The Joy of High Places Read online

  We wished each other well and then Anthony and I continued upwards until we reached Cat Bells. There was still mist rising from the lake, grey and gloomy, and a cloudy turbulent sky. It wasn’t exactly raining, but the air was wet and, although it was mid-morning, the light was dim. We sat down on the side of the rocky crag and drank tea from our thermos, feeling as if we were in a quiet English novel. One black-faced sheep sat alone on the side of the hill contemplating the Wordsworthian view.

  I felt connected and calm. A connection to place usually depends on a layering of memories, associations that colour everything with significance and with triggers for joy in the reassurance of history, but walking creates connection on its own, without need for a past. My boot on the soil created an intimacy without seeming to need memory; the slow pace, the second-by-second passing of grasses, mosses, stones, bushes, created closeness, a sense of sharing the same small patch of earth.

  As I walked back down the saddle from Cat Bells and then over Maiden Moor, the feeling of contentment swelled – I could feel it causing my rib cage to expand. I became minutely aware of my body: the air in my lungs, blood pumping, leg muscles stretching and contracting, head clear and straight on my spine; my body awareness like a child’s – lithe and strong and unconscious of appearances. A light rain had started to fall on the rough heath and wiry grass, and the path was rocky – nothing pretty here – but I could feel the ‘soul oval’ of childhood stretching out and filling with wild joy. I wanted to yell, jump out of my body. The exhilaration of high places buzzed in me. It’s a curious excitement laced with longing that must have some biological purpose; perhaps a reward for our ancestors climbing up out of the Great Rift Valley in Africa at the beginning of human time to encourage us to walk further across the world. At last there was knowledge of the landscape from above; how thrilling was the scope of our vision. I thought of Barney hovering and dipping far above the hills and paddocks, like a large and reasonable eagle.

  ‘Aaaaaahhhh!’ I whooped. ‘Aaaaaaahhh.’

  Anthony, who was 20 metres or so ahead, turned around, startled. I shrugged and looked around from the top of the world, seeing the expanse of fells and sky in all directions, and noticed storm clouds to the west. I caught up to Anthony and we looked at the dark smudge on the sky.

  ‘Which way will it go?’

  ‘No idea.’

  We had no way of interpreting or predicting the weather in this isolated place, no means of reading the relationship between sky and land. High Spy, above us, was rocky and exposed. There was nowhere to shelter, not a rock or a bush above knee height. We were about halfway and, without knowing which way the weather would go, we decided we might as well keep going forward as go back. We continued upwards as the westward sky darkened and lightning started to flash. I counted until the thunder crashed. It was still a few kilometres away.

  Just after we reached the cairn on top of High Spy, there was an ominous stillness then the wind whipped around the hilltop. The black cumulonimbus clouds were now overhead and the time between the lightning flashes and thunder was much less. Without build-up, a pelting rain began to fall. My heart started to thump. I didn’t know what we should do, which way would take us to safety. I was afraid in an elemental way, afraid of the elements. We took a quick look at the map, which was instantly sodden, and then almost ran downhill towards Dalehead Tarn. I was wearing a raincoat and pulled the hood up, but the heavy, driving rain already dripped from the front of my hair and trick-led in under the collar. I cast around for shelter, but there was nothing.

  And where was the turn to the left into the marshes the walkers had mentioned? The directions gave an ordnance map grid reference for the turn, but the map was disintegrating in the rain – we had not thought of putting it in a plastic sleeve. Anthony saw a line of lower heath that could have been read as a path, so we headed through the boggy ground, jumping from tussock to tussock, sometimes sinking as far as our knees. We helped each other to squelch free and then sank again. We came to a fence and a stile and half-ran on until we came to steps leading down through abandoned slate mines. At last we were coming off the fell, away from the electrical storm.

  The rain was still heavy and the loose slate covering the steep steps slipped every time we trod on it. It was bleak and severe and a ridiculously dangerous place to walk. I descended like an anxious long-limbed animal with my sticks balancing each precarious step, fearful of slipping even in my deep-gripped boots. There were mines all the way down on either side, but our directions noted, ‘these should only be explored by those with suitable experience’ and by now I was feeling humbled enough to take advice.

  Near the bottom of the slope we lost the way completely. We had crossed Tongue Gill, a stream running steeply downhill, a number of times, but could not find any of the other landmarks. I tried crouching under a spiky briar bush to look at our map, but it had turned into a ball of paper mush. Anthony’s phone compass was working so he tried to work out the direction of Grange village. Eventually we saw a group of walkers heading northwards on a road a few kilometres to the east. We kept them in sight, veering towards them until we were following and, after another half hour, found ourselves back in Grange, sodden and cold. Without knowing how to read the sky or the landscape, nor carrying a decent map, it was only luck that brought us safely off the fells.

  I have to admit none of this would have happened to Barney. If he had been out walking on the fells he would have been well equipped and properly informed. When you are lost or caught in the weather on the ground it’s frightening, but, unless it’s extreme conditions, not usually life-threatening. Whenever you fly, reading the sky is essential, a matter of life and death. It’s obvious if you, an earthbound creature, are going to step off the earth, then you need to know if there will be anything to stop you from falling. The skyscape, however, is invisible; the towering columns of warm rising air, thermals, the sheer cliffs of falling cold air, the direction and speed of wind highways, the endlessly shifting complexity of sky topography, are all only able to be read by their effects.

  From his front yard in Murwillumbah, on a good day when the line of sight was not interrupted by clouds on the range north of the town, Barney could see the sky above Beechmont and even Mt Tambourine launch sites and could gain some idea of what the wind was doing from the shape and drift of the clouds. The ‘best-looking’ skies for long flights are mostly blue with well-formed cumulus clouds regularly placed across the sky, marking the tops of thermals – if the line is long, stretching for many kilometres, it’s called a cloud-street. The highway of thermals, plus the latent heat of evaporation released during condensation, gives greater lift just below and in clouds. Overcast skies are not bad, but thermals generally won’t be strong near the ground, and high up, dangerous embedded cumulonimbus storm clouds can be difficult to spot.

  Barney also checked weather bureau information, including specialised weather forecasts for paragliding, and data from the wind stations at the launch sites. For take-off, wind speeds under 20 km/h are safest. Wind speed for long-distance flights needs to be between 20 and 30 km/h, although if you are flying in several directions, then lighter winds, under 15 km/h, are easier for cross- and head-wind legs. If you approach a thermal from the downwind side, you have to fly through a greater expanse of sinking air – not so good – and if you have a tailwind, your speed will increase and carry you forward as you climb – much better. If, however, the wind is too strong, thermals will lean over to the point where you can’t climb fast enough to avoid falling over the edge of them. It’s as if a thermal is a constantly rising invisible skyscraper, and if you fly too fast, instead of rising with it, you will tumble off the lip of the invisible building.

  The landscape below needs to be read as well. Stubble paddocks, sheltered gullies and furrowed paddocks are thermal collectors where air warms and gathers, and creek-lines, edges of forest and ridgelines are thermal triggers. If you spot a trigger downwind of a collector, there will almost c
ertainly be a thermal in that location. Movement of dust and leaves on the ground, especially spinning movement, needs to be noted because it indicates a whirlwind, or dust devil, which can shoot the unsuspecting flyer suddenly upwards and cause the wing to collapse.

  Before he stepped off the side of the mountain for the first time, and every time, Barney watched the trees, clouds, birds and butterflies. He looked for soaring birds like eagles, ibis and pelicans for signs of thermals, and also insectivorous birds like swallows and swifts that had been drawn into thermals as they chased their prey. He looked for butterflies being drawn up – butterflies are effective thermal markers during flying. If you see a butterfly thousands of feet up, then you know it’s in a column of rising air which can carry you, human and butterfly, where you might never have imagined. He looked at the launch-site windsock and leaves, branches and grass to judge wind strength, direction and likely turbulence and he noted the air on his face and body – was it warm or cool, was it flowing smoothly or in short sharp slaps?

  It seems to me that my brother was attentive to every element of his airy world, his senses recalibrated to notice details that only a sky creature needs, his neural pathways redrawn, as if he had become part-bird, with a firing avian brain.

  Our evolutionary paths parted company with birds as far back as the reptiles, but I still like the idea of a bird-snake-man hidden deep in millions of dark brain cells. Perhaps the child brain floats down into those dark cells to a time when beings had bird and human mind all at once, knowing the feel of wind under wings and feet on the earth. Perhaps indigenous stories from around the world are right; we really are magpie-woman, eaglehawk-man, sparrow-man, crow-woman, swallow-child, all of us every day, and not just in childhood dreams. We are land creatures, feet padding along on the soil; we see insects, stones, fences, animals, all at our own level, but deep in the cerebellum, we know the world from above.

  For Barney the view from above was addictive. I had felt the excitement of high places, but not the utter strangeness of experiencing height without anything beneath my feet. Later, when I sat down to write his stories I realised what I didn’t know. The particular details matter. I emailed to ask him to tell me what it had been like lifting off and then up into that sky world and he wrote back that afternoon.

  Each time he took off, grasses and rocks were close and distinct, his feet skimming just above them, his view rocking back and forth as if he were swinging on the end of a large pendulum as he stabilised his wing. Within a few seconds, the slope fell away and he was looking down on eucalypts, still close enough to see leaves and branches. Then when he caught a thermal early – on his first fight – he soared upwards, the earth seeming to fall, the horizon opening up so that he could see the whole landscape of the Eastern ranges inland from Byron Bay. From his pod harness – a kind of strap chair with his feet held out in front in a covered cocoon – he dangled under a red and white wing. He moved at 35 to 40 kilometres per hour and looked down on the world.

  Below were eroded plateaus, ridges with steep-sided valleys – the ridges and valleys cleared, and the steeply sloping sides thickly wooded with patches of rainforest in the deeper valleys. When he looked down he could see brilliant green paddocks, miniature farm animals, sheep tracks, the dark smudge of eucalypt stands and forests, sandstone cliffs, creeks, gullies, cloud shadows, roads, mountains, undulating hills. When he looked ahead he could see blue sky, white and grey clouds, crows, eagles, hawks, and the horizon. Above the patterned world, he felt delight in the beauty of the landscape mixed with a kind of disbelieving astonishment that he was doing something so far outside the limits of what a human body ought to be able to do.

  After I read his notes I wonder if the joy of walking might be the opposite; a return to the original capacity to stand upright and walk, two-legged, across the earth on the African savannah. Not a breakthrough to a new experience, but a return to an ancient one. In nature, not above it. When I asked Anthony where he thought the delight lay he said, ‘It’s primordial. Back to the beginning, what our bodies were built for.’ I knew wasn’t suggesting an Almighty plan, just that there is an inherent pleasure in a body working well. Our legs carry us up hills, across streams, over prickly moors, up rocky slopes; traversing the open country to the next human settlement. It’s as if I walk with my ancestors when I walk across the landscape, all the way back to my first bipedal ancestor.

  After walking in the Fells, we drove to Yorkshire. The speedy passing of the countryside made little impression, the feeling of it being an overview robbing it of any intimacy. Country needs time and stillness to do its work. A walking pace. And walking needs to be purposeless. It seems contradictory, walking should be meaningful because it has a purpose, that’s how the world works – meaning is derived from purpose – but the opposite seems to be true. It’s true that the aim is to get to your destination for that day, but it’s how it unfolds that matters more than arriving. If it was just ‘to get there’, then I’d surely climb in a car.

  But once we reached the Yorkshire moors and dales I realised I did recognise them. Writing had done its work in the teenage girl walking on the farm, immersed in the wild landscape of Heathcliff and Cathy although there was nothing resembling it around her.

  I was only going to say that heaven did not seem to be my home; and I broke my heart with weeping to come back to earth; and the angels were so angry they flung me out into the middle of the heath on the top of Wuthering Heights; where I woke sobbing for joy.

  I remember the deep sense of both disturbance and recognition those words caused in me. Even decades of ordinary life later, Cathy’s words create a pang. Perhaps I was beginning to see, even then, that I also might prefer the actuality of earth to the idea of heaven. I belonged in the smell of hot wheat and wet leaves and the sight of sun on a creek or a puddle, and the sound of cicadas and magpies.

  There were miles of brownish heather, the purple blooms faded, and bracken and short wiry grasses and rocky outcrops. The moors were high and wild and the vegetation had a roughness of texture. Even with villages scattered in the dales, the uplands felt untamed and a little disturbing, as if they were tugging at the threads on the edges of a well-made life. The walks though, were along the river valleys: green and patterned with meadows and fields. We stayed in a pub in the village of Grassington, which it turned out was only 30 kilometres from where the Brontës had lived.

  When I looked at my Yorkshire notes, there were only a few images: ‘Fields, woods, stone walls, intense green pastures, oaks, chestnuts, birches, pines, then beyond, the harsh brown of old heather.’

  I stared at the scribbled words and at first felt blank, but when I found the map of the walk, whole sections came back to me. This happens when I write about walking – a walk, which at first has only the barest outline in memory, comes back into detailed step-by-step life as if an interior film starts playing. I walk along whole sections in my mind and see my boot leap onto a particular stone, the diagonal path across a long rectangular field and the sheep huddling at one end. Neuroscientists suggest fragments of memory – a smell, a sight, a sound – are stored in various sites in the brain which the hippocampus, a curled sea-horse in the middle of the brain, puts together into a coherent image or story when one fragment is triggered by a context. It means all that’s needed is one scent, one word, one sensation of a stone underfoot for a sequence to reconstruct then replay.

  Perhaps everything you have done is stored somewhere in the labyrinth of memory and only needs the right key to make it suddenly spring into an astonishing virtual world, like Proust’s Combray, and the Guermantes and Méséglise ways, his Sunday walks, unfolding out of the eternal crumb of madeleine cake dipped in lime-flower tea. Apparently many memories are lost; some events do not make the neural pathway fire strongly or often enough to form a permanent image and I have to admit that days, months, even years of my life are blank, or at least misty, but I want to believe that I could, if I applied myself to the task, find the o
riginal flickering synaptic current. The fear is always that what is unremembered is pointless. The fact that it happened is never enough.

  We walked along a stone-walled footpath outside of Grassington, fields on one side, woods on the other. The sky was cloudy, rain threatening, but the air was still. I put my hand on the spongy moss covering the stone wall, thicker and softer than emerald velvet. The scene was more Blyton than Brontë but it did feel as if nothing had changed for centuries. There were fields with a few sheep, tussocky hillsides, scattered oaks, and, in the distance, rough moorland with brown heather patches. Every hundred metres or so there were stiles, mostly made of stone, sometimes wooden. We came to a group of Dutch walkers, talking as they climbed one after the other through one of the narrow stone stiles. I have an image of a large bottom in orange shorts turning sideways trying to squeeze through and everyone else trying not to look, as well as an ungenerous feeling – in me – of judgment not just of her, but of everyone in the group. They were about my age, on the other side of 50, and were clearly devoted to walking, but I didn’t want to talk to them or even acknowledge them. I don’t like walking in groups because I don’t want to feel as if I ought to talk. I walk with Anthony but we rarely speak; it’s as if we are each walking separately. I disappear – as I imagine he does – into an interior landscape of memory and reverie.

  Some walkers declare the only true walking is alone. Robert Louis Stevenson said it had to be done alone, and Goethe and Baudelaire walked alone – but perhaps they didn’t have anyone with whom they could walk silently. Why have rules about how walking should be done? And then I remember the Dutch walkers and wonder why I felt that my walking was somehow superior to theirs. Of anything that humans can do, surely walking is an expression of equality. It needs no particular skill or intelligence or fitness or knowledge or money; it requires only one foot after the other, each time finding the surface of the earth, toes absorbing pressure, arms slightly swinging, balance perpetually adjusting to keep the body vertical. A moment-by-moment miracle of evolution on a short walk through the Yorkshire Moors.