between scree and soil
In September 2023, I joined an all-women expedition into the tumultuous Cairngorms, following in Nan Shepherd’s footsteps
“Day two begins dark, grey, and vibrates with anticipation.
By mid-afternoon, the anticipation is gone. The elements have been at war with us almost the entire way up and we’re already battered. The weather has been unexpectedly bad – we’re caught in the tail-end of a storm. What’s that saying? We make plans, and the mountain laughs. I’m not doing so well. A combination of a dodgy stomach and lack of energy has caused me to struggle since we stopped for lunch. I’m so lost in my own discomfort that I have no mental space to really engage with anything, notice anything.
Hours after we started, we reach the plateau after a slog through torrential rain and high winds and there’s only one way I can describe what I see: nothingness.
I no longer have a sense of place or time, and it is freeing. I usually feel the anxious hum of screen addiction lying low, never not there. Here, with my mind full of fog, rain, corrie, loch, ache, pain, breathe in, breathe out, left foot, right foot, moving, moving… I forget life outside of us even exists.”
By mid-afternoon, the anticipation is gone. The elements have been at war with us almost the entire way up and we’re already battered. The weather has been unexpectedly bad – we’re caught in the tail-end of a storm. What’s that saying? We make plans, and the mountain laughs. I’m not doing so well. A combination of a dodgy stomach and lack of energy has caused me to struggle since we stopped for lunch. I’m so lost in my own discomfort that I have no mental space to really engage with anything, notice anything.
Hours after we started, we reach the plateau after a slog through torrential rain and high winds and there’s only one way I can describe what I see: nothingness.
I no longer have a sense of place or time, and it is freeing. I usually feel the anxious hum of screen addiction lying low, never not there. Here, with my mind full of fog, rain, corrie, loch, ache, pain, breathe in, breathe out, left foot, right foot, moving, moving… I forget life outside of us even exists.”
‘So there I lie on the plateau, under me the
central
core
of
fire
from which was thrust this grumbling grinding mass of plutonic rock, over me blue air, and between the fire of the rock and the fire of the sun,
scree,
soil and water,
moss,
grass,
flower and tree,
insect, bird and beast,
wind, rain, and snow –
the total mountain.
Slowly I have found my way in.’
—Nan Shepherd, The Living Mountain
central
core
of
fire
from which was thrust this grumbling grinding mass of plutonic rock, over me blue air, and between the fire of the rock and the fire of the sun,
scree,
soil and water,
moss,
grass,
flower and tree,
insect, bird and beast,
wind, rain, and snow –
the total mountain.
Slowly I have found my way in.’
—Nan Shepherd, The Living Mountain