adjectives such as beautiful, mysterious, isolated and remote. Yet veils and mysteries seemed a world away when I began my visit to Beinn a'Ghlo at the end of June. I stepped off the train in the small and quiet township of Blair Atholl, and was soon walking past flower-filled meadows and bright green pastures. Only ninety minutes south of where I live, yet Blair Atholl and its immediate environs exude a softer, lighter ambience than the frequently-stern landscapes nearer to home. I could have been in Sussex.

An hour or so later, I arrived at the base of the mountain proper, and any notions of being in southern England were quickly dispelled. A steady wind was blowing beneath a uniform grey sky; as I climbed I could not help but notice that, despite the wind, a distinctive silence seemed to have enveloped the entire scene. This, the eerie silence, is another feature of Beinn a'Ghlo sometimes noted in the literature. Was this 'just' a fabrication of my own imagination? Was the silence 'really' out there? Was the reality a mixture of the two? Was there any practical way of knowing?

A long serpentine ridge connects the three major summits comprising the massive bulk of Beinn a'Ghlo. I moved along the twisting snake of the back quietly and with the respect appropriate to this great mountain. I sensed the place to be a repository for some ancient wisdom long disappeared from the world of human exoteric knowledge. When the time arose for me to return to Blair Atholl, I eschewed the ridges and trodden ways, instead making a beeline across the stone and heather for a bridge across the river way, way below. As I started to descend, I sensed a movement out of the corner of my left eye. Over a mile away, and far below, a herd of deer had nevertheless caught my scent. As a single body, they moved across the surface of the corrie, bunching close together as they went. I have never seen such an enormous herd of deer in my life, and the sight brought to mind those aerial shots of huge herds of wildebeest or buffalo roaming across the great plains of Africa that are the staple of wildlife documentaries on television.  Mountain of hidden mysteries indeed.

More recently, I had the pleasure to visit another mountain that brims with folklore. As part of a wild camp multi-peak trip across the Cairngorms, I took in the second highest summit in Scotland, Ben Macdui. As Rennie McOwan observes in his fascinating book 'Magic Mountains', the Big Grey Man of Ben Macdui is the best-known spectre of the Scottish mountains (as well as being, according to the author, the one about which most nonsense has been written). As one penetrates the interior of the Cairngorm massif, a very particular quality of savage wildness emerges. Wide highland spaces cut through deeply by crag-lined, loch-cradling, clefts and canyons. Ben Macdui is characterised not so much by its massive domed summit as through the cliffs and gashes that form its perimeters. Personally, I saw no evidence of the Grey Man. However, many claim to have done so. Certainly, the enormous rock-and-gravel strewn summit area seems more suited to the Moon than to be regarded as an Earthly landscape, and it is not difficult to envision all kind of otherwordly happenings taking place on the upper slopes of Ben Macdui.

Rennie McOwan is of the opinion that the Big Grey Man no longer walks the tops of the Cairngorms. 'The Big Grey Man of Ben Macdhui will never return to that mountain. The mountain is too busy. It is often thronged with people. The old mystery has gone. There is no longer an atmosphere when the feel of the hill can frighten people.' He has a point. Certainly, as I stood beside the summit cairn and became aware of a man not fifty yards away conversing on his mobile phone, it seemed as if there was a human conspiracy at large to remove the mystery from these high places. Yet I have been to spots where the mountains have provoked fear in me. I have had strange experiences in these high places, and felt the veil between the worlds become wafer-thin. We can still learn much from these repositories of the most ancient of wisdoms, the mountains. I shall return.....

                  

In the Footsteps of Castaneda

                              East face of the Witch

In the footsteps of Castaneda: no, not literally. That's Neil Kramer, recently returned from a great road trip taking in the Sonora Desert, northern Mexico, home to the many adventures of Carlos Castaneda, Don Juan Matus, Don Genaro, et al. I speak more of following some of the techniques and practices sprinkled throughout the pages of Castaneda's compelling prose.

It's convenient to dismiss Castaneda as mental titillation for the bohemian wing of the student population. 'Wow! Amazing stuff! Hey, who's got the dope?' In truth, the works of Castaneda are among the few of my inspirations from the 1970s that speak more profoundly and eloquently to me today than forty years ago. The wisdom contained therein seems more pertinent and closer to hand than it ever did during the years of my communal youth.

'The Teachings of Don Carlos' is a compilation by Victor Sanchez of practices gleaned from the volumes of Castaneda, along with other techniques he has learned himself. Significantly, he had lived and trained with the Nahua and Huichol Indians of Mexico long before coming across Castaneda and finding striking similarities (thereby lending authenticity to the sometimes disputed wisdom of Castaneda).

Today I am largely concerned with the teachings on walking. The Mexican Indians are, according to Sanchez, masters of the art of walking, having developed the requisite skills during centuries of roaming across vast areas of mountain and desert. In Castaneda's books, time and again the author is taken on a long walk by the aged seer Don Juan, the wise old man moving effortlessly across the surface of the Earth for hours on end, the hapless Carlos puffing and panting, sweating and struggling along behind. The teachings on walking form part of the process of 'stopping the internal dialogue', a prerequisite for moving into the separate reality, other dimensional/density space, call it what you will. The art is to perceive reality directly, rather than thinking about it; direct experience instead of mere description.

I leave Newtonmore station, on the edge of the Cairngorm National Park, and am soon walking above the cascades and plunge pools of the Calder River. The teachings are simple in essence, yet ridiculously tricky to apply with any consistency. Walk rhythmically and silently, concentrating on the terrain near at hand. If you want to talk or look at the wider landscape, stop walking. Stay 'in the body', wear a rucksack and carry nothing in the hands. Remain conscious of breathing, and try to synchronise it with walking. Stay aware of the Earth. In general terms, don't think about where you are going or where you have come from: just be 'in the walk' right now. Follow these instructions and you will gain access to unknown reserves of energy, not to mention opening the crack between the worlds.

It is as I begin to climb more steeply and the terrain becomes rougher that the challenge really looms. As a better-than-reasonable reader of maps and of the landscape, I can easily fall into gauging my current altitude and how many more metres I have to climb. This is largely a reflection of the unpleasant sensations sometimes experienced when climbing - an ascent becomes a disagreeable slog, something to get over and done with as soon as possible. But now, don't think of the top of the mountain. Put away the map, don't consult your watch. Just be aware of moving through the landscape, whatever its nature.

My practice of walking Toltec-style is deeply flawed, yet makes a difference. I cross peaty, conventionally dull and featureless terrain in a mood of contentment.  Eventually, I find myself beside the cairn on top of the mountain. A'Chailleach, it's called: the Witch. Who is this witch? Did a traveller through the different densities of the cosmos once inhabit the mountain, maybe inhabiting a cave in the crags below the summit? Was a witch from ancient Celtic legend - the Cailleach Bheur, for example, witch of the storms - reputed to live on the mountain top, or to have created it? Was a witch burnt here during the times of persecution? Does it refer to the mountain itself, endowed with magical and healing properties? Does anybody know?

I continue onwards, across a landscape increasingly remote from the cares of normal human civilisation. The sense of shifting into a different world is palpable as I ascend peat and grass slopes to the top of another hill, Carn Sgulain. In truth, it is a small rise in the general swell of the moorland. Carn Sgulain may indeed be the least spiky of all the Munros, but looks out over the vast sprawling spaces of the inner Monadhliath, and I love it. Distant horizons are obscured by a uniform grey murk, but the sense of expanse is marvellous nonetheless. A place that the witch would feel at home indeed.

This Monadhliath, with its Chailleach and Carn Sgulain, is prime territory for trashing by industrial-size windfarms. Within a few years, the number of these monstrosities in the area will have multiplied. The witches, wizards, and local spirits will not be pleased. As documented elsewhere on Pale Green Vortex, a look below the surface hype and hysteria reveals that logical and rational arguments for this desecration amount to literally zero. Even for someone chasing the chimera of decarbonisation, windfarms are the last thing to be promoting.

I freestyle across boggy terrain, pathless and infrequently visited by humankind, finding hidden cascades and an unexpected craggy aspect to the Witch as I do so. Eventually a vague path appears alongside the stream threading down the glen and leading me back to the world of human affairs. A shaft of warm sun breaks through the greyness overhead as I pass once more along the Calder gorge and spy the little township of Newtonmore close at hand.