The Pleasure of Walking, Part 5 | Solitude

As you may also do, I love walking in the hills on my own.  It’s not that I’m unsociable or misanthropic (well, not most of the time at least); it’s just absolutely necessary that I have time away from others, and what better place to have it that in that high open ground that seems to float above the world, rooted to it, but not part of it.

I need solitude in my life. After being without it for a while, I begin to crave it. To be alone on a mountain, in the not-quite silence, is a  great joy. And while, at times, going walking in the hills on my own seems to be ‘getting away from it all’, often I feel it’s more like getting closer to it. It makes me prick up my ears and pay attention. It fires my senses. It soothes. It exhilarates. The steady rhythm of boots touching earth grounds me into the here and now. As I climb higher, the land opens out. The higher I climb, the more I see, and the more I see the clearer  it becomes that I am a little nothing and that all the cares and worries I’ve carried up this hill with me are little nothings too. When I descend at the end of the day, they’ll have shriveled or blown away and my load will have been lightened.

The mountain doesn’t care that I am there. It is impassive to the comings and goings of the creatures that stomp, scarper and scuttle across it. It is impervious to the elements, the day to day; its life is the big life, the long life, the impossible-to-fathom stretching out of geological time from the pre-human past to the post-human future. My long day spent on it is a nothing, an inconsequential fleck of time.

Walking on my own calms me; the incessant monologue of my chattering brain can’t be silenced, but can sometimes be stilled. I focus on my breathing. It is laboured and thick. I feel it in my skull, syncopating with the heart-beat rising up through my body and now drumming in my temples.

Switching my focus from the internal noises of my body, I turn my ear outwards, and my concentration to the sounds in the world around me. Its easier to hear and see the creatures on the mountain-side when you are alone. As well as being  physically quieter as I walk I am also less distracted. I stop and stare for as long as I wish; there is no-one else’s needs to take into account.  A second, a minute, an hour. It’s all one. From behind a long dyke I crouch and watch the hinds. When they pass, I’m aware that I can’t wait to tell Jacqueline about what I’ve seen once I’m back home. I look down at the ground around my feet, spend a while following a frog, study a hairy caterpillar, pick a stem of bog myrtle and rub the leaves between my fingers to release the distinctive scent. I gaze up at the clouded sky as a meadow pipit weaves and dips into a patch of long grass, its song falling with it. There’s no rush. No agenda. Nowhere to go.

I feel at at ease in the mountains with the knowledge that I can look after myself; able to navigate, properly equipped, aware of my limits, ready to bare the brunt of the elements. Maybe this sounds like hubris. It’s not. I’m respectful of the mountains and don’t take unnecessary risks – as I move through them, miles from anyone who could provide help should I need it, I feel relaxed. I can cope. There’s no one else here who can help, but I will look after myself.

Often whilst out walking I think about how society’s view of mountain landscapes has changed over time. What once was seen as a terrible, desolate and frightening landscape is now widely regarded as ‘majestic’, ‘grand’ and ‘beautiful’. I can’t comprehend how it could have been anything but. I look up at the peaks and am inspired. I admire their crags, their grassy slopes, the scree, the rock, the mossy walls, the changing of the banded rock from yellowed grey to pinkish red. These little mountains in this tiny country are mere bumps on the surface of the earth, barely poking above the level of the sea, but boy, what glorious bumps!

Last year I spent a glorious summer’s evening on the  Cairngorms plateau by myself. Having driven through Glenmore in my camper-van shortly before six in the evening, to find  (to my surprise) crowds assembled by the road, I headed up to the Coire Cas car park. The car park was nearly empty and the cars there were left within minutes of my arrival. (I discovered the next day that the road between Glenmore and the car park had been closed shortly after I had driven through to allow a carting race to take place). I had the place to myself.

After a quick one-pot dinner I headed up the Fiacall Ridge to the plateau. The day was still warm and the breeze slight. I followed the rim of the Northern Corries, occasionally stopping to look down the gullies. Ravens  circled at the foot of them, in Coire an Lochan below. Further on I caught a glimpse of a small herd of reindeer before they rounded the southern slopes of Cairngorm. Further still, descending the broad ridge of Fiacall a’ Choire Chais, as the sun started to drop and the only sound was my boots on the loose rock of the path, I spotted a feeding ptarmigan not so far away. I stopped. Finding a boulder, I watched. From the speckled rocks by the path a small rock sprang to life, now one then another. Ptarmigan chicks!  Before my eyes more appeared, only visible to me when they moved, their little bodies so perfectly matching their surroundings.  Closer and closer they came until they were only a few metres away. I couldn’t take my eyes off them.

I didn’t see another soul for the rest of that day. What a privilege it was to be there at that time, in that vast and beautiful place, in the peace and quiet of a perfect summer’s evening. And to experience it on my own without the presence of another living soul? I don’t have any words for that.