Out There E-Book

Chris Townsend

• Herausgeber: Sandstone Press
• Kategorie: Sachliteratur, Reportagen, Biografien
• Sprache: Englisch
• Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2016

Seitenzahl: 393

Beschreibung

WINNER OF THE OUTDOOR WRITERS AND PHOTOGRAPHERS GUILD: OUTDOOR BOOK OF THE YEAR AWARD 2016 'Those who decry peak bagging as mere list ticking fail to understand the commitment challenge and pleasure involved. Collecting summits means collecting experiences.' Drawing from more than forty years of experience as an outdoorsman, and probably the world's best known long distance walker who also writes, Chris Townsend describes the landscapes and wildlife, the walkers and climbers, and the authors who have influenced him in this lucid and beautiful book. Writing from his home in the heart of the Cairngorms he discusses the wild, its importance to civilisation and how we cannot do without it.

Leseprobe

Chris Townsend is possibly the world’s most experienced long distance walker who also writes. He is the author of many books including Grizzly Bears and Razor Clams, his account of the Pacific Northwest Trail, and Rattlesnakes and Bald Eagles

Also published by Sandstone Press

Grizzly Bears and Razor Clams: walking America’s Pacific Northwest Trail

First published in Great Britain

and the United States of America

Sandstone Press Ltd

Dochcarty Road

Dingwall

Ross-shire

IV15 9UG

Scotland.

www.sandstonepress.com

All rights reserved.

No part of this publication may be reproduced,

stored or transmitted in any form without the express

written permission of the publisher.

Copyright (c) Chris Townsend

Editor: Robert Davidson

The moral right of Chris Townsend to be recognised as the

author of this work has been asserted in accordance with the

Copyright, Design and Patent Act, 1988.

The publisher acknowledges support from

Creative Scotland towards publication of this volume.

ISBN: 978-1-910124-72-7

ISBNe: 978-1-910124-73-4

CONTENTS

Title

Acknowledgements

Foreword by Cameron McNeish

Introduction

1. Ideas & Inspiration

2. Nights in the Wild

3. Backpacking Tales

4. The big walks

5. Visionaries of the wild

6. Perceptions of wildness

7. The joy of winter

8. Adventures with skis and igloos

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

Far too many people have shared, assisted and supported my journeys over the years for me to mention them all here. Indeed, some of their names I can no longer recol­lect. My thanks to them all.

Many of the pieces here first appeared in various maga­zines over the years, especially The Great Outdoors aka TGO. I have edited them to make a more unified book so they’re not exactly as they first appeared.

My thanks to these editors for publishing my writing – Emily Rodway, Daniel Neilson and Cameron McNeish at The Great Outdoors, Alun Davies at AT Adventure Travel, Geoff Birtles at High Mountain Sports, Tom Prentice at Climber, and Mike Merchant at the John Muir Trust Journal. Also thanks to Roger Smith and Sandy Allan for their assistance.

Robert Davidson of Sandstone Press for his help and encouragement. Temperature units have been left as in the original publication.

My partner Denise Thorn who, as always, listened patiently to me talking about the book time and time again and who read through the text making many corrections and useful suggestions.

FOREWORD

Man’s relationship with the wild places of the world has been well documented in recent years and one of the fascinating issues that presents itself time and time again is our increasing yearning for simplicity.

I don’t think many folk would dispute the notion that we are living in increasingly complex times. We have more riches than our parents and grandparents could ever have dreamed of - books by the zillion, great music from various digital appliances, fabulous films and television programmes and the opportunity to move around the world virtually as we please.

But for increasing numbers of us that richness can occasionally appear tarnished and lose its appeal, and we begin to ache for an element of simplicity in our lives. The Welsh/American outdoor writer Colin Fletcher defined it well: an opportunity to take respite from our eternal wrestling with the abstract, and instead, grapple with the tangible.

On a personal level I periodically leap off the twenty-first century treadmill and embrace what I’ve realised is another world; a parallel ecosphere that exists alongside the busy, frenetic, technological world that most of us inhabit, a world where there is a natural order of things that allows us to slow down and become an integral part of something older, wiser and infinitely more beautiful, a world where wildness reigns supreme.

The Harvard socio-biologist EO Wilson once wrote; ‘Wilderness settles peace on the soul because it needs no help. It is beyond human contrivance.’

Beyond human contrivance! I find that a comforting thought.

Walking through a pristine and unspoiled landscape – a wild landscape - offers us an opportunity to find space. No interference to our thoughts. Nothing to distract us in an environment that is essentially peaceful. We can find renewal in the stillness of a forest, or on a wind scoured mountain top - the drift of cloud against the sky, the movement of sun and shadow, the warbling, liquid call of a curlew. In our chaotic, fast-paced and continuously changing world these things speak to us of eternal values, things that have always been, as ancient as the duration of days. All of them are completely and utterly unplanned, and most important of all, none of them have been arranged or rehearsed or manufactured by man.

That, I believe, is the real issue. And that is predominantly the issue that Chris Townsend explores in this book. Some may call it mountaineering. Others may call it hillwalking or long distance hiking or backpacking, but the real issue goes deeper than that. The issue in question is more fundamental than an outdoor activity, or a sport or a recreation, and Chris Townsend is one of a very tiny band of outdoor writers who has grasped that notion and has explored it in detail so that others may understand.

Part of that modern world I referred to has produced a crop of personality/television adventurers who treat the great outdoors as a racetrack, a place to prove themselves to others, or even more tragic, as a natural arena to be ‘conquered’. In their strive for limelight, for sponsorship deals and for personal glory they completely fail to understand the natural world for what it is – the major part of the web of creation of which we, mankind, are also part and parcel.

Because we are part of that web of creation we are reliant on it. We endlessly discuss ideas about ‘protecting the natural world’ but in essence it is the natural world that protects us! If we choose to wage war on it then we will ultimately be the loser. This spinning globe we call Earth has the ability to simply slough us off and heal itself – it doesn’t need us, but we need it! Boy, do we need the natural world. If you don’t understand this concept of reliance then try and hold your breath for a minute or two…

Many more years ago than I care to remember - I think it might be in the region of almost four decades - as I first wrestled with these notions, I met another young man who was similarly absorbed by the complexities of the natural world and our relationship with it.

Over the years our friendship has grown and I have come to hugely respect Chris Townsend’s sane and logical thinking processes, his respectful and passionate pleas for conservation of our planet and his bold and ambitious expeditions across the continents. A handful of Americans may have walked longer or further but they have not endured the tough walking conditions that we have here in Scotland, where sign posts are mostly non-existent, where the weather ranges from Alpine to Arctic inside moments, and where the voracious highland midge can make life so difficult that suicide appears as a welcome option!

Chris’ walking achievements are legendary. He is widely acknowledged as the UK’s outdoor gear guru. He has performed various roles with conservation and outdoor NGO’s but above all Chris Townsend is an evangelist, spreading the good news about the natural world, and an advocate for the importance of that other world. It’s in these roles that his wisdom truly shines through.

Throughout this book, whether Chris is writing about camping, hiking, skiing, the changing seasons or those heroes who have inspired him, a vital element becomes brightly apparent – his passion for wild places and his joy in communicating that passion to others. I commend that passion to you.

Cameron McNeish

Newtonmore

October 2015

INTRODUCTION

When I was growing up I wanted to be a writer and an explorer. Somehow, to my surprise, I have achieved both, after a fashion. As a boy my passions were reading and exploring the countryside around my home on the Lancashire coast. I climbed trees, fell in ditches, got lost in thickets, built dens, and imagined myself as the children in the books I read, especially those in the Arthur Ransome Swallows and Amazons stories and the Richmal Crompton JustWilliam stories.

I also read true stories of exploration and discovery from classics like John Hunt’s The Ascent of Everest to the Zoo Quest tales of a young David Attenborough. Imagining myself on Everest or in the jungles of South America was beyond me at ten years old but I could imagine being in Ransome’s Lake District while the imaginary countryside of William Brown was very similar to the real one all around me.

I never lost my dreams, though in my teens and early twenties they were pushed aside a little by the pressing concerns of adolescence, and I never stopped wandering in the countryside or scribbling in notebooks. I never thought either of them could be a way of making a living though and no-one ever suggested they could. My life as a long distance walker and outdoor writer came about gradually, unplanned and with many fortuitous twists and turns.

I wrote a few articles about long walks I’d done in the late 1970s and discovered that magazine editors quite liked them so I wrote some more and then expanded them to cover my thoughts and feelings about the outdoors and outdoor activities. I’m still writing many decades later and a selection of these essays make up this book, revised and with some changes to bring them up to date.

My previous books have been stories of long walks such as Rattlesnakes and Bald Eagles, ‘how-to’ books like The Backpacker’s Handbook and guidebooks such as World Mountain Ranges: Scotland. The essays in this book cover a greater range of topics and many of the ideas that appear in my earlier books are expanded and considered in more depth.

My interests are in wild land and the outdoors in all its aspects so you’ll find my thoughts on rewilding, forests, mountains, wilderness writers, outdoor gear and more, plus accounts of ski tours in places like Spitsbergen and Greenland, and trekking in the Himalayas as well as walks long and short.

My passion for wild places and for communicating my joy in them hasn’t dimmed over the years. If anything it has grown. Along with it has come a growing desire to help defend these places and work for their conservation and restoration. Out There tells the story of my outdoor life and shows the importance of wild places to me. My hope is that it will enhance your own experience of ‘out there’ or, if you haven’t been yet, inspire you to think and feel about it with something of my own affection, enthusiasm and concern.

1 IDEAS & INSPIRATION

Thinking of the mistakes I made as a novice backpacker makes me shudder. Did I really suffer that much? With no instruction or mentors I learnt initially by trial and error, mostly the latter. Sleeping out in the rain in a feather and down sleeping bag in a plastic survival bag showed me the joys of condensation and a wet bag; trying to sleep on frozen ground with no insulating mat taught me why these pieces of expensive foam are needed; buying a piece of open cell foam from a market because it was cheaper than a real camping mat taught me just how much water it absorbed when sleeping in a single-skin tent with no vents to let condensation escape. Result: another sodden sleeping bag. Then there was humping an external frame pack round the English Lake District with no hipbelt (these were ‘optional extras’ in Britain in the early 1970s). A shocked American hiker had me try on his pack with hipbelt, and I’ve been in loved with hipbelts ever since.

I also learned that one of those compass things might be a good idea after getting lost on the featureless moorland of Kinder Scout in a November storm and descending in the dark, cold and wet. A torch would have been useful too, as I stumbled into bogs and fell over rocks. Just a week later I realised that carrying spare batteries was also a good idea when my new torch failed. It had accidentally switched on in the pack and again I found myself slipping and sliding downwards in the darkness. When my cheap thin nylon cagoule leaked through the seams I went to the other extreme with a bulky, heavy neoprene coated cagoule with taped seams. The condensation was horrendous (this was long before any fabrics that let moisture out) but it never let in a drop of rain.

Those episodes and more taught me a great deal, as they would anyone who survived them. I don’t recommend following my example though. Far better to learn from those with more experience, whether in the wilds or from books, blogs and articles. Back in my early days the Internet didn’t exist so I couldn’t just pull up advice and gear reviews in an instant. Instead, when I realised that I would like to be safer and more comfortable, I read backpacking manuals and joined The Backpacker’s Club, a new organisation in Britain at the time. Those books – Peter Lumley’s Teach Yourself Backpacking and Derrick Booth’s The Backpacker’s Handbook (whose title I pinched for my own how-to book a few decades later) – were invaluable. I still have them and when I glance through them now, although the gear seems old-fashioned the advice is sound. I also went on Backpacker’s Club meets and learnt much by talking to experienced backpackers as well as hiking with them and observing their techniques.

Along with instructional books I read books about long-distance hikes and soon aspired to undertake similar walks. My first really long walk was inspired by John Hillaby’s Journey Through Britain, the story of a backpacking trip from the farthest apart points on the British mainland, Land’s End and John O’Groats. Hiking 1250 miles (2000km) that spring was a revelation. Two weeks and 270 miles (430km) was my previous longest walk. This one was long enough to become ‘what I did’, my way of life for the 3 months it took. This, I realised, was really living, this was what I wanted to do. I also discovered my love for real wildness as I crossed the Scottish Highlands and revelled in the remoteness and vastness compared with the English countryside. I still didn’t know what real wilderness was though. And I didn’t know I didn’t know either.

After Hillaby came Hamish Brown and his wonderful Hamish’s Mountain Walk, the story of the first ever walk over all the Munros (mountains over 3,000 feet/914m high) in Scotland in a single trip, and still one of the best long distance hiking books I’ve ever read. Inspired by Hamish I set out to climb all the Munros on backpacking trips. It took me four years, during which I undertook two 500 mile (800km) hikes and several shorter ones, and I learnt much in the stormy Highlands where camps are often exposed and subject to high winds and heavy rain. I think that if you learn backpacking skills there, you can easily adapt them to anywhere else. (Many years later I spent four and a half months on a continuous walk over all the Munros plus the subsidiary Tops during a wet summer that really tested my skills and my perseverance).

Whilst bagging the Munros I was lent a book an acquaintance had picked up in the USA, a book that would change my life even more than Hillaby’s and Brown’s had done. It was The Thousand-Mile Summer by Colin Fletcher. Reading Fletcher’s wonderful prose about backpacking in big wilderness in California inspired me to think about hiking overseas. A little research (again, without the Internet, I can’t imagine how I did it!) turned up the Pacific Crest Trail. I knew the moment I read about it that I wanted to hike it, and the year after completing the Munros I took my first very nervous steps north from the Mexican border.

Although still early April it was hot. The desert landscape was completely alien to me and I had much to learn. My first lesson was that a half litre water bottle is nowhere near adequate in dry places. In Scotland I barely ever carried water – there were always plenty of streams and pools. Once I’d added some soda bottles to my load all was well though and I began to enjoy and appreciate the strange landscape.

The next challenge came as I approached the High Sierra. Late snow meant it was completely snowbound. I bought snowshoes and crampons and teamed up with three other hikers and, together, we made it through, taking three weeks on the longest section. My pack was so heavy at the start that I couldn’t actually lift it. I had to sit down, put it on, and gingerly stand up. Every hour or so I had to rest as my shoulders and hips were going numb. At least that’s what my journal says. I can’t now remember the weight or the pain but I can remember the joy of spending so many days without leaving the wilderness. The weight was ridiculous and I’ve never carried such a stupid load since but the rewards made the effort worthwhile.

For much of the PCT the beauty and wildness of the landscape had me floating on a high. I was astounded and overjoyed to discover such wilderness. The whole trail was an inspiration. It remains the one walk that stands out in my memory; the one where I discovered real wilderness and the great pleasure of hiking and living in it. Since the PCT I’ve done many other long walks, most recently the Pacific Northwest Trail and the Scottish Watershed, and all have been great experiences. None has quite the magic or power of the PCT though. That was my first wilderness walk and as such remains special.

Going solo

The best way to experience wild places is to go alone. The full intensity of being in nature, of feeling part of it and blending in only comes with solitude, when you can open up to the world around you. By myself in the hills or the woods I often achieve a feeling of heightened awareness, of being in touch, never reached when I am with others. The reasons for this are deep, varied, complex and not completely clear, at least to me, but I shall try and identify them. Firstly of course, being alone means no distractions. When I walk with companions their company is a key part of the trip so involvement with nature is no longer central. Just removing the distractions of others is superficial though, it’s what emerges without those distractions that matters. Time alone in the wilds is time to connect and the longer the time the deeper the connection, which is why backpacking is much more intense than day walking. This connection is a mix of understanding and feeling.

Being alone also helps ensure a connection with the wild, allowing free interaction with

weather, landscape, internal feelings and external stimuli. On one overnight trip I wandered into a corrie in the Cairngorms and came upon a granite seat facing a curve of ragged cliffs and snow-choked gullies. I accepted the invitation and sat for a while watching rocks, clouds and a trickling spring, absorbing the atmosphere. When it seemed the right time I shouldered my pack and left the corrie, which now seemed familiar and known. Being alone it was completely my decision when to stop and when to move on.

This freedom applies to a host of decisions from the moment of waking. Do I spring up, pack and stride off or do I roll over and sleep a little more? Do I linger over an extended breakfast? Choosing the route, choosing the frequency, length and whereabouts of rest stops, deciding how far to walk each day, picking a campsite early because it looks too wonderful to pass, or walking into the evening and camping in the dark because I’m enjoying the dusk. Doing whatever I feel like when I feel like it allows me to relax and follow what feels a natural rhythm unbroken by the desires, needs or abilities of others. Sometimes I go into an almost trance like state where I am not really conscious of my body and walk for several hours, completely absorbed in where I am not who I am.

Sometimes I come out of these reveries astonished at how far I’ve walked and for how long. Yet at the same time, because I am walking at a speed and with a rhythm that suits me, I can deal almost automatically with changes in terrain, barely conscious of the need to cross boulders with care or slow down and shorten my steps when climbing steep slopes. Without conscious thought I’m engrossed in the landscape, observing every detail.

Falling into a natural rhythm is most obvious when walking but it is also present when you rest, camp, eat and sleep. I have my own camp routine, honed in Britain’s wet and cold weather but applied even in warm dry places. I sort out my shelter first (which may mean pitching a tent or just laying out a groundsheet and mat), then unpack gear into its place and finally start the stove. This procedure allows me to relax and feel organised and protected. As I become more awake as the day goes on I tend to walk, camp and sleep late. This does not suit everyone and when I walk with others I usually adapt to doing things earlier. Following my own rhythms and habits means I am at ease and able to relate more easily to where I am. It is a way of putting the necessary routines of backpacking into the background so they do not intrude on my real reasons for being there.

Two frequently put objections to solo backpacking are loneliness and safety. I’ve often been asked how I cope with being on my own. I find this an extremely difficult question to answer because I don’t find being alone a problem. In the wilds there is always so much to see and do, from the practicalities of campcraft, route finding and dealing with the weather, to watching everything from the landscape as a whole to a devil’s coach horse beetle struggling up a loose gravel slope. Solitude and loneliness are very different. I have never been lonely in the wilds.

Safety is a consideration, of course, but I find that being alone, and always taking that into account, adds to the intensity of the experience. There is no one to ask for advice, no one to share decision making with, no one to tell you your judgement is faulty or your choice unwise. Only you can decide what route to take, where to camp, whether to ford a river or make other choices. Your thinking becomes deeper (or at least it should do) because you and only you have to live with the results. With others safety is an issue and care is needed but it is shared. On your own every action must be weighed carefully and the risk assessed without consultation.

This becomes still more significant on backpacking trips, especially multi-week ones in remote places. On my thousand-mile hike through the Yukon Territory I went ten days without seeing another person (and I met very few in the whole trip). I was hiking cross country in terrain ranging from dense forest to open meadows and rocky ridges, and route finding was a matter of going with the nature of the land.

Following braided wide shallow rivers, wading between gravel banks, was easier than bushwhacking through the dense undergrowth on either side. At other times I escaped the tangled forest by climbing up to long bare terraces running high on the hillside. Constantly having to assess the terrain and choose a route kept me profoundly involved with the landscape. With a companion or in a group I would not have been so absorbed. I knew that I was far from help, that no one expected to hear from me for a few weeks and that the route I’d left with contacts was very approximate. At any time I could be several miles from it. This gave me every incentive to be careful and to concentrate all the time which, in turn, made the experience very powerful.

Thoughts on peak bagging

Looking out of my window, I can see a small heather-clad hill a few miles away. It goes under the prosaic if appropriate name of Tom Mor - Big Knoll. It’s not, as far as I know, in any tables of hills. At just 484 metres high and a mere 70 metres above the saddle linking it to the nearest higher hill, it doesn’t fit the criteria for even the most obscure and esoteric list. Over the years though, I’ve climbed up Tom Mor many times, sometimes in deep winter snow when it looks as though it could be part of the Arctic, sometimes on warm summer evenings when the sun glows red on the bright thread of the river twisting through the valley below and the distant Cairngorms fade into black.

There are mountain hares on Tom Mor, along with red grouse, meadow pipits and the occasional raven. Two big well-built cairns decorate the summit, plus a less attractive modern communications mast. I’ve never seen anyone else up there or even any footprints. I go because the route is interesting, the view pleasant and, when the light is right, spectacular. The distance is just right for a half-day or evening walk and, of course, it’s close to home.

Even though I’ve been there many times before, I always go to the summit of Tom Mor. To bypass it would make the walk seem incomplete. It’s a destination, a goal, an objective that gives a purpose, a meaning, to the walk. Afterwards it defines what I did. I went up Tom Mor. Although the real enjoyment is in the going up and the coming down and in what I see and experience along the way, not in reaching the top, having a summit to climb to gives a shape to the walk, a picture I can see in my mind.

Of course, if I just climbed that one little hill over and over, I would have a very clear image of a very small area. Some people do that and are content. I once knew somebody who went to Edale in the Peak District in England and climbed Kinder Scout every weekend. He liked Kinder and also liked the familiarity, the friendliness, of the known.

While I enjoy my strolls up Tom Mor, I also like to seek out the unknown and the different, the potentially challenging and the uncertain. But oh, how difficult this can sometimes be! How much easier to stick to the same paths and the same summits. Often a stimulus is needed to get me to venture into new territory. Curiosity is the usual spur. No hill is identical to any other, so every hill has something different to see and enjoy. Each way up is different, too, offering a new perspective on a perhaps familiar summit. This alone, the desire for the new and the unfamiliar, is enough to justify peak bagging.

There’s more, though. Working through a list of hills means building up a picture of an area until you can see it as a totality. Climb all the Lakeland Fells (I have to say I hate the neologism ‘Wainwrights’ - the man himself never compiled a list or gave his name to one) and you will have a clear overview of the area, of how the different hills and dales link together to form the whole. Work your way through the Munros and the Corbetts (and maybe the Grahams as well) and your knowledge of the Scottish hills should be fairly comprehensive. Go out in all types of weather, as peak baggers tend to do, and you’ll know what the hills are like in storms as well as sunshine, again giving a depth of knowledge unknown to those who only venture out when it’s fine.

In Britain, there is a particular reason for peak bagging too, and that is that most of our truly wild country lies high up, on and around the summits. To experience that wildness, we need to climb. In other places where there is real wildness in the valleys as well as on the heights, I don’t feel such a desire to reach the summits.

In wild places abroad, I’ve walked for weeks and months at a time and hardly climbed any peaks as I was in wilderness anyway. I did, however, bag a few in the White Mountains of New Hampshire, specifically for the views as the mountains are mostly densely forested and only the highest summits and ridges rise above the trees. To see anything, you have to climb. There are 48 summits over 4000ft (1220m) in New Hampshire and, on a ten day backpacking trip I climbed 22. Maybe I’ll go back and climb the rest one day.

While essentially a pointless pursuit, in that reaching summits has no extrinsic value, peak bagging is healthy and harmless (apart from some erosion on popular routes) and should cause no offence. Yet there are those who feel so threatened by peak baggers that they attack it as ‘list ticking’, ‘stamp collecting’ and even as ‘sacrilegious’. These critics seem to think that peak baggers have no appreciation of the mountains they climb, no desire to understand the nature of the land and no feeling for the beauty of wild country.

There probably are peak baggers for whom reaching a summit and ticking off a list are all that matters (philosophically, this may be the existentialist approach, as with Mallory’s ‘because it’s there’), but I venture to guess that they soon give up, as the effort and time required would be too much if there is little enjoyment. In my experience, most peak baggers have as much awareness and understanding of the hills as their critics, and often more due to their greater experience.

Those who decry peak bagging as mere list ticking fail to understand the commitment, challenge and pleasure involved. They also seem unaware of the rewards of exploring new country, of learning how the topography of a region works, of experiencing a range of hills in all weathers at all times of year. Collecting summits means collecting experiences.

Why some walkers should feel smug and superior (which is how they often appear) because they don’t bag peaks leaves me baffled and not a little irritated. It seems such an intolerant and elitist attitude, a way of saying that their way of doing things is right and anyone else’s is wrong. You never read of peak baggers criticising other walkers for not doing all the Munros or all the Lakeland Peaks. Why should they? Yet somehow those who set out to climb these peaks disturb those who don’t so much that they feel they must denigrate them.

Those of us who love the hills should be tolerant of different ways of doing things, as long as they don’t damage the wilds. There is nothing better about admiring the hills from below than there is about climbing them. Repeated ascents of the same peak are no less or more valuable or valid than climbing a different hill every day. How we enjoy the hills is a personal matter and not one that should engender criticism or censure.

Planning and spontaneity

Long distance walks are usually planned carefully. Information is put together on the nature of the terrain, possible camp sites, resupply points, water sources and more so that a detailed plan can be assembled. Once this is done you can, if you wish, know where you’ll spend each night, how far you’ll walk each day, where there is water and whether there are any hazards such as stream fords. Such plans are good for safety and peace of mind. They also ensure that you can complete your walk in the time available. I make plans similar to this for my long walks, but not in so much detail. Certainly not down to where I’ll camp or how far I’ll walk each day. Rather I need to know how far it is between resupply points so I know how many days to allow for each section. Any more than that takes out some of the adventure and excitement.

I like not knowing what to expect and the freedom of decision making. Raining at dawn? Let’s have a second breakfast and read some more of my book. A late start might mean a shorter distance but so what? Discover a beautiful camp site mid-afternoon? Then stop early and enjoy it. On other days, feeling strong and with a beautiful dusk unfolding, I might walk until after dark, making camp by headlamp. This approach sometimes means I have to walk further than perhaps intended. On the Pacific Northwest Trail I lingered on the summit of 2,225 metre Abercrombie Mountain as the setting sun turned the sky dark red and a half moon rose followed by a single bright star. I had intended to camp at the first water I could find back down in the forest. I did camp at the first water too – but 1,200 metres down and four hours later.

This less structured approach reaches its epitome on trips with no plans at all. I often do this over one and two nights where I can let desire, terrain and weather determine how far I go and where I camp.

A friend from Derbyshire found himself with a few days free and made a flying visit for a trip onto the Cairngorm Plateau. The forecast was good so we wandered across the plateau to the summit of Ben Macdui where a brisk wind sent us down to the headwaters of the Garbh Uisge Mor and a spectacular camp looking across the plateau to Cairn Gorm. The evening was lovely with soft light, drifting pale pink clouds and a slowly darkening sky. Morning came with low mist and drizzle. Cairn Gorm had vanished. With no set plans we decided to cross Ben Macdui again and descend into the Lairig Ghru and follow this out of the mountains. It was a good choice as the clouds lingered on the summits all day while down below we had views of the burns, pools and rocks of this dramatic pass. With no schedule to adhere to we could adapt to the weather.

On another trip I headed up alone onto the huge Moine Mhor (Great Moss) above Glen Feshie, a wonderful place for aimless wandering as there are a myriad possible camp sites and the terrain is good for walking. The weather forecast was promising and I was hoping for a couple of fine camp sites. My first was in the heart of the plateau with extensive views of streams, pools, rolling tundra and hills all around – totally wild, totally beautiful. Feeling energetic the next morning, probably inspired by the clear sky and warm sunshine, I decided on the superb high level walk along the rim of An Garbh Choire from Braeriach to Cairn Toul. I could have done this as a day trip from camp but wanted the option of camping elsewhere that night.

The day was magnificent with sharp, clear views and the Moine Mhor shimmered in the sunlight. This really is big country. Coming off Cairn Toul I was entranced by the many springs surrounded by bright green and red moss and, low down on the hillside, found a curious, long, wide, grassy shelf like a road cut across the slope for several hundred metres. Possibly it was the shore of an ancient loch. Mostly smooth and mostly dry it was a fine place for a camp with a view to the gully-riven craggy north face of Beinn Bhrotain. I’d walked 15 kilometres but was only four kilometres from where I’d camped the night before. I could easily have left my camp there, but that would have taken the spontaneity and freedom out of the day.

Trips like these with no destination, no purpose other than to be in wild places and relish the natural world, are in some ways the most perfect ones. No pressure, no schedule, just the freedom of the outdoors.

A sense of space

One warm sunny evening early in the summer I walked into the great bowl of Coire Ardair in the Creag Meagaidh National Nature Reserve, admired the dark snow-streaked cliffs rising above the lochan, and climbed the steep stony slopes to the narrow notch known as The Window. Here the world suddenly opened up. Until now I had been in the corrie, surrounded by its steep walls rising to long rippling ridges. The corrie was wide and there was no sense of being closed in but I could not see beyond its confines. From The Window I could look out to wave after wave of shadowy mountains vanishing into the distance. The sudden sense of space was liberating. I revelled in the vastness as I climbed the last slopes to the big plateau of Creag Meagaidh, that broad bulky mountain set in the heart of the Highlands. Up here there was just sky and mountain and wildness and this seemingly untouched landscape stretched to the horizon all around with only a few signs of human interference, not enough to do more than slightly detract from the scene.

I camped just fifty metres below the summit, my tiny tent dwarfed by the immensity of the mountain. The western horizon turned pink, the sun sank behind distant clouds, the first stars emerged. The ranges of hills became silhouettes, the corries below pools of blackness. The feeling of a huge world remained.

Morning came with a hazy sunrise. Far off hills were pale and vague, hovering in the cool air. Slowly as the sun rose and strengthened they hardened and sharpened. I gazed at the spreading view from Creag Meagaidh’s summit cairn then set off on the long high level walk over a series of tops to Carn Liath. I was above the world, striding over the hills free from the concerns of the locked-in land far below. From Carn Liath I began a slow descent and as I came down the land closed in, the world shrank, the mountains rose on either side. I felt restricted. The freedom of the summits had gone.

This sense of space and freedom is for me one of the great joys of the hills. I can find it on any summit but most especially on big plateaux or long ridges, places where I can stay high for hour after hour. I’ve also felt it on wide beaches, particularly remote ones such as Sandwood Bay, and there’s a hint of it in wide meadows in forests. In deserts it sometimes seems all there is. In such places nature is dominant and nature is large. Size is a key component of this feeling of space. It has to be seen spreading out all around. This is why in Britain mountain tops and ridges are the places to find it. High passes can provide it too but we don’t have many of those, unlike the High Sierra in California or the Himalaya, both places where I’ve enjoyed the vastness of the landscape without climbing summits.

As well as size I find naturalness important. The curving, flowing lines of the landscape, unbroken by human straight lines, have a beauty that speaks of space. In Britain it’s rare to have a completely unsullied view. Even from Creag Meagaidh, surrounded by hills, I could see blemishes – a distant wind farm, the white blades catching the eye; the pale slashes of bulldozed roads; the stark War of the Worlds marching metal towers of electricity pylons; blocks of conifer plantations – but these were tiny in the great scale of the landscape. Every new turbine, pylon or road has an effect though, gradually diminishing the beauty and sense of space.

This sense of space, of a world unconstrained and free, matters. We need to know such places still exist, that there is still somewhere to go that is beautiful and wild and in which we can lose ourselves. Of course glens, forests, corries can all be magnificent and wonderful but they don’t, can’t, have the same feeling of space. I love them for the details of nature, for the protection they offer from storms, for the views up to the summits, but to really see them I think you need to climb high above them and look down. The regenerating woodlands of Coire Ardair are lovely and inspiring and walking through them is a pleasure but to see how extensive they are you need to be on the hills above. From the heights you can see the shape of the land too, the shape of the corries and glens, the shape of the lochs and rivers. I love watching the landscape and seeing how it is constructed, how the parts fit together.

Backpacking is the ideal way to see the world like this, as long as the world itself is big enough to embrace multi-day journeys. Carve the wild up into little pieces and that will be lost. We need space for freedom and beauty.

2 NIGHTS IN THE WILD

The finest roof when camping is the open sky. Falling asleep watching the stars and the ragged silhouette of mountains, and waking as the first pale light glows in the east is the most thrilling way to spend a night in the wilds.

In dry areas such nights can be the norm. During both my two month long Arizona Trail walk and a five week hike in the High Sierra I spent more nights under the stars than in shelters. Sleeping out like this means keeping in touch with nature, in touch with the world. Breezes ripple the sleeping bag and brush your face; the sounds of animals scurrying nearby are loud and clear. If you stir in the night you half-awake to stars, trees, rocks, grass and the whole spreading natural world, and when you properly wake at dawn you are already outdoors with no need to unzip the tent to see what’s happening.

There are nights when the wind blows too hard or the rain starts to fall or biting insects launch an attack, and then you need a shelter. Even those scurrying animals can force you under cover. One night in the Grand Canyon mice running over my sleeping bag kept disturbing my sleep until, in the early hours of the morning, I pitched my tent and sealed myself inside.

After the open sky the next best shelter is a roomy tarp pitched so you can see all around. Next again, a tent with doors that open wide, again providing a good view and some contact with the outside world. Only when high winds blow and heavy rain or snow falls or insects are biting do I close up a tent. I don’t go outside to be inside. It’s just that I’m not out there to suffer. If it’s more comfortable sealed into my tent then that’s where I’ll be.

Lying in a warm sleeping bag, listening to the rain rattling on the flysheet and the wind roaring in great gusts can be strangely relaxing. Feeling snug and secure inside a tiny shelter is satisfying, but few such camps are really unforgettable. The lack of contact with the outside reduces them to the simple function of survival in a storm, with nothing distinctive to remember them by.

Sometimes, though, stormy nights can be surprisingly memorable as well as pleasurable. On my walk over the Munros and Tops I descended from a cloud-wrapped summit on a day of torrential rain and strong winds into a glen that was waterlogged with pools of water on every flattish spot and cascades pouring down the valley sides. I stumbled through the wetness, cursing the rain as I searched for a site. I wanted warmth and shelter, food and rest. Eventually I found a flattish knoll that wasn’t too wet and had just enough room for my little tent. I pitched, tightening the guylines against the wind, stripped off my wet waterproofs, boots and socks and crawled in. Suddenly I had shelter. I donned a dry fleece sweater and slid into my dry sleeping bag. Now I had warmth. Lighting the stove I made a hot drink. Outside lay a saturated world, the rain still hammering down, but now it looked wild and exciting and I was glad to be there.

More usually wild camps are remembered because of a beautiful or spectacular situation and weather that doesn’t force you into a closed tent. Camps where the tarp or tent function only as a bedroom are ideal. After that I like it when I can look out from my shelter, protected from wind and rain but not cut off from the outside. Whilst sleeping under the stars is not possible that often in Britain (and by sleeping under the stars I mean just in a sleeping bag with the hood open, not sealed in a bivi bag, which I find more confining than a tent), camps where you can sit outside or look out from your shelter occur surprisingly frequently, especially outside of summer. This might seem surprising but the one horror that can force me inside a tent with the doors shut tight are the ravenous hordes of midges that roam the hills searching for campers in the summer months.

Midges are usually associated with the Highlands but I have memories of midge-ridden nights in the Lake District too. Outside of midge season wild camping in the British hills can be a delight. The number of possible sites is legion. I discover more every year and the list of those I’ve passed by, but intend returning to, would last several lifetimes.

Taking pleasure in camping means that I rarely walk from dawn until dusk as this allows no time to enjoy a camp site. For me contemplation and slowly absorbing my surroundings are important, and remaining in one place gives the opportunity to notice the sort of subtleties that are easily missed while walking. Wildlife is more likely to be observed from a camp too, another reason not to be closed away from the outside. Tents and tarps make good hides.