New Zealand

Landscape plays a slow tune.

At first distant, a gathering of cloud beyond the horizon. Or, spring sunshine on frost. It’s a gradual softening and loosening of things. It builds, there’s a reordering and at some point it throws flames, sudden, great flames that leap and cast shadows and throw warm arms up to the cracked walls and smashed glass windows. And there’s a heat, and it melts the creaking doors from their frames and dawn shines on flame and it doesn’t relent and nothing asks why.  

It took an entire week in New Zealand, this tune. No conscious hand can hurry it along yet I seemed destined to try. Wild-eyed and crazy for a connection I pulled my thoughts this way then that, through days and lakes and books. If I could just be startled, or sad, some sort of shock perhaps? Anything that would open those doors to the sunlight. This awful dance started early, on the slow descent over the beautifully named “Remarkables” mountain range near to Queenstown. They were enormous, clouds were boiling in valleys and what wasn’t black rock was brilliant white snow. I conjured up some tears and swept some make-do emotions into a nice neat pile, you know the way, like wondering at a baby’s hands or how on earth did they build the pyramids? We turned down a river valley, the water was turquoise and the stone was that alp-grey colour; as the engines whirred through their landing notes I grappled around faster and faster for connections, some way, any way, to bring the landscape to me. All this, even before I’d breathed the air.

It was through this hazed panic for joy that I approached the first days. There are plenty of ways in which not to connect with the environment in New Zealand and I drifted about these corridors quite regularly, what’s worse is I’d taken to using a camera. So on more than one occasion I’d pull over into a little carpark and take a photo, get back in the van and drive on, that anxious, hollow desire to record and catalogue, a reducing of the actual world to your own dreary collection of lurched-for images, holding onto moments that never extended beyond the act of capturing them anyway. It’s a regret that I never quite shook this off, this awful enslavement to images, following my camera around like some faithful dog.

I was living as some glitching computer programme or machine, flitting about between places and times, through sleepless nights and knotted dreams, over and over that same dry, wheel-rutted terrain of conscious grief. But then the brilliant flames? The doors melting away all of a sudden? Well of course, I exaggerate. I can chose to remember and repackage this holiday however I wish, whatever seems most appealing in retrospect. The truth is there were moments of peace and clarity throughout the holiday, it didn’t all burst at once, and I’ll come onto those. But there was this one experience at the end, something of an epiphany - or at the very least some sense of becoming okay - that I want to indulge, embellish here and there, take liberties with and simplify. All with the intention of presenting the holiday as I’ve held it since, as some beautiful coming together of threads.

It was on the shores of Lake Hawea at a little Department of Conservation campground. I arrived late, but in time to have a swim and cook dinner before spending a few hours on the beach with the setting sun. The swim had been calm, I remember standing up waste deep and letting the water drop from me before diving under again head first, I kept doing it and a London Grammar song lyric drifted around my head, maybe I’m wasting my young years. A smile rose, I wasn’t. At some point, after the sun dropped behind the mountains but long before darkness, I laid down, it was warmer down here and I felt assured, my thoughts had slowed to the pace of the idle breeze and flames lapped away inside me unhindered. I began to fall asleep and each time I opened my eyes, the huge cloud that cut across the sky had darkened a little more. Eventually stars switched on and the tent zips and camper van doors became the only sounds, even the lake became silent, nothing, no rustling at the pebbles, no sloshing, absolute calmness under the long dusk. I’d spent the week in crystal clear waters, walking endless beech forests, long sweeping ridges above Fjords and sailing on the world famous Milford Sound. These environments had their slow effect and there is no way that arriving here on the first night, I would have drifted into a peaceful sleep under the stars like this. Slowly the mania had lifted, and as it fluttered off across that silver lake I realised it was the first time since Ali died that I had felt peaceful, or indeed anything approaching it. And so New Zealand holds a special place in my heart, the giver of peace and as odd as it feels to say, something of a redelivery of Ali, now in a form with which I don’t need to wrestle, or spin around, or scurry away from. Now a peaceful, permanent, loving companion lying comfortably alongside me as the stars of the southern hemisphere knit those great unfamiliar shapes across the night.

In reality - and I should record the truth - during this epiphany I had two trips back to the van, one for a jumper and one for some insect repellent. I couldn’t get my back comfy after a while, the stones cooled down rather fast and thoughts of airports kept intruding like heavy boots, but at some point during that time all those wonderful things did happen to me, the calmness, the Ali-by-my-side, the big dark cloud like a tear across the sky.  

To all those other experiences then, the threads, the actual holiday I sat down to write about today. I should start with the Milford Sound (actually a Fjord, not a sound). Foremost, it had the most arresting effect on me, I find myself telling people it changed the way I see the world, and although that seems a little grandiose, it does persist as a feeling. The actual experience wasn’t all that visceral, I was milling about on a boat with others taking photos and listening to the too-loud tannoy guide, but the scenery has stayed lodged in me. The slow progress of the boat through the deep, blue-green water made the mountains seem infinitely big. Mitre peak, which stands straight up like the Langdales do above Old Dudgeon Ghyll stretches up 1692m and you see all of that, foot to summit from the water. Tides and crabs slip up and down its base, trees cling so far up and then it’s just brilliant silver rock chiselled into some kind of lightning strike, the perfect jagged triangle. Gable from Wastwater. There were seals and a solitary dolphin, there were huge forested valleys sloping off around corners, under impossible cliffs and ever-changing low clouds. Sometimes a wind whipped down the fjord off the Tasman Sea, I held a coffee and leant against the railings at the front whilst sea birds came close then far, giving some scale back to the cliffs, small planes did the same, or perhaps they were big? After the cruise I swam awkwardly at the head of the fjord, clambering over seaweed rocks out into a sea that refused to get deep. Once afloat though, I could stare up at Mitre peak and across at the 150m waterfall cascading from a glacier high above in the frozen valleys. There was an Oystercatcher and a few Brent Geese enjoying the late afternoon sun, and on my way out I let saltwater dry across my back as I crouched over a rock-pool bustling with tiny life. Everything beautiful.   

Later in the week I climbed Mount Luxmore and Ben Lomond, both of which provided unnervingly vast views. I felt compelled to pull the mountains closer in, huddle them around me. The lakes stretched away forever like seas and the mountain ranges were enormous piles of snow-capped monsters. These hills with their muscular, freshly formed shapes were, at times, an aggression upon the senses. I couldn’t stand the thrust. I longed for those old sages of Lakeland and thought wistfully of Skiddaw who’s youth was not unlike this. Its adolescence was full of drama, bursting up from a fault line into a mountain of Himalayan proportions, before the long drift north, the slow weathering into that beautiful stump sitting now, ever watchful over Keswick.

Weather? Clean air, winds. From the south, air uninterrupted since Antarctica would bring cold mornings to the campsites, chins in zipped fleeces over barbecues, dew on tents and puddles in ruts. Then warm tropical air would blow from the north and cicadas would wake up, the grass would crunch underfoot and everything seemed to be suddenly hot, like Spain or something. Often the sky would wake-up and cloud the heat away, wind would whip shapes across the water, rain would fall and then stop, leaving sunshine on steaming roads. Long days tumbled by and that beautiful dance between cloud, water and mountain never stopped all week. It was free, ever-changing weather, fast and troubled like a mind.

I genuinely didn’t think a place as beautiful as Britain could exist elsewhere, that a climate so spectacular and engrossing was just pottering along like ours, equally over-looked and undervalued at the opposite end of the globe. I can feel my hand on the warm pebbles at Lake Hawea, I can feel that mineral-like fine dust they left on my palms, I can hear the tents and camper vans, I can close my eyes and see the dark hills across the lake standing tall and black against the last embers of the day. Everything is a re-imagining, a sense of shapes in the chaos and New Zealand will remain just that to me, a forming of fantastic shapes that I’d long-forgotten existed. 

Langdale Horseshoe Fell Race 2018

So it rained. Needles of it lashed across Martcrag moor, on Crinkle Crags it came hard and heavy from above, thrown down with intent and malice. Sheltered behind Esk Pike, it drifted like sea fret, warm and slow through the silence behind the wind. It never stopped. As sure as the Thames, it came and came again. The fells were dark and muscular, racehorses, bad dreams. White veins had burst out everywhere, marbling Bowfell, fizzing and tumbling all-over like packs of terriers.

On the start line, a self-satisfied roar went up as it was announced that only half of the five-hundred people registered to race had turned up, making us the ‘hardy few’. I suppose there’s an element of personal heroism in choosing to run in conditions like this, a reinforcement of that familiar old narrative runners slip into: I do this, I don’t quit and am therefore valid. Of course there’s something in that, the satisfaction of completing something is deeply appealing, especially when it’s difficult, but there’s something to avoid there too - needing to punish yourself to feel OK. Is that what we’re up to? I hope not, but a friend once said to me that he’s never seen a runner looking happy in the act and for whatever reason that really stuck with me. I dwelt on it whilst jiggling around to keep warm on the start line, wondering why, questioning the motives. As we left though, clattering along the lane towards the first climb, something shifted in me, and once the steps to Stickle Tarn took hold of my legs and lungs all those half-baked, anxious thoughts slipped away behind, unresolved, returned to chaos.

I listened out for ravens under Pavey Ark. They’d been croaking and diving all over during my recce, but today it was just that familiar old shuffling and snorting sound - a pack of runners slowly catching me - rowdy bullocks, the hardy few. Reminded I was in a race, I pushed on. Soon enough another climb came and I felt sick and then hungry, then sick again. Later on I fell in a stream, cutting my knee and taking a bang to the shin. There was a low level of discomfort all the way around, but I never snagged again on those barbed, twisted thoughts, those forever why’s that pull and drag like the black dog and its tattered toy. Even walking along Wrynose bottom with all hope of competing gone and no energy left to run, even then I felt rested and sure. In motion there’s peace and what wouldn’t you trade for that?

I’d clearly I got a bit too peaceful up on Crinkle Crags, after running the little trod around Bad Step, I felt good. My mind was settled, my legs were springy and I’d found myself positioned well in a race that I’d been excited about all week. In this state of quietness I switched off completely and where I should have been descending to skirt around the last lump on the ridge, I ascended. The climbing felt good so I carried on, totally absent from the situation, completely adrift. Unwittingly, two other runners followed my absent mind into the mist and all of a sudden we found ourselves stood still, I’d woken up from whatever dream I was having to see two very concerned faces. I had to admit to them I was lost, my hands were too cold to unfold my map properly and it felt like minutes until I managed. I stared at it with aimless eyes, knowing it had no answers. I span the dial on my compass to a bearing I thought might do the job, I guess there was a 1 in 360 chance of it being right. In the end we agreed to follow a bearing of 55 and set-off down some steep fell, at some point we tried a bearing of 80 too, then 90. Tiring, and becoming cold we stumbled across a fence that followed a stream down to our right, sensibly one of the guys suggested we just follow that wherever it goes in order to get off the tops and down to safety. We dropped down beside the stream through rotten bracken and eventually out of the clag to see a shining Wrynose valley, full with streams, rivers and that familiar winding road up the pass to Three Shires. 

It was a long way back, and after a final bit of drama crossing the torrents, we were plodding nicely along the roads back to Langdale. Once we reached Blea Tarn I let the other two run ahead and I walked slowly up the gravel path beside the water. Recceing the Three Shires race back in summer, I swam here, disturbing a heron as I splashed into the water. It was warm and a family were picnicking on the other bank, skylarks were singing tall in the blue skies. Now, as the rain hardens, and the trees sway, I think about how memories are layering up in the Lakes once more, building on one another, holding me upright. Then, with a dull thud, it dawns that looking backwards isn’t always to look at Ali now, there’s a bit of road in the way and it’s stretching. Loss, if anything, is another dimension, it’s everywhere; it’s the light behind the poplars, casting those long, beautiful shadows into the distance, all afternoon.

It rained all the way home, cars were stranded in floods and traffic was backed-up for miles out of Ambleside. In-between the wiper blades were glimpses of shadowy fells and low clag, nothing flew or moved, crows, like deer, were sheltering in the woods. Whatever it is we brought down from up there is still burning away inside me now, I’m not sure what it is, but it feels something like gratitude.

Fieldfares

These are good times, because they are the only times.

A sense of permanence is lost in the bereavement process and today, sitting at my desk watching the clouds build and then collapse, as doors slam shut and buckets tumble about in the garden I feel grateful. It’s not always like this, but as I spend more and more time on my feet, moving through the landscapes I love, my thoughts come to rest more easily on gratitude. Transience and mortality seem so piercingly natural at times like this, not something to fight, or make sense of. Something to hold carefully in your hands like you might a butterfly or a broken light bulb.

Earlier, the wind was building frantically, and just as the rain began to splatter the window I found myself in a natural break from my work so headed out for a jog around the block. Descending through steep woodland, sheltered from the wind and rain, I dodged fallen branches and hopped over the stile in the wall, feeling light and awake for the first time all day. The wind sounded like surf in the tree tops and as I left the wood at the bottom it lurched across the field in gusts, blowing me from the path. Along the road, an odd coincidence of timing meant the siren of an ambulance started just as the rain became torrential. There were storm debris all over the footpath and I had my head down tacking against the showers, a wheelie bin fell over and a man held his hood across his face as he walked towards the bus stop.

Turning back up the hill and out of the wind I enjoyed the climb up the old track towards some more woodland. Leaves were flying past me horizontally and the rain had really kicked in, now pouring down my face. As the path steepened through some bracken I met a guy with his dog, his red coat was tied tight around his face but his dog was free, steaming, weaving.

“You’ve picked your time!” he said

“I certainly have”

And I had. All the irony in my intonation was through a sense of politeness. Because this is when to run. No doubt if the day was baking under tedious blue skies and a gentle breeze I’d have skipped all this, I wasn’t planning to run today. But the wind thrashing around like this, the broken skies and sideways rain bring some of the mountains down and it’s irresistible. After that steep section the route levels out through some woodland. Jogging along that path I thought back to the big freeze in February when I’d walk up here every day for a week. I’d booked holiday but we stayed at home, maybe because of the weather or maybe because Ali was too ill, I can’t remember. But we were snowed in for a few days and I walked this loop via Co-op daily, to get Rabbit out and to buy our evening meal.

Leaving Ali at home with the fire blazing and everything she needed for an hour or two meant I could focus on the silent, frozen landscape, exercise my legs, maybe even try to process some of what was going on. As the week progressed though, I became increasingly concerned about the birds. Some fieldfares – winter migrants who come to the UK from the east looking for berries – were knocking about near the woods. I bought a bag of apples, which they like, and placed them in some trees and on a little mound that is usually covered in heather but was thick with frozen snow. I’m not sure how long I waited for them, but enough time passed for me to become really cold, I was anxious to see them arrive for food, see their grey heads and spotty chests. They never turned up, so the next day I moved some of the apples but still no peck marks, in fact they never came all week. Rather than assume they’d found other food, I panicked they’d not found this food and I wondered about cutting the apples up, or moving them down the hill, nearer to the garden I’d seen them in.

Each morning I’d defrost the bird bath and after we ran out of food I baked a big cake for all the sparrows and tits, it was full of all our expensive nuts and seeds and they never touched it. I got to the point where I couldn’t think about much else but the birds, their struggle against the relentless winter was all consuming and a couple of times it became too much. I thought about their tiny hearts fluttering against the cold, about the race for life the fledglings had won over summer only to be faced with this frozen, foodless desert. And I thought about them at night, whilst Ali slept beside me, full of chemotherapy drugs and painkillers. I wondered where they slept and how I might manage to do the same.

Running around there today, past all those trees where the apples were hung, up those same paths, warm now, full of worms and bugs, running past Rowan trees overflowing with berries, running under a sky that blew as hard with rain as it did pigeons, I realised for the first time that those fluttering little hearts I’d cried for in winter were just spray flung high from a torrent, a raging torrent at which I couldn’t look.

These are good times though, because they are the only times. To see permanence flutter away on the wind, to know we are all gone in a gust, is to be alive. The season is on the move, birds are starting to flock and geese have taken to the skies once more, arriving here for our mild winter. Soon enough the fieldfares will be here too, and when it snows you’ll find me up the lane with a bag of apples, even if the fieldfares don’t.

Applecross

I have been entering some writing competitions recently. I'm finding it a really good way to practice writing under some imposed conditions. My latest piece not to win was about a holiday in Applecross last year for the Just Back travel writing competition in the Telegraph. I guess I was stretching the definition of "just back" a touch, but I came in on exactly 500 words thanks to some dodgy hyphens.

Its quite a sad piece, so if you're feeling a little wobbly about Ali today then maybe avoid it. Thanks

Applecross

 “They’ll be pinkies heading south” says Ali, looking up from her book as twenty or so pink-footed geese fly low across the grey sea that separates our cottage from Raasay. As I make another tea in the silent kitchen, Ali calls through “another fifteen just gone past, must be migrating, heading to Solway”

“sod the tea Al, I’ll get you a beer, lets watch the Pinkies awhile”

She could manage a couple of beers back then, it was the second week of her chemo cycle so each day was a small improvement as the toxins left her system. She’d slowly come back to life, start talking again, telling me about the geese or hedgehogs or something Grayson Perry said, or that maybe we’d see eagles this week. The geese kept on coming as the light faded on our first day in Applecross and we relaxed easily into our slow, quiet week together, both excited for another one of our Scottish adventures.

That was October, and somehow now it’s August. In between, Ali died. She talked about Applecross a lot during her final weeks, she told me that it’s all she could think about, that it had become an obsession. I got this panicked desire rise up in me to drive her up there again, like I had in October, with her fast asleep next to me as the sun slowly rose over the M6. I drove for nearly ten hours that day with barely a break. I could have done anything back then, bent down and pulled the mountains flat like bedsheets, sucked the clouds from the sky, because for once the drugs were working. Each month Ali improved a little more and she could breathe, walk, laugh without coughing.

So we didn’t pack her incurable diagnosis, we left it at home and spent a week amongst the bellowing red deer stags. We watched white-tailed and golden eagles float around like barn doors above Shieldaig harbour and most evenings a pine marten came to visit, helping the local mice eat  peanut butter that we’d smeared across the patio. 

As the week went on, the wind started to pick-up, battering our lonely cottage with rain that had come north from the distant Cullin mountains on Skye. We listened to the whistling window frames as we read our books and took long baths. Days rolled in and out with the weather off the sea, and through it all, pinkies continued to fly south into the wind, determined to leave those arctic breeding grounds before the real cold came.

It’s my turn to think of Applecross all the time now, it’s my obsession. This conflict of a place where I was the happiest I can remember being, but that I can barely say out loud. To help, I turn again and again to a quote Ali wrote for me towards the end, faced with a choice about where to die:

“Place is everything and nothing, for he is me and I am him”.

Brenda G Macrow

I didn’t go to the hills this weekend but I did drink too much which means I’m fumbling about at home on a Sunday evening looking for something tangible. The Crows outside are starting-up with their bedtime routines, cackling and posturing on their way down the field towards the woods. I’ve dug out my Brenda Macrow books, their torn jackets and brittle pages always sooth me. The smell of dust, or trapped damp, or whatever it is these old books smell of is taking me back to Barter Books in Alnwick where we bought them, I can hear the little train rattling around overhead and the pointless ticking of a clock.

Brenda wrote beautiful prose and melodic poems that scratch away furiously at the clichés and weary language we use when describing the hills. She was digging for that jewel in us for which she readily confessed, there are no words. Yet she tried, and I think what she achieved was to express just how compelled she did feel to dig, and it’s that journey which she takes us on. She wasn’t satisfied to have something in her that couldn’t be explained, almost at odds with this love for the mountains, so great and raw that it overwhelmed and confused her. She was out of control, and I haven’t read anything else about the hills that conveys this reckless love so purely.

“On days like this…” is a short piece of prose that I have found to be the most honest of her attempts at rationalising her feelings and it is as much about what it is to be alive as it is about the mountains.

The whole piece is here: http://www.electricscotland.com/travel/hills/chapter37.htm    

This passage seems to be shouting, begging, pulling at the ankles of the reader. I could imagine it shouted by a street preacher at indolent passers-by, it’s her rallying cry to us all, do you not hear??

“Do you not hear the faery violins of the grasses as they bend and bow to the breeze? They are playing for you. The trees are touching their harps for you -- the heather-bells are murmuring a song which reaches out to all the lost and lonely places of your soul. You are happy for the sun-kissed summer flowers -- and sad for the broken reed at the edge of the mourning stream. Whatever else you have known or failed to know about life, you feel that this day will live forever in your heart.”

She goes on to say that “while the senses cry “This is madness" the spirit cries “This is real!” which is a brilliant description of that conflict within us, when standing in the mountains, contemplating a view with your conscious thought, thinking how this or that look amazing, incredible, yet inside your spirit, which never grapples around for meaning or ideas, is finally connected and crying out way beyond your disintegrating thoughts, out beyond the senses, beyond reasoning, a spirit in you is crying out this is real! Do you not hear?

Later on, perhaps describing herself:

“Down in the glen, the shaggy red cattle stand at peace under the tall trees and the woman at the bothy door forgets her weary task and looks away up into the mountains, with that in her eyes for which there are no words.”

Yes, there are no words Brenda, but there’s a cry and we hear it loud and clear. And you can hear it too, in the following poem which reads like a song, it forces you to sing it, it swings and heaves off the page. It’s possibly the most cheerful thing I’ve ever read. 

I WILL arise and go, and go to the mountain: Oh, I will arise out of my darkness, my sorrow, and go to the mountain. To the old ways and the wise ways: To the lost ways and the long ways. Where life is but a shadow that plays on the calm face of the mountain. 

I will cast off my shackles and flee to the mountain: Oh, I will cast off my shackles of care, of envy, and flee to the mountain: To the cool days and the still days: To the brave days and the blue days: Where Peace in blessing forever lays her hands on the brow of the mountain. 

And I shall find my soul again in the mountain. Oh, I shall find the soul that I lost in the City, there in the mountain. With the wild things and the shy things. The swift things and the sure things. And the night, a mysterious folding of wings on the broad breast of the mountain.

The shy things, what better term for wildlife? conjuring up swathes of fantasy and magic in us with the simplest of language. And what a beautiful way to spend a Sunday evening, bathing in passion for life. Here’s to Brenda and a life well lived.

Borrowdale Fell Race

Something’s catching moonlight and I can’t tell if its high trees, clouds or mountains. That’s the thing with the lakes, nestled in these deep valleys you get your perspective all out of sync, get yourself lost in the folds of the... shit, must be all the Sneck Lifter and Stella sloshing around in me but I think that’s just a security light shining out, not the moon. Actually, it is, it definitely is. I still don’t know what it’s catching on up there but one things for sure, it’s shining down on a complete and utter ponce, swooning about in the beer garden alone, me and the moths giving it Wordsworth at the wall lights. I’d come out when the musician stopped, thought I’d cool off before he returned, its getting on for midnight but he had promised to be back after his piss. Unfortunately the staff thought different and his kit was unplugged, people were dispersed from the dance floor, and lights were flicked on. All a bit unceremonious, he’s worked so hard all night screaming Nirvana and Prince down the mic with just about everything he had. Anyway, he seemed happy enough and drunk enough too, telling one woman he lives in Paris and telling me he lives in Liverpool. I don’t know which is true, but his thick liverpudlian accent explaining how there’s “a lot of water round here” and that “Tories can’t swim” suggests maybe its Liverpool. I guess we’ll never know for sure.

Earlier he’d stood aside from his mic, put Karaoke versions of Right said Fred and Dolly Parton centre-stage, he’d stood screaming Smells like Teen Spirit to the point of speaker distortion as one after another shirt was flung in the air by a group of runners hitting a big second wind. I resisted of course, in my usual deliberating, hesitant way, with fractured thoughts about toxic masculinity popping in and out my head as the dance floor swirled and stamped all around. Then someone behind relieved me of my top and I instantly got it, put the thinking to one side for a moment and joined in the abandon. I guess it’s all about being immersed, whether that’s dancing, running or anything, it’s about being totally immersed and present. Like descending Scafell Pike earlier in the day, sliding through the scree, out of control, completely at the mercy of that moment, the next step, that’s all. Thrown up to the wind like confetti, alive, smiling a smile that starts in your chest and rises, that’s what happens out there in the hills and I guess that’s how you end up stood romanticising at wall lights, half-drunk and hungry for beauty and experience, what else can you pour in whilst the lids off? Give me moonlight and narrow valleys, bring that musician back on I’m not ready for my tent.

Of course, I was more than ready for my tent, over ready. The race had been incredible, it lived up to all the build-up in my mind, five years of build-up in truth. It’s something I’ve thought about a long time, I’d escape into blogs about it in tougher times. Soaked it in, studied the route, learnt about old legends and battles that had played out over these hills. I’d follow the social media aftermath each year and wonder. Wonder how I’d fare on those last big climbs up Gable and Dale Head. It was hard work finding that out, and the best I can say is I didn’t stop! But the lovely run down the corridor route, the misty descent off gable and the surprise of finding I still had something in my legs to make places up through the quarry on the way back was fantastic. Parachuting down towards the finish field, excited, knowing I had finished one of the classics was fantastic. And although there was no Ali stood filming me at the line on her rabbit-eared phone, there were plenty of friendly faces, happy, welcoming faces keen to chat and share in the euphoria of being out there. I knocked about with Martin a while, got washed off in the river and ate Jam butties in the village hall, later as the sun dipped down behind Dale Head I sat easy amongst my new club mates. Barbecues smoked, kids raced about, stories flowed well like the beer and wine. Then to the pub, where I found out what Wharfedale Harriers are definitely the best at as they spilled onto the empty dancefloor like a bag of marbles and stayed there all night, seeing to to it that the day came to a fitting close.

    

Bowfell

The Lake District is wilting, like an ant under a magnifying glass. Its buccaneering streams and waterfalls are dry and soundless, the peaty bogs are hard sponges, boulder fields are too bright to look at. Everything is foreshortened, fells that usually stand tall amongst the swirling clouds are shrunk against the massive blue sky. Below, in the valleys, air squats heavy, farmers cut grass to dust, dogs pant, tourists are dotted like Lowry-men along rivers, car parks, sun dappled lanes and afternoons that last all week get hotter and hotter by the hour.

Walking along the last bit of road to the top of Langdale my trainers are sticky with melted tarmac, the guy whizzing past on the quad is topless and the collie on the back has his mouth gaped wide open looking for air where there is none.

We’ve popped up to look for good places for a wildcamp with Dan & Juli in a couple of weeks, Bowfell seems a good choice with views down Langdale and west into Eskdale and the Irish sea. It was just a matter of finding a little grassy area amongst the mess of shattered rock that characterises this central Lakeland terrain. At the col, amongst the small tarns, I sit to eat my tea, looking out over the silhouette of Scafell and Scafell Pike I remember walking with Ali and Boz up there from Eskdale, enjoying a whisky on the summit whilst the sun went down and walking back through the dark to a cottage full of very worried family. I remembered walking up to this col with Helen and Becky too, the four of us taking our time nosying about the tarns before descending slowly towards a rising hunters moon. Looking down into the deserted plain of Great Moss I can almost see Ali & I ascending, on our way up to Crinkle Crags a couple of years ago, wandering past these tarns, me reminding her its where we came with Helen & Becky and her smiling through laboured breath. I couldn’t see me sat by this tarn alone, eating a sandwich, and I couldn’t see that this was her last mountain. It was hard for her on crinkle crags, the big steps and jagged ground making the pain in her back difficult to tolerate, at one stage not really being able to move for it. There was a silent agreement that we wouldn’t be back up here, some things can’t be spoken, or thought of, I mean, who’d stand and say goodbye the mountains. Like Joss Naylor once said, talking on the psychology of keeping on in the hills “It doesn’t do to think about it, if you thought about it you’d lie down”. Sometimes you’ve got to apply this to life, put the brakes on your mind, take shelter behind a rock a while, let the storm rage on without you.

Two topless lads appeared from the Langdale side with nothing in their hands or on their backs. One pointed up at Crinkle Crags and shouted over to me “Is that the highest bit?” I pointed over to Bowfell the other way and told them that’s higher but its 200m more ascent and maybe not to take too much on without water. I said it might take an hour, which they scoffed at and then one of them said “what, is it up and up again?” When isn’t it in the lakes. I explained they’d climbed 700 metres and it’s another 200 now. “Sound mate” They wandered off and I got back to my memories, taking care with the warm hummus that was spilling out my roll everywhere and trying to persuade Rab to have a drink rather than stare at sheep, how do you tell a dog there’s not water after this for miles? On my way up Bowfell I caught up with the topless wanderers, they were really struggling in the heat so I shared my water with them. They were grateful and I didn’t inhabit the miserable, grumbling Wainwright that was hanging in the air between us. There’s a balance, two fit people up on the hills with no chance of cloud, plenty of light and every route off the fell leading to civilisation. They weren’t being that irresponsible and they were having a lot of fun. They joined me on the summit and took pictures, we chatted a while and then I departed towards Ore gap in search of more pitches.

The sun was dropping nicely now, picking out crags in orange here and there and we had got into the shade of Esk Pike, enjoying a relatively cool descent form Ore Gap towards Angle Tarn. As we got closer to the tarn, a huge lake really, sat in a bowl under the immense north face of Bowfell, I noticed a buzzard fly below us across the water, it made one call and then perched on a rock. So we sat on the path as still as we could and waited to see if it would fly and not notice us. After a while a guy came descending towards us very slowly. He had that hobble of a long day under the sun on rough ground, I could feel his knees throbbing and the weight of his pack. He stopped near me on the path to chat. He was Australian, “I split with my girlfriend earlier in the year so came to Europe, got a van. What else?” What to say? Bloody girlfriends, mine died would you believe, and I don’t even have a fucking van, I’ve got a Honda Jazz with folding seats and a steady job though, that’s something isn’t it mate? I say I’m sorry to hear about his girlfriend and say nothing of my situation, why I’m out here alone. I don’t even show him the buzzard. But when he says he’s come at the best time to see the lakes, looking up at the blue skies, I do correct him. I paint him a picture of the rushing gulleys, the waterfalls, the power that the water brings this place. I tell him about winter, that’s when to come, those fleeting afternoons amongst the snow, low sun flinging shadows across frozen tarns. Or the grey days, no views, no vistas, no warm rocks or shimmering haze. Just water everywhere, in the sky, in the ghylls, cold so you can’t feel your fingers, the tussocky ground saturated beneath your feet, ravens croaking through the mist, telling you you’re lost, a compass in your hand, not long till four, not long till it’s too dark, when your head-torch just lights up the mist anyway. That’s when you feel alive here, not that you need adrenaline to enjoy the fells, but you need drama in the scene and under this permanent sun there is no drama, just one big fuck-off postcard.

I didn’t quite say all that, but I did want him to know how this place can be, how it can steal you away and hold you for life, how it’s not just another beautiful place he’s been. It’s my entire self, and it’s not on show properly. Anyway, in no time I make everything awkward. I’m finding that increasingly easy out on my own, without Ali to seamlessly keep the world well oiled. He asks me if I’m going the same way, and I jump to my feet and say yes I’ll walk with you. He didn’t mean that, he meant just to ask me if its far…back to Langdale? He needs to rush you see, get back to the van. So I watch him rush off, a much faster hobble that I’m bound to catch, and which I do even though I take in Rosset Pike. He’s really struggling, and fair enough, he climbed Scafell Pike from Langdale and took in Crinkle crags first, an insanely long and technical route. We meet where I join back up with his path and have another chat. To spare him being forced into a walk back with me, that he’s already declined once, I say I’m needing to rush off so speed ahead. Only, about half a mile downstream I see a perfect rock pool for Rab to have a drink, and for me to have dip.

So to our third meeting, I think of maybe shouting tortoise and the hare as he passes, but he speaks first “see ya” he’s not looking, probably thinks I’m naked, but I can’t shout up that I’m in boxers, and I can’t really pretend I’m in a rush anymore, basking in a pool. I watch him hobble off and wonder if I’ll catch him again. I’d almost like to, there’s something I want to tell him, a reason why I’m so incredibly strange at the moment. Maybe that wouldn’t help, no, definitely it wouldn’t help – Ali’s shaking her head and smiling at the ground. She always used to say, about social anxieties, that, in the nicest possible way, nobody gives a fuck about what you say or wear, or anything. They’re all busy with their stories and thoughts.  

We almost get back to the car, but as I pass the Old Dudgeon Ghyll pub I realise its only 10.30, and can hear a folk band playing dancing in the Moonlight. It’s warm and sweaty inside, the walls are covered in paintings of climbers. Rab lies on the stone floor whilst I buy a pint and then we’re out the open door into the bustling beer garden. One star is out across the valley above Pike O Blisco and the sky is moving through the blues into black, bats are swinging around the corner of the building and moths keep smacking into my face and legs. Conversations are raucous inside, they come tumbling out the door with the music and the light, it’s still warm out here, Rab is flat out again on the floor and I feel in touch with the hills again. It’s been a while and I doubted if they were still there, or if something of them went with Ali. Bowfell says different and I know who’d be pleased to hear that.

Strid woods

Its half an hour until the third world-cup game of the day and I’m flat-out on the sofa, letting myself off the hook whilst I recover from the laser eye surgery I had the other day. I’m full of lentil dahl and a lethargy that only comes from hours and hours of watching sport, all that movement and chaos on the pitch sliding past your eyes whilst you lay stone-still with just a farting, twitching lurcher for company.

I decide to break the dordling flow of the day and get up to Barden Bridge for a walk round Strid woods with Rab. Sod the final game, let’s face the head rush and stand up. As we drive through Silsden the debris of an early England kick-off is everywhere, a girl is swaying about outside the Jet garage in an 1966 shirt and denim shorts, the pub doorways are a ajar with men and their pints, and there’s a que outside Curry Corner where two people are bend-double laughing. Nothing is at rest tonight, and Monday doesn’t exist for a few golden hours.

I reach the little car park just as Bolton Abbey packs its bags, a thousand families are heading home with fishing nets and sunburn, doors slam shut on tired children and then their faces peer out, fighting sleep until the very last. A young girl approaches me from the ice cream van she’d been hovering around when I pulled up.

“Do you have a phone? It’s just my boss was meant to pick me up ages ago and hasn’t turned up. My mum will be worried”

“I do, but not signal, never get it here” I’ve got my phone out to prove it

“Oh its fine” she seems suddenly very happy to leave it there, but I’m concerned now

“I can give you a lift if you like, to wherever you need to go”

“No, I’ll wait”

I don’t realise what’s going in until a few minutes later, how scared she is. There are a few things about me that I had forgotten when I left the house. For a start, the whites of my eyes are bright red with blood since the surgery and I look like I’m dressed up for Halloween, add to that the fact I haven’t washed today and the large helping of dahl that I have down my front and you’ll see how quickly she must have regretted talking to me.

But I wasn’t done, in a bid to reassure her, to let he know I wasn’t deserting her, that I am a good Samaritan, I say if he hasn’t turned up by the time I’ve finished my walk I’ll give her a lift. Poor girl. Never mind worrying about mum, now she’s got precisely as long as this weirdo’s walk takes to get picked up, or he’s giving her a lift even though his eyes are bleeding and he’s covered in what might be sick.

It’s a few weeks since I’ve been down here and the sweet smells of wild garlic and bluebells have given way to a musty, dry smell as ferns start to tower by the path and grass is cut for silage in nearby fields. It hasn’t rained properly for ages, earth is cracked and the moss is brittle on the baking-hot dry stone walls. It’s been an unrelenting day of tall heat, no clouds, just a moon out early in the blue above fells, who are resting now in the low evening light. Curlews are frantic about everything, and every so often one gets caught from underneath by the warm glowing sun, orange now where it should be grey. Gulls too, they’re not at rest for some reason, not the blackbirds either who are scalding alarm calls back and forth all over. Surely a hawk is around?

I’ve been drawn down here a lot since Ali died, she came here to be free when undergoing treatment, to magic up characters and plots for her novella and to blast herself out from under a disease that hard as it might try couldn’t keep her from nature. She was no doubt pleased with the lack of phone signal too, a bit of time where none of us could be in touch, subconsciously seeking her reassurance, hoping she was having a good day. I think about her when I’m walking these same paths, and it makes me smile that she had this place, this time out of mind in the woods. Of everywhere I go this is where I find her easiest and it’s her defiance that inhabits me as we trudge around under the filtered light, me looking for hawks and Rabbit looking for squirrels.

When we get back to the car the girl has gone, and I’m probably more relieved than her, I mean how could I make it any better – I’d end up refusing her the lift to make a point or something. I drive back over Embsay Moor as the sun tilts off into one of those eternal midsummer sunsets. I catch the last ten minutes of the match on the radio and I’ve missed a good game but nothing compares to an hour or two in Ali’s woods.  

Not playing out

We haven’t been going up the lane much recently so it was a nice surprise when the top field was free of sheep. The wind hadn’t died down yet and the long grass was swaying about all over. I dispatched Rab off into it, gallivanting down the hill after her ball. It’s warm, so she curtails her joy-loops and settles down about fifty yards away, I smile over at her stupid head, poked up above the long grass, tongue flopped out in the wind all daft. I decide to sit down too, on the path where the grass is a bit shorter, and I watch the wildflowers tip this way then that in the breeze. Occasionally she feels ready for another chase and drops her ball, just out of reach so I have to get up. I tell her firmly she’s getting trained one of these days. After a few of these ups and downs I hear a guttural scream which sounds so odd I wonder if it’s some kind of machine, or maybe even a cow in distress, but then the shock subsides and the sound takes form:

“OOOIIIII, it’s not a bloody playground”

I’m stood looking at where it’s coming from - the big detached farm house across the next field - and then finally decipher a guy stood on his wall. Blimey what to do? I shout back as loud as I can:

“I can’t hear you” cupping my ears in case he’s not sure.

This is mainly to buy time, find a reaction that respects both my pride and my safety but also it’s quite funny, asking him to shout louder given how enormous his first attempt was. But he tries, and hell, he succeeds.

“I said it’s not a bloody playground, clear off”

This time I respond immediately “I never said it was”

He doesn’t seem to hear, or I’m not giving him chance, but I shout again “What is it, is it not a footpath?”

“YES! It is. Not a playground. Now CLEAR.OFF.” He’s motioning now back the way I’d come

I’m a bit done-in by this sudden confrontation, I was just starting to loosen-off from a day of malfunctioning spreadsheets and really didn’t need any of this. So it’s in this state, on a beautiful evening amongst the wildflowers that I shout back over the wall, almost pleading:

 “I’M NOT PLAYING”

Well fuck me. Look at us, bellowing back-and-forth across a field as the world spins on all around us, spring in full flow and a million birds singing their evening songs. Its two angry men filling the air tonight though, crying inside about territory and rules, masculinity raining down and clogging everything like frogspawn. But for it to finish on that broken holla of every little boy that ever got upset, that final act of defiance. “I’m not playing”. Well that’s unwritable.

Rab and I take our ball home and turn on Springwatch instead. I hope we’re not on there tomorrow, “Look at these two male pipits disputing territory, very common this time of year when headspace is in such short supply”.

Leighton Moss

The colours all gone out the world again. I know, I know. We’re watching marsh harriers dancing over the reeds and Christ, an otter just slithered past all casual but I’m full up. The memories are fresh and warm in each hide, in the swaying reeds, in the smell of the shiny books and t-towels you loved so much in the shop. Memories of fear, of hope, the miracle around the corner, a hand on a knee, a shared cup of tea, the finches and tits on the winter feeders. Your face alive with the power of everything that ever lived as a robin lands on your hand to feed. You came good here, each and every single time, you came good. 

On the skytower staring at some dust out west by the sea, willing it to come closer and settle over the reed bed in front. A starling murmuration we’d travelled fifty miles to see but which wouldn’t shift the half-mile up the reserve to meet us. Cruel nature. But there's not time to be missing things like this, so its down the tower and into the car, we’ll catch them near the Eric Morecambe hide. 

“Are you sure?” I say 

“Well they’re not here are they? lets go” 

“Pullover!”. A thousand, a million of them in the shape of a whale over the field. And now look, look at you. Head tipped back on the car, eyes packed full with life, lips motionless and slightly apart, begging the sky to beam you up. Throw you into that seething pack, sway this way then that back to the roost where its just you and your birds crouched under the winter sky till dawn. But your hands. Your hands are too cold, let me get you in the car and home for a bath. Maybe this was the last time we came to Leighton? I don’t know who to ask.

“What’s that, there?” Dan’s question so succinct that it must be urgent, I see a long bar flying up the lake and think black-backed gull because I’m not used to seeing ospreys. At some point we realise, there’s maybe some words exchanged but I don’t recall them because the colour’s all back in the world and this bird just tilted into a curve showing me its big brown back. Three failed attempts at catching a fish, each time banking round and flapping like a kestrel as it waits for its next moment, a call from the tower to land. We’re close enough to hear the splash and see it shaking the water from those thick feathered legs, maybe in frustration. We don’t drop our binoculars for what feels like ten minutes, swifts keep crossing in front but they’re midges now against his ungainly frame. A woman asks me if they eat mammals too and I wonder if she’s scared. I feel like we all should be, nobody move until he’s gone.

When he does leave I remember why we’re here, that the memories I’d been indulging all day were the bad ones, the in-between ones, the half-thoughts in a day otherwise perfect, they weren’t the story of this place. We came here to be lost, caught in the talons of an osprey and dragged off to a place where all that ever shines is the feathers of a bird, no strip lights or bleached floors, no glasses hanging from the neck of that no-hope consultant as he pauses over your blood results. No, not lost. We came here to be found, picked up from the debris of your illness and laid out in a winter sun, tenderly brought round from the dizziness of loss.

Dan and I wander on through some woodland that’s thick and sticky with spring growth. We don’t say much and it reminds me of the silences with you, respectful of that bird and the time we both needed to recover from it.

The evening is chirping-in at the car-park, blackbirds singing above the slamming doors as we throw our things in the boot. We’re not done, away to Foulshaw Moss to chase this osprey back to its nest. There’s a tower above the raised bog and some volunteers with a scope who show us what’s what before leaving. We set our scope up and watch the male perched in a tree, just a white smudge from all the way back here. Soon Dan sees him fly back over towards Leighton, sent back to do a proper job this time. We watch a marsh harrier for a while as the wind gets colder, we’re hungry but when the colours are back in the world there’s nothing to do but look and so that’s what we do, stood up there like a couple of kids with BMXs, watching the redpolls chase back and forth and letting dusk settle over us. When we finally pack up and wander back we see two greater spotted woodpeckers at their nest. After a full day peering and peeping through hides and scopes Dan is still brimming with of all the enthusiasm you’ll ever see in a person, staring at the mess of black, white and red on the tree, so much like you.

Helvellyn & the Dodds fell race 2018

“I live like my dogs now, got three cocker spaniels and I live in the moment like them. I’ve got work left in me like, but I want to be out here so I’ve been winding things down a bit”. His voice was thick and warm, a bit Cumbrian, a bit dales, and his skin was browner than late May would suggest. He was talking to a stranger in the car next to me, and I was sat in mine looking busy, pinning my race number on so he’d not see me listening in.

But fell races are fascinating for listening, stood on the start line the conversations were bustling like a swarm of midges, all positive and inclusive, conducted with a keen eye for pretence, that rather than shackling people, seems to free them up to say anything. Like what they’ve learnt from their dogs or how they’re skint this month so couldn’t afford to replace their old knackered Walsh’s. There is no judgement or jealousy here and as the marshall gets up to give us a few pre-race instructions she’s afforded silence after everyone helps her quiet the crowd down by shushing.

And we’re off, funnelled along the tarmac road at the foot of Clough head, bound for the long ridge that will take us away over Great Dodd, Raise and Helvellyn. Chatter continues along the lane but as we hit the fell, with the gradient bending us double into a slow climb all there is to hear are the bleating lambs. I keep checking behind me at Blencathra to get a fix on how much we’ve climbed and it looks great in this heat, stood shoulder to shoulder with Skiddaw against a hazy blue sky.

The real story of the race hits us as we crest onto the summit of Clough Head. The incessant wind that will turn us into tacking ships all the way to Helvellyn presents itself immediately and violently. It takes a while to adjust but people seem to and I’m just grateful it isn’t blowing my glasses off. Someone asks me to hold his bottle whilst he sorts his bag out on the final climb to Helvellyn and he offers me some food as we walk together a while.The view west from here is fantastic with the whole park on show, I could sit for hours watching. Maybe its the thought of sitting or just the lack of training in my legs, but after Helvellyn I find it hard and start to wilt, people go past me in a steady stream but always say hello.

Its bloody awful descending Clough head on knackered legs, almost three hours after climbing it, and when I stop to say bastard, a woman in pursuit stops too and says “I know”. We run back to the tarmac swapping places a few times and exchanging some words of encouragement. At the finish a guy sits down in the verge next to me and says he was done with the wind after an hour, I agree but can’t summon the energy to add anything else. I need some food and hobble back to the car thinking about the man living as a dog, on the way I see the woman who’d descended alongside me and she puffs her cheeks out. Everyone is spent, but we’re all here together in the endless summer making a go of things whilst we can.

Kestrel

I wrote this in January at a time that Ali was particularly ill, she'd just been discharged from hospital after complications with her lung disease. Whilst in the hospital I read Reality is not what it seems by Carlos Ravelli, a book about a potential theory to unify quantum and classical physics. I feel that  understanding nature in your heart and mind are the same thing, and that the separations we impose are arbitrary. I'd like to explore this more, but here is my first go...

Kestrel

As the wind lashed handfuls of rain along the valley and yesterday’s storm debris lay awkwardly in the mud something made us turn right into the rotten ferns and up along the side of a wall. We’ve never gone this way before, it all seems a bit private, but cloaked in the dusk of a stormy January afternoon we snook on. 

Rabbit had a lot of work to do, frantically joining the dots on a new field of scents, I upped my pace in keeping with her and then caught a hint of something fighting the wind. A kestrel fell and then rose, and by the time it began to hover I had it in the binoculars, focusing past the bare winter sapling that separated us. My heart began to beat faster, and now it was me joining the dots, guided by the fine brushstrokes that the kestrel sketched across the gloaming.

Its thin shape changed continuously and was as sharp as a crack in the sky, the occasional flash of colour from the top of its wing marked a dive, always to rise again effortlessly against a wind that swayed the trees like huge reeds. I felt safe here, in the reed bed, taking cover from the fretful grey sky. I kept my eyes on him and imagined what he saw in the field, the countless ultra-violet urine trails, a hint of some movement before a tilt into dive.

My mind drifts. What if we could see all of the electromagnetic spectrum? Radio waves lolloping by unhindered by the furious wind, the infra-red glow of a sheltering fox ten feet away, and always the distant hum of the big bang in the background. I looked again and saw the kestrel hanging in the great known, framed now by the science that had flooded my thoughts. More beautiful, I whispered.

Rabbit remained seated, her bulky back legs splayed awkwardly to allow her long spine to touch the floor, pink belly radiant against the fermented browns of  last year's ferns. She wanted to know what all the fuss was about. Not interested in birds. Taught frame, wide eyes, patient for a mammal to appear from the lichen-moss folds of the wood below. The kestrel took its final dive and disappeared below the horizon. I watched the empty stage for a while and saw the mills of Connonley crouched below the rushing gales, the Aire valley was going about its relentless business and I felt tired. Lights twinkled on and our fire needed stoking, I no longer felt fractured or confused.

Rabbit kept seeing ghosts in the trees as we walked home and etched on my retina was the perfect curve of a kestrel wing.