Climbing, not Bagging
View of the lower part of Ben Nevis through the rain spattered window
It’s raining – again. I’m sitting in the motorhome with a view of Ben Nevis, the highest mountain in the UK. When we first arrived at the campsite in Glen Nevis at the base of the mountain, the sky was clear and you could see hikers on the first part of the ascent.
Tomorrow I will be joining them, not climbing all the way to the top but half way up to the next artist residency called Outlandia. It’s an off-grid studio site, a bit like a well built cubby house, high up a mountain.
Outlandia is not on the Ordnance Survey map I just purchased. However, I had a small fission of excitement unfolding the paper as I saw its potential to be cut up into large postcard sizes for a series of artworks and poems. There’s a sense of direction with a map, all those blue rivers, brown contours and strange place names that you slowly get to know. A map feels like you are going somewhere, which has got to be a good thing.
I am quite apprehensive though. I remember these same feelings when I booked to go on a glacier walk in Iceland in 2019. I wrote a blog post about it – On Falling not Failing. So much has happened in my life since that time four years ago and now I’m even more apprehensive – if that’s possible.
I’ve never considered myself to be a hiker, walker or climber, so I googled why do people climb mountains and was surprised at the result. I thought it was something to do with human machismo, the idea that a mountain exists to be climbed or conquered, “because it’s there”.
Bagging a Munro is a popular sport in Scotland. Mountains have to be over 3,000 feet to be considered a Munro, named after Sir Hugo Munro (1856-1919) who surveyed and climbed all the mountains in Scotland over 3,000 feet. There are 282 mountains considered to be ‘Munros’, while other mountains have names according to their gradings, like ‘Corbetts’ (between 2,500 and 3,00 feet) and ‘Marilyns’ which is any Scottish mountain with a drop of 150 feet on all sides. I never knew there were so many classifications!
According to several mountaineering sites, climbing is good for mental health, it reduces stress, gives you an immersion in nature and reminds you of how small you are in the scheme of the greater universe. But first you have to exert yourself!
The Scottish mountaineer John Muir famously said "The mountains are calling, and I must go". I have to say I’ve never felt that particular urge, but rereading my own blog post with its collage from September 2019 reminds me that a lot of my fear is to do with trust.
“This collage revealed to me the depths of my fear and my exhilaration at successfully getting up to the top and down again without stumbling or falling… I just had to trust in myself and release that fear of failing, not falling.”
I’ll be manifesting a clear sky and a slow climb. I’ve got my walking poles, my hiking boots and belief that I am always being looked after. I’ll pack some chocolate in a paper bag . That’s my idea of ‘bagging’.
All those brown contour lines on Ben Nevis!
