April 12th 2025
Introduction
Spring is uppermost for this Footnotes but as a conclusion, in relation to seasonal change and the impact it has. The landscape is very different. More colourful, alive, vibrant, vivid, and green.
In photographic terms you sometimes see green described as boring which it might be if there are no other features in a frame. It depends. Are the hills shapely, shadowed, or under a stunning sky; is there a special tree or distant view? Context is important which as a walking experience means seeing very little green for several months.
I read this line from Seamus Heaney and thought I’d use it as the basis for some Footnotes.
“If you have the words, there’s always a chance you’ll find the way”
I find remarks like that very evocative, connecting with interesting and outdoors related topics.
This is what happened.
Connections
Heaney was a poet not a walker and I’ll start with the hiking experience, which is the reverse. You find the way, then the photographs, then the words. Nietzsche, R.L Stevenson and others knew this and walked to help them think and create. Rebecca Solnit said the mind works at three miles an hour and the faster experience of life, which is unavoidable, breaks the healthy rhythm which is our natural state.
But Heaney’s idea is also valid. If we have the words for something we know it, in some fashion, hopefully for good but including unavoidable bad. Find the words for it. Say it right. Capture the feeling. We say these things about a poem, and as the basis of counselling which is a specialised dialogue of words in a therapeutic matrix.
There’s also a silent knowing beyond words experienced with love, grief, shock and more. In The Agamemnon, there’s a Watchman on a tower too stunned to speak when he sees a messenger fire which signals the fall of Troy:
“A great ox stands on my tongue. But this house/ if it could speak, might tell some stories.”
I read Aeschylus and Euripides a long time ago and don’t remember them well but what I like is the feeling this is where culture, civilisation, and literature began, and we recognise and understand it. We can’t speak, then sometimes we do speak, which isn’t always explicable and is the search of a poet which Heaney compared to the earth digging of his father.
What did he mean? This implies that life and poetry are the same thing and in every activity. Jeanette Winterson describes literature not as an escape, or avoidance, but as a revealing power of knowing. I agree with this, but not as an absolute formula she sometimes implies.
Body and Sublime
There’s also a blend of memory, body, feeling and subliminal thinking as a reality of nervous system not cognition. That’s what you experience when you walk, and with the somatic practice of yoga. I’ve been doing doing it again. I did when I was young, before, during and after university and then three months living in a yoga centre. This means I can select a sequence of postures as inclined without consulting books. I remember them.
Heaney compares the physicality of digging with a search for a word, or a phrase, found in symbolic earth. There’s a symbolism in yoga, some postures likened to animals or fish, which presumably means the silky twisting of watery creatures for Matsyendrasana. One of my favourite postures is Natarajasana which you can’t do without concentration. Try it. Apart from the necessary flexibility of spine and thigh you will stumble and fall unless you exercise the will to do it, which has a stabilising and centering effect.
The Sublime too isn’t an idea, or cognitive words, which is how this is misunderstood. A mountain view reality is neither. At the top of the Aiguille du Midi many years ago, I sensed this wordless thing in two climbers as they relaxed in the sun. “They’d been somewhere and done something (climbed it) I could only imagine.” That was my first experience of considerable height.
Featured Walks
I’ve mentioned before, I’ll never undertake a long walk in Scotland because of the weather risk and midge horrors . You have to be prepared for this and accept it in advance. I am, and don’t. I prefer camp sites and day walks in Scotland. I did wild camp in the Mamores a few years ago on this route, and the first night was midge hell. The second night was cold, not too bad, but that was my limit. Even on camp sites, I don’t stay in Scotland beyond the end of May when the midges become unbearable.
My bite record is sixty, in one night, using garlic, vitamin B, lavender oil and Smidge, in a large valley tent with supposedly good net protection. The Mamores however, just to clarify, are a marvellous walking area.
It’s fun seeing people do the long walks, part of which is seeing places you know, and Jen is a delightful person for this. She never stops! Walking every weekend, often from her camper van, and taking big trips such as the well known Cape Wrath Trail and the lesser known Cateran Trail.
She mentions the Topo GPS system which looks good. I’ve only used GPS once, in Wales, relying instead on a map, compass, and I like guide book instructions.
No one says this, but books are the easiest method for a route where you more or less know where you’re going with a clear path to follow. Turn left, turn right at the trees, reach a river and so on. This needs simple map awareness not detailed. At every junction in the Pyrenees, I used map and compass while surveying the land. In between, I just follow paths.
There is a danger you’re not reading the terrain sufficiently which becomes a problem when you’re lost, and suddenly have to understand where you are. I once climbed up the Carneddau in Snowdonia, thick mist arrived and I could see nothing. I had no idea where I was because I hadn’t been watching. Not far away there was a sudden steep drop.
The answer was walk back along the path to a junction then pay attention. There was nothing to see, except for the gradient, but that was enough. This is fine in settled conditions but if you encounter rain, then cold wind and disorientation, the situation changes.
Most of the time however, guide books are fine and Continental mountains are easier to follow than Scotland and Snowdonia paths, with the red and white paint flash of the GR routes.
Kentmere was the last place I discovered in the Lake District. I’d driven past countless times heading for Eskdale, Borrowdale, Ullswater or wherever it was. I used this and other guides by Bob Allen to decide where to go. Amongst a collection of other books, I liked his for the photographic views. Kentmere was in the book, but I overlooked it, because I was used to getting into the heart of the area.
Look south and east on the initial climb of this walk and you see this is correct. The views are outside the Lake District. Look north and north and west when you reach the heights, and you gaze across to the well known hills. I’m not sure (but I am good at this game) and seem to recall you can identify the Langdale summits.
It’s a good place for a day walk if you drive up from the south, and potentially extends to High Street and Ullswater. The path drops down, where I had a memorably cold winter camp. It was minus five and I had only borderline protection wearing everything I had in the sleeping bag. I slept a little, but not much, recognising that if it became colder I would have to get up and walk around to get warm.
Sunshine
We’re having wonderful spring sunshine, as warm and bright as summer. I hear people say they don’t like summer hill walking, which I find bizarre. Every year at the first sight of snow they get excited. Snow is fun but the day concludes at 5, 4, or even 3 with dark cloud in mountain areas.
Richard Mabey writes about so called S.A.D. in one of his books. “Disorder” is a label and not correct. It’s bodily, he says, as a pineal response much the same as flowers, trees, and animals when the environment is cold and dark: time to hibernate.
Reach the end of March and the clocks change as nature does the same. The days quickly lengthen and there’s a feeling of opening, expansion, and energy. Time to wake up. Wild flowers return, and I walk to find them. As Ralph Waldo Emerson said, “The earth laughs in flowers.”