The Blackberry Walk

Apologies, this week will be a quick'un after my holiday. I write to you returning from hiking in Norway, in a region known as the Rondane National Park. The experience was incredible: snow-covered mountains as far as the eye can see; layers of pine forest, creeping up the mountain-side; until it stops, the treeline ends, and all you see is formless white. The mountain air is crisp. You breathe it in, and you realise how farty and smoggy the air you regularly breathe is. There were no other people in the mountains, only me and my two friends. Between natural beauty, the crisp air, and the solitude, the mountains are at once magnificent and healing; breath-taking and spirit-giving. A salve for the modern's soul. But the mountains are 'awful' too. Now, I want to be precise when I say 'awful', because I don't mean awful in the common sense of 'bad'. No, instead I want to focus on the 'awe' of awful, the sense of overwhelming immensity and grandeur, which is then alloyed to cruelty. Because there is a cruelty to the mountains - one I experienced first hand. The first moment of danger I faced was a kind of 'boiling the frog' experience. What began as a more manageable incline got steeper and steeper, degree by degree, until before we knew it we were clambering up a hill which was steeper than 45°. Each tuft of heather I grabbed hold of I relied upon to hold me in-place and lift me up; and when there was no heather present, I dug my reddened hand into the snow like a claw, and held myself in-place with friction. At one point on this ascent, my feat slid and for just a moment, just a split second before I yanked myself up from the heather, I thought I was going to die. I can't explain the feeling too well, only that so many of the shocks from rollercoasters and being startled I've felt before were duller, 'fake' adrenaline by comparison. The second moment was the next day on a descent. After a pleasant hike to the summit, we began our walk back down. This started off easy as we traversed several kilometres across a frozen lake. Then, once we had gotten to the other side of the lake, we passed into the forest once more. As an aside, I would like to say that the old joke that the Eskimos have thirty-odd words for snow now makes perfect sense. I now know that some snow is crunchy underfoot, and some snow is squeaky; some hard and holds its shape, and some soft, letting you fall right in. In my experience hiking, the snow which is in and around the pine forests is awfully soft. You fall straight in. Attempting to traverse this patch of forest after the lake, and in spite of my snow shoes, with each step I fell in at least knee-deep, usually thigh-deep; and then the snow shoe would get stuck, twisted under the snow, and I'd panickedly shovel out snow from around me as I forced my foot up with all my might. This went on for an hour and a half. We hadn't even made it a kilometre, and at this rate we wouldn't be able to make our way out of the forest before nightfall. At such times of desperation, all one can do is put one foot in front of the other and pray. And by God's grace, we stumbled upon a ski path compressed for Easter skiing which led us most of the way back. The mountains are awful: at once magnificent and at once terrifying. Their beauty is tied to their danger. There is a sense that only because the mountain is so much greater than you, and that it is so difficult to surmount, can it be revered. The mountains are above us as men, as if they are somehow more powerful than us - a concept modern man is uncomfortable with, and rarely finds in city-office life. But the ancients knew. They knew gods lived on mountains: the Japanese place shrines on mountains; the pantheons of pagan Europe lived on mountains like Olympus; and the ancient Israelites couldn't stop themselves from worshipping in high places. Mountains are where higher powers live, thrones worthy of their might. It's that simple. Now, I am not a pagan. I do not believe we should return to worshipping atop mountains to Norse gods in the Rondane National Park. But I do believe such an understanding is a kind of pointer. Through the awful nature of a mountain we can see an aspect of God; we see that the mountain can give long stretches of easy-walking across frozen lakes, and thigh-deep falls into sharp snow; and so too can God give and God take. There is virtue in being God-fearing, for, like Job, everything in this life may in a moment be taken. For without fear, very rarely is there deep respect. An interest of mine lately has been in the classics. The narrator of the podcast I've been listening to, in discussing the life of Sertorius, made a poignant observation: that because figures like Sertorius and Caesar commit acts of brutality in their early lives they developed a reputation, and were able to command respect, be merciful, and compassionate as they matured. These men were respected out of fear and they were followed out of love. Perhaps, if I may do a little off-the-cuff theological speculation, could God be the same? Maybe in disbelieving in the flood of Noah we lose our fear for God and thus our respect, seeing Him instead in the image of the now over-ripe hippie Jesus? But mountains, I was talking before about mountains. As you ascend, the valley and the treeline become but stubble, a beard of the mountains, and you begin to only see mountains. You begin to see new, taller mountains behind the smaller mountains which in the valley blocked your view, these smaller mountains now sitting at eye level. It's as if, by your ascent, you enter the mountain realm. A higher realm. And, when I was hiking, not another soul bar the three of us could be seen. There were animal tracks recorded in the snow - we spotted the tracks of a hare, a lynx, a wolf, a bear, a reindeer, and what was likely a moose - and we even spotted a capercaillie; but save a few ski tracks, very little in the way of human life. The solitude is beautiful. We all yearn a little to be like Robinson Crusoe. Man wasn't made for the city, nor its domestication of us. There is something real in the mountains, a truer life. But its reality is far more awful than the softness of the city. That is the choice, one between spiritual depth necessarily alloyed to fear, or continue in the shallow softness of city life. For it is only by rewilding ourselves, cutting our teeth in the mountains, can we overcome our hypersocialisation.