I’m a keen walker. I suppose I have been ever since, when I was about 21, I suddenly decided I wanted to take my rubbishy little tent with no sewn-in groundsheet and hitchhike up to Snowdonia and climb its highest peak. As I emerged from the grey mist near the summit, I was surprised to find a building also emerging – a cafe I hadn’t known was there. I felt a little cheated, but I still kept going back. However, I don’t think I’ve ever been inside the cafe.
Yesterday I went on a big walk in the Black Mountains, not far from my home. I took photos so that I could write up the walk for one of the two magazines I occasionally write for. One of them, The Great Outdoors, used to have what one could call a ‘narrative format’ for its walks section. So, instead of a step by step set of instructions for how to tackle a particular route, I could write an account of my actual experience of going for the walk. Once I included starting off by forgetting the map and having to go back for it. Another time I wrote about doing the last lap in the dark, both my torches failing, and my ending up thrashing about in a holly thicket somewhere near the edge of a precipice! It was fun to write about later, but somewhat stressful at the time.
Now the magazine has gone back to the step by step approach. Well, perhaps hands-on (or feet-on) walkers find that more helpful. Nonetheless, I always see a walk as a narrative, and even a metaphor. Every walk has its holly thickets, its challenging choices between paths, and its paths that start out clear and self-confident, then gradually fizzle out, as it they just couldn’t be bothered anymore. And that, of course, is much like life!
There’s also the element of narrative in that all the sections of the walk fit together to ‘make sense’ as a whole. This path leads to that one, and so on. I love to stand on a peak in the Black Mountains and feel I can name all the peaks around me, and see them in relation to each other. Perhaps if history is one thing after another, then geography is one place after another. But if all you can ever experience is really this moment, then perhaps the only place you can ever be is here.