Foggy Mountain Dispatch #3

Warm northerly wind, light rain, low clouds.

Alex here, hopefully loud and clear,

For now I just need a walk so let’s head out, maybe we can talk after.

Leaving the cabin I follow the old farmer’s lane, scarred with deep rutted tyre tracks, until it fades into the hillside and is replaced by a faint footpath. The farm itself is now nothing more than a monument to what was, stone foundations slowly sinking into the hinterland. Whenever I pass I think of the lives lived amongst the valleys here; the toil and graft, the cattle and crops, the family around the table, the laughter, the tears too. I imagine my late grandfather’s farm, his diligent work of tending to the land, my father earnestly assisting him, the collie pups bundled in the trailer, the big roasts on Sundays - plates stacked with vegetables from my late grandmother’s garden. A home I never knew - only black and white photographs and scattered stories left to spur my imagination; memories too tender for me to peel back from my father’s thick skin, at least for now anyway.

The old footpath leads me higher into the valley, an ancient trail worn by shepherds as they repeated the annual task of retrieving their herds from the high pastures at summer’s end. Where the footpath is swallowed by the land, indistinct sheep trails guide me higher still. I like to follow these non-human trails to find the special places, hoping that the wise creatures entangled with the land know secrets that I do not. When eventually I lose the hoof marks in the mud, covered over by carpets of moss, and am relieved of the attention required to follow the fading signs, I can take a break from the forward progression that a trail tends to ask for.

Let off the hook for making up miles I relax into the present moment. I find myself on the high plateaus, just before the glacial valleys make their last sculpting lift to the peaks above. Giant boulders like mythical grazing buffalo are scattered across a vast grassland. The mountain breeze runs like a cool river through the shimmering green and silver. It runs too through my hair, and with deep breaths of acceptance, through my body. Sat on an appropriately shaped rock I watch this dance of the invisible made visible, and think about the relationship between the wind and the grass. We all want to be seen, to not feel alone in the world, and with meaningful relationships to others we can be seen, appreciated, and recognised, made whole by reaching out to those we share life with. The wind is seen by the grass, appreciated by the birds, and recognised by the trees. We can also find this connection not just in other humans, but in our habitat as animals of Earth. I am run through by the wind, held by the rock on which I sit, and marked by the mud in which I in turn mark with my feet; traces shared to say I was here, the mud and me.

Sometimes I just like to lay on my back, staring with eyes closed at the sun to sit in that brilliant golden embrace, or to catch cumulus clouds as they brush around the mountains, like a feather duster on a cabinet’s edge. On my feet again I wander light-footed and open-minded to a particularly charismatic boulder, admiring its absolute conviction of form and physicality. I muse on how it rolled down the cliff face, or was dropped gently by a retreating glacier. Up close I appreciate its coarse surface, dappled by millennia of rainfall and windblow, decorated now so beautifully by a myriad of mosses and lichens finding home on its resilient foundation. One detail draws you to another, and like this you can float across the plateau, here and there, in no particular direction. At a stream I bow into a kneel like a Buddhist prayer, my hands planted like roots into the mossy bank and take huge mouthfuls of the pure water; refreshing myself after the sweaty ascent. The clarity of water passing over the golden rocks below, the green borders of grass and moss, and the delicate but determined flow of liquid sound make for a curative awakening to the present. Like this I spend an afternoon bouncing gently between daydream and acute awareness. And this is not to say the worries and doubts of my life in the world below Foggy Mountain do not creep in, but they are often quietened, or even given perspective; indeed new ideas are usually found hiding on the high plateaus.

The cabin looks tiny from up here and the small towns and villages further below even tinier. I always feel an immense separation in time when looking down to the world below. I remember the same feeling when I was walking in Los Picos De Europa in northern Spain. I was sitting in an alpine meadow covered with Thrift, little pink lollypops dotting a green blanket. The limestone massif huddled together like silver monoliths in the warm Asturian sun, their roots lost in an ocean of cloud. My legs aching from the long ascent I rested in this perfect spot drifting in the same way between daydream and appreciative attention. A break in the clouds reveals the glistening red roofs of tiny villages thousands of feet below. I think of all the people, going about their lives, the duties and dreams, and I think I have stepped out of that world. As if there is a certain moment in ascending where you pass through some kind of portal, and arrive on the other side to a place entirely of its own. And it is a kind place that gives you rest from the incessant demands of capital, stepping back toward childhood again, free to play, to wander, or to learn.

Back on the plateau I think of my world down below. The dog is probably out following rabbit trails in the forest, just for fun, or maybe sulking because I didn’t bring him along today. The cat most likely baking herself by the fire, dreaming her own dreams, wherein she finally catches the blackbird that always teases her in the garden. In the villages and towns there is the constant work to be done; lots of it good and honest, lots of it not so much, but everyone with a role to play, me included. And so I pull my laces tight and double knot the bow, shoulder my pack which now carries a bottle of fresh water from the stream, and begin my journey home, step by step a little closer to the world that continues to spin below.