Contrasting days
The two days couldn’t have been more different and as I lay in the hazy spring sun near the old building at Dalballoch (see below) in the Monadh Liath it was interesting to reflect on the two days that represented two dimensions of my life as an outdoor writer.
Two days earlier I had wandered round the stands and stalls, the presentations and the demonstrations of the OS Outdoor Show at the NEC in Birmingham. I think this was possibly the sixth or seventh of these shows I’ve attended and I didn’t feel any more comfortable with this one than I did with the first. It was probably great if all you wanted to do was buy gear at knock-down prices but I would, personally, rather support my local retailers. It was nice to meet a few old friends, but within a couple of hours I felt a familiar depression settle on me, the discomfort that comes when cooped up indoors with crowds of people. This wasn’t adventure, that wasn’t outdoor experience, this was a kind of simulated, commercial and celebrity driven contradiction in terms. An outdoor show indoors. The closest I came to an outdoor experience was my eventual escape.
Wind on 48 hours.
I left my home, walked up the length of Glen Banchor in spring sunshine delighting in the sound of skylarks, oystercatchers and the first curlew calls of the year. As I climbed higher the character of the land changed, from spring back to winter, into the Arctic monochrome of the secretive Dubh Loch and the broad swathes of the snow covered plateaux. I felt the warm sun on one side of my face and the bitter north wind on the other. Ptarmigan still wore their white coats of winter as I climbed to Carn Dearg, the most shapely of the rounded Monadh Liath summits, and followed its ridge back to the old cottage at Dalballoch where I lay against a sweet smelling grassy verge by the burn and thanked God that I didn’t have to rely on the simulated adventure, high-octane promotion and celebrity culture of outdoor consumer shows to get my fix.
While the indoor outdoor show is so obviously a contradiction in terms I couldn’t help reflect the same contradictions in my own life. The all-too-short experiences of the hills, mountains and trails, buttressed against the long spells of office work, writing, lecturing and travelling. As I lay there in the sun by Dalballoch I promised myself a new resolution - a better balance. It’s time to give up some of the time-consuming add-ons in life, to make way for more experience, more of the real stuff, more of the mountains. When I eventually lie in the last throes of life I know I certainly won’t be wishing I had spent more time in the office! Perhaps, just perhaps, I might take some satisfaction from having made the decision to spent much more time in the wilds.
March 19th, 2008 at 11:45 am
Well said, Cameron, and I couldn’t agree more. The right balance is difficult to achieve. I definitely know the moments that I’ll recall when I’m experiencing my own last moments. And it won’t be the meetings, the motorway driving and the sales pitches which dominated my life for 30 years. Some people tell me that my own personal need and passionate desire for the mountains, the wilderness, the outdoors is a selfish escape from the ‘real world’. If that is true, then so be it. I know which ‘reality’ I prefer.
March 19th, 2008 at 1:05 pm
The late, great Colin Fletcher once wrote: “What is more real - concrete sidewalks, traffic lights and drinking iced champagne, or forest, pine littered trails and drinking ice cold water from a creek?”
I’ve nothing against ice cold champagne but could happily miss out on the other two.
March 19th, 2008 at 1:36 pm
Ice cold champagne on top of a mountain top could be the best of both worlds…
March 20th, 2008 at 8:32 pm
“What is this life if, full of care,
We have no time to stand and stare?”
Leisure - W. H. Davies
But if we didn’t have the pressures & responsibilities, would that stolen pleasure taste quit so sweet?
March 21st, 2008 at 7:49 am
You might be right John and I wonder of the pleasures taste all the sweeter following times of pressure? On the other hand, from my own experience of various long distance walks that I’ve done, up to a month in length, the days simply get better and better. I’ve often heard ultra-long distance walkers say they simply didn’t want to stop at the end.
March 21st, 2008 at 11:11 am
Cameron, you are quite right.
March 21st, 2008 at 11:17 am
On my recent 60 day Camino walk through France and Spain I enjoyed it more and more as the days went by. Arriving In Santiago what I really wanted to do was face east and walk again - to Rome. Now having been at home for 3 months all I do is dream about long distance walking. My urge to do it all over again, and greater and greater distances, has increased not lessened. Scratching this walking itch doesn’t assuage the desire. It increases it.
March 21st, 2008 at 11:20 pm
Best of luck with your resolution to find more time for the outdoors!
For my Dad’s 65th birthday we took a bottle of bubbly up Scafell with us, and now that I think about it, I seem to recall that my brother did much the same thing for me on my 30th when we climbed Beinn Bhan near Fort William together, on a day that was unseasonably warm for early April. I can attest that mountains and champagne can go together!
I have to confess that I have been a bit non-plussed about the excitement in the outdoor blogging community about the Birmingham show. Personally, I can hardly think of anywhere I would less like to be. Whilst we all probably have our own inner gear freak, it sometimes seems that some people’s obsession with the latest piece of kit, whilst typical of our consume and dispose culture, is the kind of thing that you might expect those passionate about the outdoors to try and avoid.
The Great Outdoors was formative reading for me. I think that my dad must have started reading it shortly after it was launched. Each copy had an enthusiastic second audience in me. I can still remember being inspired by articles about bivvying on summits, following streams to their source, the music you might associate with mountains and many others. I know that I often read some articles several times. I would directly trace one of my favourite mountain memories - watching a distant thunder storm light up the clouds from a sleeping-bag on the summit of Bowfell - to an idea that had long been germinating from a seed planted by reading TGO.
I have to confess that I very rarely read TGO these days (sorry). I began to feel that each issue was too heavily stocked with gear reviews and step-by-step route guides. I realise that there are probably sound commercial reasons for both types of content, and also that both are probably very popular with most readers. But personally I want to read something that inspires me to get out there, and perhaps to look at things from a fresh perspective, not to tell me where I should walk and what I should wear whilst I’m doing it. The gear reviews in particular it seems to me fuel the erroneous idea that walking is an expensive pursuit, when nothing could be further from the truth. I don’t suppose a make do and mend ethos would sit too cosily with advertisers!
Sorry - reading back I realise that this has become a rant, I hope that I haven’t caused offense. I’ve very much enjoyed reading the posts here. I also think that TGO is streets ahead of the competition: it’s still the only outdoor magazine that I would contemplate buying.
I hope that you are having good days on the hills over Easter.
March 23rd, 2008 at 9:02 am
No offense taken, Mark, although your comments about step-by-step route guides, coming from one of the UK’s best known guidebook writers, had me smiling
You are quite correct about the commercial aspect of TGO - if it didn’t make money it wouldn’t be on the newstands but I like to think that on TGO we try to get the balance between honest reporting about gear (ie we’re not afraid to be critical) and information about what’s available. Do we ever get advertisers going in the huff over something we’ve written and not advertising with us? You bet we do. It’s amazing how sensitive some manufacturers and retailers can be. However Mark, if you have good ideas about features you think should be in TGO then get in touch. Always happy to hear fresh ideas!
March 23rd, 2008 at 11:58 pm
If only…many years ago I do remember trying to pass off a copy of his Dark Peak Guide as my own work but I didn’t fool many people and even then not for long. Actually, I like a good guide book (although there are a lot out there that are not good). The best will tell you a lot about the area that you might not otherwise know and might entice you to tread new ground. The problem with routes in magazines is that by necessity they have to cover a large geographical area. The last TGO that I bought was February 2008 and the only one of the ‘Wild Walks’ guides that I read was ‘Around Aberdaron’. Many of the other routes were familiar and some of them were close to home, but since we have started to take a regular family holiday on the LLyn Peninsula this route interested me because it’s an area which I don’t know well, but there is some prospect that I wil get a chance to walk this route in the foreseeable future. Having said that, now that I have the magazine open in front of me I can see that actually, each route is more of an account of a walk than a step-by-step guide - a much better idea. Oh dear - its only my prejudices that have kept me from reading these!
As for the gear articles - well I haven’t read them, and nor am I likely to. I never doubted the integrity of TGO’s reviewers or editorial stance, it’s just that in my opinion, too much space is devoted to ‘kit’. I’m sure that this is not just TGO or even just Walking magazines. I feel that we are all inclined to turn our hobbies into another reason to shop. I could enjoy myself more if I had that new camera, golf-clubs, stove etc. (See the amount of expensive technical gear being worn to tackle the north-face of Ambleside’s shops and cafes on just about any day of the year for evidence).
The regulars and the features in February’s issue were all entertaining. The first thing that I turn to is the columnists. Over the years the opinions, experiences and thoughts of yourself, Mike Harding (when he’s playing it reasonably straight and not doing comedy routines), Roger Smith, Sarah Nelson(?), Jim Perrin (and probably others) have consistently been my favourite part of reading TGO. I enjoy the idiosyncratic, the personal, a passionate view. Even when I don’t always agree with the views expressed.
So ideas……I suspect that much more qualified and talented minds have been put to work on this one. I really enjoyed Wilderness Walks. Would that work in print? A kind of extended interview in which we could learn about an interesting person and perhaps the landscape about which they are passionate? And to nab another idea from TV what about reports on historical journeys? Stevenson’s travels in the Cevennes are well known, but Keats walked from Lancaster to Inverness, the former PM James Ramsay McDonald was a keen hill-walker…I’m sure that there must be other examples.
Apart from that I suppose that I’m just arguing for more that suits my own personal taste ie more features and regulars and less gear reviews, but I strongly suspect that I’m in a small minority there.
Perhaps I should leave it to the professionals?