What am I doing here?
Thou art the thing itself. Unaccommodated man is no more but such a poor, bare, forked animal as thou art.
King Lear. William Shakespeare.
But perhaps there is more to it than that.
Day One – Ascent
I stepped out of the shower, dried myself and walked back into my hotel room. The room, to make it look bigger, had one wall fitted with a floor to ceiling, wall-to-wall mirror. I saw my reflection walk into view. There I was, head to toe, naked. I dropped the towel I was holding and took a long look. I had never before seen my body with such clarity. Stepping back for a better view I examined my figure, up and down. The body of a 76-year-old man. Bald head, a broadening nose due to age and alcohol, a short grey beard. Strong shoulders and chest. A flat stomach scarred from operations. My penis drooping from dark pubic hair. Thin but strong legs. Feet with bad toenails.
The room was silent; the voices and snatches of music droning on in my head and the emotional messages flickering around my brain’s synapses could not be guessed at by looking at this figure in the mirror. This was a reflected image of the material me, a hairless ape, standing silently in space.
Then, out of my brain fog and the vague musings on my body, a clear question arose.
‘What are you doing here?’
There was at one level a straightforward answer to this question. I was in a hotel in Buttermere in the English Lake District. I was there with a desire to complete a wild camping walk I had started two weeks before which had been curtailed halfway by bad weather. Now there was a very good forecast for a few days, and I had travelled up from London to carry on the walk from where I left off. The plan was to traverse the fell, Robinson, and cross some ridges to Dale Head. I would then descend to Dale Head Tarn. There I would bivouac for one night, continue the next day via High Spy to Catbells, descend to Derwent Water and take the ferry to Keswick. Bus and train home. Fit young people could do this walk in one day but because of my age, slow pace and my desire to linger in these places, I had given myself a leisurely two days.
That was the plan. If the answer to the first question was to do the walk, a question underlying that was, ‘Why did I have a desire to do the walk?’ That might become clearer during the action, but best leave it floating for now. Before the questions must come the walking.
Usually, I carry a tent and cooking material for these walks if I am to need more than two nights out. In this case, it would require only one overnight camp, so I was only taking cold food, hot soup in a flask and a bivouac bag. This made the sack I was carrying a bit lighter than usual, but not by much.
The first and last steps on these walks are the hardest. Legs creak on the first uphill gradient, even on the tarmac road leading to the start of the path. With the heavy sack I must take things slowly. So it begins.
After climbing the first few hundred feet I became aware of a lone figure way above me on the hill side. I stopped to look. Yes. A figure in red trousers and a white top carrying a huge pack. I couldn’t quite work it out but I had the impression that he or she was going very slowly indeed. Another solo wild camper.
After a some time I looked up again and found, to my astonishment, that I was gaining on the person above. It has never happened before that I would be going faster than someone else on a path. But it was true. My steady plod, using my usual small footsteps, was taking me nearer and nearer to the person above.
The more I looked the more intrigued I became. It wasn’t that the load was huge, it was that the figure carrying it was quite small. Eventually, when I was just a few yards behind, the figure stopped and turned. It was a woman. Grey bobbed hair that was being blown about by the breeze. Dark glasses. The white top and the red trousers were half hidden by an enormous plastic map case that swung around her neck and shoulder. She was using expensive walking poles. These were extended to their full stretch, almost her own height and, rather than leaning on them, she held them halfway down their length.
‘Good morning’, I said.
‘Hello’ she said. ‘You are camping. I could tell from the size of your pack and your slow pace. I knew you would catch me up. You see, I am very, very slow. But I don’t mind. I just get on with it.’
‘Well, I must tell you, I have never overtaken anyone in the whole history of my doing these walks. A new experience. Thank you.’
We exchanged solo campers’ usual chat. Weight of sack? What kind of sleeping bag?
Then she said she was heading for Dale Head Tarn. I told her that was also my objective. A fleeting look of disappointment appeared on her face, then it was gone.
‘Don’t worry,’ I said. ‘I will probably camp on Dale Head summit. Always wanted to do that. I won’t encroach on your space.’ This wasn’t accurate, but solo campers are honourable and she had started first.
‘Oh, don’t worry,’ she said. But I could see her relief.
It’s that solo wild campers do just that, they camp in the wild – solo.
After a few more words she said, ‘I suppose we should do the age thing.’
‘76’, I said.
‘You beat me by 4.’
‘I’ll get going then,’ I said. ‘We’ll probably meet later on’.
I started up again without looking back. The track led on up through some zigzags and steeper sections. At one point the bare white ribs, spine and scattered fleece of a dead sheep nestled just by the path. No sign of the head and old enough not to smell. A body with less matter covering it than my mirrored image from this morning. If I am not burnt after death, to this favour I must come. I think the sheep would not have asked what it was doing here before it died. But did it ever feel, in however obscure a manner, unimaginable to us, a sense of unexplained unease about its existence? Or did it live in a state of utter matter-of-factness? Almost certainly the latter, but how would one know?
Before the last drag to the summit of Robinson, one has to cross the Buttermere Moss. This is described in Wainwright’s guidebook as ‘a wide marshy depression from which water cannot escape except by being carried away in the boots of pedestrians’. This proved to be true, and I reached the far side with one sodden foot and wet trousers.
I was nearing the summit dome and stopped to look back. There below, on the green and marshy plateau, I could see the diminutive red and white figure picking her way across the bog. Slowly, slowly but not stopping. An image that silenced me for a moment. I could only hear a slight breeze passing and the harsh ‘ark’ of a raven. Nothing else. The green plain and the travelling woman.
The top of Robison is a blessing. Some parallel ridges of rock make for fine wind breaks and seats, or for backs to lean up against. The weather had been a little overcast to begin the day, but now the clouds were high, hot sun coming through at times and a slight breeze. In other words this was perfect walking weather. I ditched the sack, sat down and pulled out some kind of nut bar and ate it. Some swigs of water, a look around and then a doze.
I woke sometime later just as the woman appeared over the rocky edge. I waved and clapped and she came over and dumped her sack next to mine. I was about to leave but we stood chatting for a while. I got some of her life story in small snatches of language and images as in a fragmented mosaic. I left her to her lunch and wandered off on the large path towards Dale Head.
Her presence had changed the journey. She was like something out of myth. She seemed indomitable and almost permanent although constantly on the move. An essence of the mountains and I had been lucky enough to meet her. Her presence in the landscape gave it a reassuring feel that all was well. Even if it wasn’t.
Now something else was changing. The weather was good, the mountain views extensive in a wide panorama. The sky seemed to expand and welcome me under its kindly wrap. Everything sparkled and I felt happy. Perhaps this was the answer to the question as to why I desired to come here, although I had no idea that this would be in store for me. Anticipated and hoped-for pleasure? But that did not answer the deeper question – what was I doing here?
I walked along the path slowly downhill for a while. Everything had been transformed by now. The hotel and the tarmac road out of Buttermere had been left behind and I was now walking, physically uplifted, in a state of some grace, isolated and independent but with a companionable imagined presence of the woman somewhere behind me. I was walking these hills as a monk treading cloisters.
Having seen my body that morning in the mirror I was more than usually aware of it moving about within my clothing. I could now feel the aches in my legs and, because of the weight of my pack, my shoulders were beginning to complain.
At the lowest point of what had now become a ridge I stopped for a rest. I knew the rest of the day would become more and more painful as my aged muscles and bones began to feel the strain. I was aware that the few walkers passing me had something of a spring to their steps compared to mine. If my artificial hips started to get sore then the outcome of the walk would be in doubt.
I started the slow climb to Dale Head. Halfway I looked back but there was no sign of the woman. Maybe she had given up. Maybe she didn’t exist. But how could I doubt? Within a minute or so there she was, silhouetted on the horizon and then descending towards me. She was still a long way off, so I turned and continued.
I realised that I was now feeling a kind of low voltage excitement. Reaching Dale Head would be a small triumph for me. Something I had planned and would now be able to achieve. This animation added to the free-wheeling spirit I had noticed earlier. As I neared the summit, I found myself smiling. Yes, this was a good thing to do. I stepped up to the summit cairn. As I did so, I registered around me what must be one of the most extensive mountain scenes in the country. The sky was bright and a light wind whipped around my legs. And my body and my embodied consciousness now felt a part of all this.
The journey had already become something added to my personal mythology. It had left the mundane behind. Now I was travelling with a different set of perceptions to those I woke up with in the hotel. It is as if I was slowly becoming naked again. Open to the experience of being a living organism travelling through space and time to an uncertain end.
I sat behind the huge summit cairn out of the wind. A sip of water and a bar of something and another short sleep. On waking I stood up, put on the sack and came around the cairn. There she was, leaning on her walking poles.
I told her that I couldn’t stay the night on the summit as there was no water, no real shelter and the wind was getting up. I said that she needn’t worry as I would move further on from the tarn to give her some space for her solo camp. She waved this away, but I knew that she would have been very disappointed if I tried to share the site.
I moved off and reached the start of the track down. Immediately I could see, way below, a small tarn further along on the path to the next peak and could see I could camp there. I turned and yelled at her that all was well. She waved and I started downwards.
It was late afternoon when I reached Dale Head Tarn, a place of stillness and light. There were two ancient sheep pens by the side of the water and I threw the sack down and propped myself up against a stone wall. The first day’s journey was done.
The sparkling light on the rippling tarn was beguiling me into a half dream. There was the woman standing next to me. We were holding hands. We were both naked at the edge of the water. Her sagging breasts and wrinkled buttocks and my scarred and depleted body showed our ages well. We looked at each other for a moment then walked slowly into the tarn. The shock of the cold did not deter us. We kept going steadily until only our heads were above the surface. Then we sank. For how long I don’t know, but we emerged at the same time. I was some yards from her, nearer to the shore. I looked round and she was smiling at me. She made a motion with her hand above the water which said, ‘Go on’. I turned and moved to the tarn side until my feet took a stand on the rocks below. Now I was ankle deep and looked around. She was not there. I looked down at my foreshortened reflection in the still water. The same naked body as mirrored in the hotel room. But the same consciousness? No. I was a long way from that. I was clean, reborn.
I stirred myself and looked up at the path coming from Dale Head. The woman had not appeared. Or maybe I saw the faint image of a figure moving on the far skyline but I could not be sure. I stood up and lifted the sack once more and moved on several hundred yards up the path by another small pool out of sight. I still thought it best to leave the tarn to the woman even if she didn’t show up.
Lying in my bivouac sack and sleeping bag I lay looking at the sky for an hour or so. The sunset was not spectacular; a slow decline into a deep red on the horizon. Looking up I saw, in the pale blue, a faint star. Then another, and another. But as I watched, a thin layer of cloud drifted over and obscured them. I slept.
I slept for some hours. Waking for no known reason, I found myself in the same position as before. Opening my eyes I looked straight up into the diamond dotted black velvet blanket of the sky. All clouds had long gone and it was very clear. I started the game of trying to find constellations but then realised this was a mistake. It would divide the wide and wild scattering into named segments, thereby destroying the overwhelming image of the whole thing itself. And what was that? Particles and forces is the knowledge. Beyond that we have nothing but our reactions to its visual presence. These responses can vary from ecstatic wonder to a ‘so what?’ It was the wonder of it that was mine for a while. My eventual reaction was to fall asleep once more, this time until day break.
Day Two – Descent
In the morning I rose and decamped early. After climbing the path towards High Spy for 30 minutes or so I turned and looked back. I could see Dale Head Tarn below me but there was no sign of the woman or her tent. I was now cut off from her presence and felt free in my solitude. I had been born into the next day and the next journey’s episode without imagined or real encumbrances or attachments. This freedom felt light on me as would a cool breeze.
What was I doing here? This became shorter – what was I doing? Then again – why do it? Why do anything beyond the necessities of working for food and shelter?
The temperature grew hotter as I walked, but there was a light wind which made the atmosphere pleasant. On reaching the top of High Spy I could see an almost flat path leading me on towards Maiden Moor and I began to swing along this with a fine rhythm. On one side were the depths of Borrowdale with its bright green, stone-walled fields and wooded flanks. On the other the glaciated valley of Newlands. I was traversing a high ridge between these hollows and, in my mental freedom, delighting in it and in a sensed emptying of my mind. Ego turning to a faintly discerned mist, and me wordlessly merging with this elevated landscape. Was this the reason for coming here? What I was hoping for? Some kind of epiphany?
The question returned – ‘why do anything?’ What about doing nothing? Inactivity for most must eventually lead to boredom. And the ache of restless boredom must be the frustration of life’s energy failing to find expression. Can it be that the fear of boredom is a spur to action and even a striving towards something beyond ourselves?
These walks, meditation and my experience of art, especially music, can induce some form of heightened awareness, where my illusory self merges into the whole of my perceived world. In these states I feel I contain, and am contained by, the whole of existence. From the joy to the horror, to the background void, and all within a cloud of unknowing. The whole thing. All of it. And all of it ending in a profound feeling of compassion for all of it. My transactional daily existence doesn’t allow for this. It doesn’t give me time to give attention to the world and therefore muddies the paths to wonderment.
Was my walk of this nature? A mad bid to escape boredom and, in so doing, attain some kind of transcendence? Perhaps. It had indeed become a rhythmic journey taking me far from the normal run of my life, allowing an opening up of my perceptions to a wider and unaccustomed experience of being alive, beyond the barrier of ego. The loss of self being an unlooked for consequence of putting one foot in front of the other.
I approached the top of Maiden Moor. Now I could see large areas of the shining surface of Derwent Water, way below to my right and, straight ahead, found myself looking down on the very top of Catbells, the last summit of this trip.
What am I doing here? What are we doing here? There is no answer to these questions. I don’t know one and neither does anybody else. The fact that there is no answer leaves the door open through which can be seen infinite possibilities of living and perceiving within the utter mystery of existence itself. The question then becomes ‘what am I doing here?’ And only I can answer that.
I could see a gathering of people on the summit of Catbells and I was on my way to mingle with them. Inevitably the mood of the last two days will be diffused, and the feel of the journey dispelled, as something dissolving in water.
The long descent from Maiden Moor and the short ascent of Catbells was done. Jokes were exchanged and photographs taken with a family celebrating their ascent. The little boy stuck his chest out for the picture, bursting with pride on his first mountain top. I left them all and negotiated the rocky steps down towards the lake with some tension, fearful of a stumble, while overweight, panting people and their dogs passed me. But it was soon over and I found myself wandering through a sunlight dappled woodland towards the lakeside jetty. Here I would pick up the ferry to take me over the water to Keswick.
My body, seen fresh in a mirror in a Buttermere hotel and in an imagined Dale Head Tarn, was now full of aches under my dirty clothes. It had taken up traces of what had just been, but these would soon disappear and leave no signs of the physical strain on this poor, bare, forked animal.
Would the transcendent state I had in part experienced on my walk last any better? No – of course not. When the music ends we find ourselves back in the silence of an empty auditorium. But soon this silence will demand a response and the pendulum swing between the passive and the active, the detached and the engaged, will continue its rhythmic dance – until the clock stops.
One thing stayed with me. The woman. As to who she was and what happened to her, I have no information. She seemed a spirit of the mountains, haunting these high and often lonely places, forever moving, but always there. Our paths may cross on other hills and she and I might briefly acknowledge each other as we pass on these solitary pilgrimages to nowhere and everywhere.
Garry Kennard
September 2024
Go back to ‘Encounters Trilogy’.