Outdoor Discoveries

Journeys of others

Before my career break, I found it difficult time to read a book and often lapsed into watch television documentaries on the BBC iPlayer. The situation got reversed after a book called Flow by Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi encouraged the practice. Whenever I feel an emotion that I do not want to remain, a TV watching binge never helped but reading a book causes movement and the feeling can be left in the past. It is as if someone else’s journey brings you along too.

Currently, that is taking on the shores of the Aran Islands in the company of Yorkshireman Tim Robinson. Reading his two part work on the islands has lain on my reading list for far too long and I started Stones of Aran: Pilgrimmage back in the noughties only never to get very far with it. My paper copy may be gone but I made a new start on its digital counterpart and it is reading well so far.

Handily, I visited Inishmore (Árainn, as Gaeilge) so the localities are not all that lost to me. If another visit were to happen, then Iaráirne could see an encounter as could the opposite end of the island if I feel sufficiently adventurous. Sightings of Inishmann (inis Meáin, as Gaeilge) or the Brannock Islands could be additional rewards for such endeavours. Before such things, more of Robinson’s works like Stones of Aran: Labyrinth and his Connemara Trilogy await and who knows what they might inspire?

The world described by Tim Robinson is not dissimilar in ambience to that described in Chris Townsend’s The Munros and Tops, another of this year’s reads. After that came John McPhee’s Coming into the Country and it proved to be a book in three very different sections. The first section features the Brooks Range with a narrative split in two with the second part preceding the first. It still hangs together well with the second and third sections featuring more of the folk that are attracted to the idea of a wild place away from the strictures of everyday living.

That unleashes tensions when trying to find a new state capital or dealing with the encroaching bureaucracy keen on keep a wild landscape as it is when you fancy exploiting its resources on a small scale. The act of taking a Caterpillar D9 bulldozer into wilderness oddly aroused my concern for the machine and not the landscape as might be expected. Maybe it reminded me of of abandonment in a big hostile world and there could be a wider theme there. In the end, McPhee finds himself siding with industrious Alaskans earning a living rather than others solely following their perhaps unrealisable dreams. They might fancy abandonment much like Christopher McCandless only to find that they still need humanity or that it continues to intrude on their world.

Stepping away from humanity awhile is a recurring theme in my own wanderings and it is why such places as the Scottish highlands and islands are as amenable to my ends as the wilder parts of other places. That also explains a certain interest in North America that was accompanied by perusal of writings about Lewis and Clark crossing the continent though that was a very dry read that I was happy to finish.

There is another recurring theme in all of this: you often find Robert Macfarlane appearing in these with either a recommendation or a foreword. That applies to the McPhee and Robinson works as much as that by Nan Shepherd on the Cairngorms. It might be that he is using his fame to restore older books to our notice but I reckon that I might be reading them anyway given how I have been collecting them onto a reading list in recent months.

Speaking of those older books, it is unlikely but if I ever were to wnat more but I might be tempted by the Gutenberg project if I wanted eReader files of works from a very different era by Heny David Thoreau or Raplh Waldo Emerson. They are out of copyright but a visit to either AbeBooks, The Literature Network or Scribd could serve a use if I fancied a wider selection of those still covered by such restrictions. With more new tomes that appeal to me, that is unlikely to happen just yet. Usefully, the time taken to complete any single volume should put a brake on any overspending. After all, it is better to acquire for reading than to decorate a bookshelf and horde more than you need.

Journal keeping

One thing that I do not keep myself is a written diary though photos from various outings act as prompts for my memory at times. Until his health no longer allowed him, my late father used to keep a diary and often referred to it when trying to unearth what happened on a particular day. After his passing, they were put somewhere more discreet for the sake of maintaining a sense of dignity.

It is not recent encounters with lapses of memory that has brought this to mind but recent reading. Over the summer, I got to catching up with Chris Townsend’s Rattlesnakes and Bald Eagles where a long hike along the Pacific Crest Trail from thirty years before was recounted lucidly. That was followed by Hamish’s Mountain Walk by Hamish Brown where mentions of journal keeping appear in the a narrative that includes reminiscences from twenty or so preceding years of wandering about Scotland’s hills. Going back further in time, I then read Mary T. S. Schaffer’s Old Indian Trails of the Canadian Rockies where journal keeping again must have made the retelling of summer expeditions from several years before that bit more successful.

Thinking about it now, I find myself wondering just how much travel writing needs a supporting diary or journal to make it work. Currently, I am making my way through Bradt’s Roam Alone with its tales of solo travelling that read so fresh that you have to wonder if some contemporary notes assisted the various short stories.

All this probably should make me consider if scribbling a few notes at the end of each excursion might be worthwhile given how long I have tended to leave things before writing them on here. It is true that less adventurous rambles leave less of an imprint on anyone’s memory as I found with one more recent trip report so that might be a hint that new experiences should be sought on a continuing basis. In the meantime, my memory often beats others so that might explain how I never got thinking these thoughts before now.

Life’s journey has followed that trail in recent years and new things have been tried. Maybe, it might be no harm to keep doing that with my wanderings too. Revisiting old haunts brings satisfaction but exploring new places keeps things from feeling stale. Adventurous thoughts lead to roaming North America, New Zealand or Australia in my mind’s eye but there are other possibilities closer to hand. It is a matter of making some time to uncover them and then make the most of what is there.

Autumn reflections

There have been a few nights this week that possessed the chill of autumn and some trees already are losing their spring and summer colouring. In fact, I picked two early conkers on a walk this evening. Meteorologists may prefer us to wait until the start of September but I always wonder if autumn really starts in the middle of August. Some I overheard talking about turning on their heating may not disagree with me so strongly.

It is strange how we assign the summer months because when it comes to hours of daylight, August in some ways is a mirror image of April. The main difference generally is the residual heat remaining after June and July, something that can hold until the start of November. This past summer has been exceptional so it is not that the school year starts after a break without its share of sunshine even if August came damp.

For whatever reason, I can get ideas about fresh restarts around this time. It might be that there is a lull during September or the start of those school, college and university years but my mind can fill with possibilities while bemoaning that such things often are stymied by a decline in energy coinciding with growing hours of darkness. It often feels like a brief burst of energy before other things take hold.

The latter has me wondering about a midwinter getaway since I did not have an overseas trip this summer because of other concerns. This line of thought also emerged two years ago and there was a trip to Mallorca with some walking that in on my radar for a forthcoming trip report. Other possibilities will be assessed and enough time allowed so as not to have 2019 began like 2017 when a heavy cold weighed me down.

2018 has been a busy year for me with a move into self-employment taking up the summer months and a series of property maintenance tasks in Ireland that were planned during the career break that I began in August 2017. The last part of 2016 came busy with Irish matters so that might not have helped the start of the next year either. As I look to the rest of this year, I hope that work will remain steady enough for me to focus on other things like getting out and about in any good weather that comes. Life has become an adventure again and that blows away any staleness that once may have beset me.

Of anniversaries and birthdays

A warm sunny bank holiday weekend may be a rare thing but I have not been lured out and about. In any event, temperatures have risen a little too high for what I call comfortable walking and other preoccupations have overtaken me. Still, they have not been all-consuming so I have not passed the twelfth anniversary of my setting up this blog after a May Day bank holiday trip to Scotland that took in Lochaber, Inverness and highland Perthshire. Sometime in June (the actual date itself is lost to me) marks the twentieth anniversary of my setting up a website for the first time and November is when my public transport website reaches its tenth birthday.

It goes without saying that a lot has happened during these time intervals. Family and work circumstances have changed while my explorations of hill country have become more international; the process of recounting my Norwegian wanderings is an ongoing project. There have been new beginnings and false starts but life has continued in its many ups and downs. The need for constant supply of new and happy memories has been made plain to me as my explorations continue.

Finally, I have got to reading Graham Wilson’s Climbing Down and I have other books by the same author to keep me going after that. Guidebooks to parts of North America as well as New Zealand have been perused in the off chance that my wanderings may become intercontinental. Canada’s western reaches have their scenic allure together with a hint of danger added by the presence of bears and other wild creatures. It is my intention that those readings continue as I rediscover the necessity of reading books from cover to cover in place of dipping in and out of certain sections. Any way that adds an extra overview has its place. They have added thoughts of visiting Vancouver Island and the Canadian Rockies while any prospect of going as far as New Zealand is more of a long shot.

Before all that, there is a possible venture in my working life that will need setting up if it comes to pass. Once such a thing is place and things are more settled, my hope is that my outdoor explorations will continue. After all, May is the best time of year in Britain and Ireland and I hardly want to let that slip by me if I can help it. Longer outdoors outings may not have happened since February for a variety of reasons but there should be more of the year left for such pursuits. Life’s adventure continues.

A longer reading project

Over the years, I have been prone to buying books with good intentions and then hardly getting around to reading them. This has been known to apply as much to paper books as their digital counterparts, and I have been getting through a backlog of the latter since last autumn.

The reading material itself has been varied with travel writing from the likes of Dan Kieran, Bruce Chatwin and Jack Kerouac seeing inclusion along with other subjects covered by the likes of Clive Aslet and Christian Wolmer. Among these have been works from Henry David Thoreau and John Muir, with the latter featuring through every month from last November until this one.

What I have discovered is that reading nineteenth century prose takes more effort than what is found today. Sentences feel longer and have more packed into them. The same applies to paragraphs that spread from one page to another. Even so, there are rewards in revisiting observations from another time, for the sort of descriptive writing from centuries ago is more of a rarity today.

Returning to the Scottish naturalist and conservationist John Muir, my chosen task was to work my way through an extensive compendium of his collected works along with a volume in tribute, and it is that which is the main subject of this post. In the U.S.A., Muir remains a revered figure and someone who appears to have fitted much into his lifetime, too.

It was not just a childhood spent in Scotland prior to a move to Wisconsin, either. Still, that childhood was severe, with corporal punishment at home and school to go with schoolboy scrapping. Throughout all of this, there was a growing love of nature that was to define him. Engaging in that persuasion often got him punishment from his father yet he and his brother continued regardless. Such things were regarded as straying away from the path of Christian righteousness.

The hardship continued in North America, with lots of hard work to build up a block of farming land from what was wilderness. Still, the appreciation of nature grew, and there even was time spent inventing various clocks and other contrivances. That time was made by getting up part way through the night, an act that bewildered his own father.

The inventions were to see him heading away from home on an early trip to a fair, and that was followed by four years spent at the University of Wisconsin at Madison. Though a degree was not gained, there was plenty of mental enlightenment that preceded a time of factory working that was ended by an accident that nearly blinded Muir.

It was after recovery from that incident that he began his long walk to Florida by way of Kentucky and Tennessee. Along the way, he had plenty of time for observing natural beauty before a bout of malaria laid him low. Though he made it as far as Cuba, the intended journey to South America had to be abandoned in favour of one to California that took him via New York.

It was his explorations of the High Sierra that would make his name. Yosemite, King’s Canyon, Hetch Hetchy and other such spectacular valleys would allow him to investigate the effects of glaciation. Mountain tops like Mount Shasta would see him climbing them, even when the weather was not that hospitable. One incident on Mount Shasta got a repeated telling. All the while, his health improved and his strength advanced as he observed grand fauna like the giant Sequoia trees endemic to California. Variations in weather were much experienced too, with storms being relished; when most of us would stay indoors, he would be heading outside. Quite what people must have made of this and his other exploits would have made interesting reading, not unlike what some write in our own times.

From California, he went north as far as Alaska, while also visiting Oregon and Washington State too. The Grand Canyon was another place that he visited, as was Yellowstone National Park. His trips to Alaska had him exploring glaciers with a view to seeing how their action related to what he saw in California. As well as Muir’s own published accounts, Samuel Hall Young also published his own tribute to the man with whom he too explored places such as Glacier Bay. Muir embarked on a summertime sea journey to the Arctic as well, so he got to know Alaska and neighbouring parts of Russia better than many at the time.

There was one trip back to Scotland later in life, and he also appeared to get to other parts of Europe, as well as Asia and South America. Before all this, he married and settled down to run a fruit farm, though that was not his real calling. His wife often sent him away to mountain country to get his fill of the wild places that he so cherished.

That love of nature must have turned him to conservation, for he was one of the founding members of the Sierra Club, an organisation that continues to exist today. It also was reflected in his writing, for he campaigned for National Parks and decried the effects of sheep grazing on wild meadows. Lumbering was not seen as a legitimate activity always, nor was the building of the railways. It was after an unsuccessful campaign to stop the building of a reservoir in Hetch Hetchy valley that he passed away.

His legacy has persisted, with people still reading works like My First Summer in the Sierra, A Thousand-mile Walk to the Gulf or The Story of my Boyhood and Youth. These are just a small selection of what I ended up reading over the last few months. There was some repetition along the way, but that probably can be found here too. The nineteenth century prose took some effort to read and things undoubtedly have changed since the times in which it was written, yet there was much to enjoy. In their own way, Muir’s books and other writings describe many parts of the world that I have yet to visit, and the effort was worth it for all that. The enthusiasm and alternative approach to life percolated through the narratives too, and the thinking has remained until our own time. Let’s hope that it does so into the future.