Skin to Rock

“O there is blessing in this gentle breeze,

A visitant that while it fans my cheek

Doth seem half conscious of the joy it brings”

 

William Wordsworth

 

Unexpected things happen among the forests and hills. A cloud moves over, letting a ray of sunshine in on a grey day. A pine sways back in the wind, then springs forward and showers you with its needles, and answers a question. You suddenly come across some item which you’ve sought for years and never found while you were looking – a flower, a pine cone eaten by a squirrel, a forgotten memory. Once, an Osprey dove into the water within arms reach of me, paddling my canoe, leaving me soaked, shocked and spluttering as the huge brown bird flapped its way out of the loch bearing its silver trout which had been hiding in the shadow of my boat. But sometimes you do the unexpected thing, as if it’s not a decision but something that happened to you, caused by some outside agent. Maybe it’s destiny. Maybe some paths you can choose, but some are laid before your feet.

One soggy day – a cloud scudding, hill hiding, delightfully mizzled and silver aired kind of day –  I was on my way through the woods, and I suddenly wanted to take off my boots. One moment as I normally was, strolling along between the juniper bushes, then suddenly and completely wanting to press the soles of my feet against the forest floor, as if the protective shell of my boot was a prison I just couldn’t stand a moment longer.

I sat myself on the damp brown ground and unlaced my boots, tied them together and hung them around my neck. Then delicately, trying to touch everything but disturb nothing, I got back to my feet. Those pale, flappy white paws on the end of my legs were suddenly alive with fresh sensation. Coldness. Pine needles pricking into skin. The softness of the soil, the hardness of a twig. The scaliness of a piece of squamulose lichen, the knobliness of a pine cone (best avoided). 

 

I realised that I could never fully experience the forest while I still walked in my boots, I could never understand it like that. I recognised immediately that the foot was the most sensitive instrument of our connection to the earth. By wrapping it in leather, and placing a hard rubber sole underneath it all the time my walking gained speed, but lost so much more in understanding. A boot presses hard on everything, making it all the same whether it is soft or hard, wet or dry. Nothing can press back, and the foot becomes nothing but a dull tool of support.

I also realised that my feet were over-sensitive and soft from a lifetime of doing exactly that. Imagine, if you can, being blind and then being given the power to see. Overwhelming.

Walking barefoot slowed me down and opened my eyes anew, like learning the fox walk all over again. To avoid hurting my feet I had to consider each and every step with even greater care. Place the foot down toes first, feel what is under them. I winced as a tiny pebble pressed too hard in the heel, hurried too quickly over it and placed the next step carelessly out of need for balance. Something digged in, and I winced again. I learned to slow down, to let the foot speak back before I commited my weight to it. I smiled slightly to myself, there alone in the middle of the woods, as the hairs on my instep stirred in the breeze, and my sole squidged into some mud. When was the last time these trees saw a proper human footprint? I made my solitary way among them, walking only where the forest asked me to, and where it let me, rather than crushing my way over its tiny suggestions about where to place my feet. The woodland floor, strewn with cones and sticks, required careful navigation. But through a clearing of moor grass I could race, folding the soft blades under each foot, following the circular imprints of the deer. 

 

I couldn’t help but wonder whether there is more than just chance in the words soul, sole (as in foot) and sole (as in alone). My feet may touch the ground, but it was my heart that I was pressing into the spaces between every tree and stone. Walking alone through the forest, barefoot, feeling and seeing more than ever. I was now immersed in this as surely as I was immersed when I swam in the loch.

 

It was through the soles of my feet rather than the vision of my eyes that I learned how truly different the mountain was to the woods. Walking across the Cairngorms, even on a path, I discovered that boots are to the hill as wings are to the ocean. You may traverse it more quickly, but you will feel nothing of its reality. Every small pebble and stone was like a breaking ocean roller – an obstacle in its own right. Then there was the hardness of everything – the unyielding mineral of gravel is altogether different and more overwhelming than the hardness of a stick or piece of bark underfoot. Even the hill grass, waving in the summer breeze, was hard in its way, growing on soil that was little more than compressed grains of rock. The sharpness of pine needles was soft in comparison.

Unexpectedly, the hardness of the mountain encouraged grace in movement. With my boots firmly strapped in the top of my bag I ventured into the boulders of Coire an-t Sneachda. Inexpressible joy at the way my feet respond to every rock. I did not ‘tread’ or ‘step’ like this – these words made little sense. It was like moving a hand from one thing to another – there is no word for that as far as I know. The fact that it moves me forward is incidental. Toes wrapped themselves, wrinkles clinching together on my soles as they grasped at granite. Under the walls of craggy mountain shadow I wandered among cold stones with smoothness and finesse. My steps flowed through the jumbled piles and blocks, fluid and silent as my feet reached out, touched, and maintained my balance moving ever forwards through it all. The grain of each rock was felt and known. Walking a mile on the hill like that taught me more than a hundred miles in boots.

 

The combination of intimate contact of skin to rock with fluid, unthinking movement captivated my body and releases my mind from thinking. And the fact that it should be in this place, this specific coire beneath the rivened gullies of the Fluted Buttress seemed apt given the many memories that lay around. Looking up at the scrim and sarking of granite slabs I recalled a winter day of ferocious wind and cold where my journey into these hills began all those years ago. But it was a different climbing memory that I had in mind, now. Not an ‘epic,’ as mountaineers say, but a ‘perfect.’ This same delightful combination of touch and movement, but played out on a vertical plane instead of a horizontal one.

I am standing at the belay ledge about to begin the second pitch. My companions and I don’t know yet that we are on the wrong route. The one we intend is actually several dozen yards to our left, with its easy and big blocky holds. This section of the wall is much steeper, blanker, smoother and harder, now we see it up close. So it is with some surprise at the difficulty of the moves that I set off following a small fissure in the stone. 

 

I am leading this section of the climb, which means there is no rope above me. The rope is attached to my harness, and I pull it up with me. I must place pieces of equipment in the rock as I go and attach the rope to them as I climb. As long as I keep finding new cracks to put gear in as I climb, I can never fall very far. But the further I go without placing something, then the more the risk increases. And this section of rock is as blank as a bedsheet. 

 

I manage to place a piece about ten feet above the belay. A first point of protection, that is enough to convince me to try and overcome my doubts as I contemplate the slabby rock above and all around. Behind, the void is tugging at me, and whispering in my ear. The moves are still hard, every grip strenuous and tenuous. I am twisting my way upward, following the slightest weakness through the difficulties – a shallow groove that offers just enough opposition to my feet that I can grip.

There is nowhere to place any gear. The risk increases with every forward motion, but also with every moment I remain still. Eventually my muscles will start to shake, and then I’ll lose my grip and fall. I doubt the single piece of protection I placed will hold, now I am so far above it; and if it rips then I might be going all the way. Here’s the thing about falling: it’s instantaneous. You don’t get that cartoonish pause of a second or two in the air to collect your thoughts. You go fast immediately.

The potential consequences of falling here do not bear thinking about, but I’ve come too far to back off. The moves I’ve just done are too difficult to reverse. But hesitation is my greatest enemy. If I stay still I’ll fall, if I try to descend I’ll fall. There is only one option. And knowing that, something moves inside me. Absolute quietness descends. The view is gone. My companions’ voices are gone. Thought is gone. There is only stone, and a body I can not even be sure that I control.

A foot moves upward and finds a nubbin of crystal. A leg presses hard, hard, hard while crimping fingers pull arms and chest close to the stone. The breath comes rushing in. There is nowhere for the other foot so it must simply extend away in a ballerina’s glide as a hand reaches up and finds a slight ledge. Not enough to wrap the fingers on – just enough to press and counterbalance the forces of the body as the other hand now moves. The breath slowly exhales. Through two windows I watch, looking left and right, as the hand finds something and does not pause long enough to question. My cheek is next to cold hard stone. Now the good foot must lift again, and for a moment it all hangs on that one insubstantial foot that is barely standing on anything but air.

The foot slips. Down it goes into space miles away, dangling on the end of its leg like a cartoon poised in space before falling. But the body does not go with it. At any other time, on any other climb, the fall would have been inevitable, but no. Tension and strength flows like warmth from the heart into the leg and the opposite hand. It checks the downward move before it begins, pulls the foot back up and presses the point of the toe back to empty rock. Then, before thought can comprehend, it commits everything to it – the power unleashed into the stone like water through a fire hose – the other foot and hand both releasing simultaneously – a floating upward lunge as if I were thrown – and the fingers sinking decisively into the slot of an invisible crack in exactly the right place, as if it was made to fit the hand, as if the hand knew it would be there all along. At the same time the foot lands with the precision of a laser scalpel to find the new point of balance.

And there, just in front of the eyes, is a perfect crack to place some protection. For a moment I am still somewhere else, looking out at it through the windows. Then suddenly I am back again, once more the denizen of both a body and a mind. Possessor once more of ordinary senses, my fingers firmly grasping a positive edge and all my limbs secure. With a sense of profound strangeness I look down beneath my feet. The difficult section mysteriously appears to be beneath me. Not only that, but at least a dozen more moves that I don’t remember doing. There is only a lingering physical memory of stone, of a left/right pendulum of balance, tranquil breaths and effortless power. I place a nut in the crack, add a quickdraw and clip the rope to it with the ease of muscle memory, and climbed easily upward to the finish.

 

And then suddenly it was years later, and I was barefoot on the rocks below. I looked up at that buttress with a slight smile, and a slight shake of the head. The hairs on my arms and legs were standing up, and I’m not quite sure if it’s the breeze, the coldness of the stone to my bare feet, or something else, but the world had my senses alive and tingling where it touched me.