The Fell Walkers’ Guide To Eternity
Chapter Four: The Apparition of the Brocken
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With nothing else to go on, I took the advice I was given and I began to slow down and listen to the something that was guiding my actions and I noticed that I was changing from within. I seemed less restless and learned patience. There were times when I just sat, feeling a stillness while time sped up and slowed down around me.
I took to finding hidden ledges and other perches and would sit and watch the fells, seeing the days pass by, the seasons merge and change. I was wandering to one of those lonely places overlooking a popular walk, where I could watch the clouds sweep over from the West, a blanket of soft grey and white, stroking the long summit ridge opposite, reminding me of the crest of a wave, just about to break.
In the still air I could hear the cry of ravens and the occasional clatter of a stone dislodged by a grazing sheep. Crisp and beautiful sounds that could be near or far away, part of the natural symphony of life.
This put my odd little situation into some perspective.
The next time I saw Sam was in one of the quiet valleys on the edge of the Lake District. He was leaning against a gate, peering into the distance, down a rutted and muddy track. His jacket was shiny from a recent shower. He turned and beckoned me. I was really unsure around him; he has a blank and serious looking face that intimidated me, but there was a gentleness to the outer edges of his character. I guessed I’d have to prove myself to him somehow.
“Just wait, Lad, got some cleaning up to do,” was all he said. Then we waited in silence. Then Sam let out a slow smile full of sly joy and wickedness. “C’mon Lad, got some folk who need a lesson in respect,” and I heard the roar of engines, whining towards us, the sound of not quite being in the right gear, too heavy on the accelerator. Then I saw them, a group of Land Rovers from an off-road experience company inching their way towards us. They had been painted in camouflage with decals and stencils that appealed to the testosterone deficient.
The noise increased, driving away the peace of the valley as they approached our gate. The first vehicle stopped and a man got out of his oversized Tonka toy and opened the gate. The convoy passed through, whooping and shouting at abuse as encouragement at each other.
Then the world slowed to a stop and Sam strode out and dived under the first vehicle, pulling something out of his jacket. I crouched down and saw him frantically rubbing some cables with a stone, “You do the next one lad,” he ordered.
I climbed under the next and looked at the underside and just knew what each of the cables and parts did. I attacked the brakes. We went through them all. Then we got out as time went back to normal and the convoy went down the steep track. Time went back to normal and seconds later, the mass growling of the engines changed into whines and crunches. We watched as they went through a dry stone wall and over a quarry edge to a loud crash and a tongue of flame.
I followed Sam down to the crash site and we went through the crushed and tangled vehicles checking for survivors and finishing them off by banging their heads against the dashboards. A couple of them took a few goes before we finally dispatched them. Walking away from the carnage, Sam patted me on the back, “At least they died doing the thing they loved,” he said in faux consolation almost smiling as he wandered off. I did smile, thinking of the inquests, the lawsuits against the company for unworthy vehicles. It would put them out of business with the slow and sadistic journey through the courts. That was the last time I saw Sam.
Pam was more talkative, always asking how I was, checking I was coping, which I seemed to be on the few times we met. She gently prodded around the limits of my memory. I told her what little I knew, but she deflected my questions with an airy grace. But I managed to put a few tiny pieces together. When I asked after Sam, she shrugged and said, “Sam? Sam’s something else now.” I pressed but she didn’t elaborate. Perhaps she was just guessing like I was. My theory was that we were working off some kind of penance for our sins. But which ones? And if it was true, the fells would be full of us.
I mentioned to Pam that I felt something just out of reach when I looked at some of the crags and cliffs. She nodded thoughtfully, “You should meet Sid, he was a climber. I’ll tell him to look out for you.”
So, there were three of us, or two, depending on what had happened to Sam. I stored away each scrap of information, but they didn’t add up to anything informative. As I worried less about what had happened to me, I found I was enjoying my surroundings more. There were advantages, while I could feel the wind, rain and snow, it registered rather than affected me. For example, right now there’s rain streaming at me, in a high biting wind, I certainly feel it, but it just doesn’t seem to matter and I can endure it with little discomfort. I can smell oncoming rain, there’s a sharp clean sensation at the top of the nostrils a few minutes before it hits.
But what does affect me the most is the land itself. Imagine sitting in one place for a year, watching the sun rise and fall as the seasons move, this makes the horizon feel like it’s taking a deep breath in then slowly letting it out. I see the grass grow, the tides of bracken turning from brown to green and back again, the clouds float past, the scent of pollen in the Summer, the sharp cold of Winter’s air. Always changing, always revealing something new.
One spring morning, I found myself on on a barren summit, there was snow around and the thick cloud sat a few inches the ground, damp wisps reaching out to stroke the earth. I was sitting, looking down on the steep crag where I’d just rescued a lost sheep when in the deep silence I heard the crunch of footsteps coming towards me, the cloud thinned and I saw a short, strong looking man, almost bald, wearing rough baggy trousers and a dark green jumper under a gabardine jacket. He looked like one of the pioneer rock climbers.
“You must be David,” he said, “Pam told me about you. I’m Sid.” He offered his hand and I shook it, spluttering a greeting. It was a firm handshake, that of a man who knows his strength.
“Let’s find a good place to chat,” he suggested and led me down a large gully for a few metres then we followed a rough sheep trail until we came to a large ledge, with a view off the steep cliff and all the way down to a far away tarn. We took in the view and I wondered what was coming next, hoping for some answers.
“You can probably tell that I’ve been here a while, though I’m not sure how long it’s been. Don’t suppose you know much about that either.”
“No,” I replied, “Time seems to be as changeable as the weather.”
“Aye, it is that. I used to try to work out what was going on, but never got anywhere so I stopped worrying about it,” he said and smiled gently at me.
“That’s pretty much what I do these days,” I told him.
“Good,” he replied, “All you need to do is”, I interrupted, “Do what’s right,” and smiled back. He laughed.
“I don’t know what happened to me,” he said, “But I’m pretty sure I popped my clogs on the fells somehow. Maybe I was at fault, I don’t know, but, and this is important lad,” He looked me in the eye, “I help climbers mostly, maybe I’m putting right a wrong, I don’t know, but that’s what I seem to be asked to do.”
He explained, “Sometimes I see someone slip while climbing and everything seems to stop, so I climb up there and put their hand or foot back on the hold, stopping them from falling.”
He put his hand on my shoulder, gently, firmly, “Sometimes I see them at the crag foot and I tell them, that this isn’t their day, whisper about doing a different route than they planned.”
He added slowly, “Usually it works,” he looked right into me, “But there’s some folk who just won’t listen.”
The world fell away from me and everything stopped.
I’d seen him before. My God, I’d seen him before, before… this.
He was the same but wearing a red checked shirt, one of the old-time climbers, full of stories about the early days, tales of people who had become legends in the climbing world. I was at Black Crag in Borrowdale. I’d had a huge row with my girlfriend and stormed out determined to go climbing and not visit her parents.
Sid was talking of the early climbs and the joys of the classic routes, but I had decided to push myself, feeling the anger inside of me urging me on. I was going to solo climb Black Crag Eliminate, a steep, exposed route up the front of a large pinnacle that dominated the middle of the crag. I managed most of it, but on the last section, easier than the rest, my anger had finally burned through to my nerves as I reached up at full stretch and my arms suddenly ached, my left leg started shaking and I grabbed the vital hold. And missed. I just had time to register the colossal mistake I made before I hit the ground and nothing.
Sid held me tight until I stopped screaming.
I was young then, but my impulsiveness, my determination to do what I wanted not only cost my life, but hurt people around me. I was obsessed with hill walking and climbing and if you’re going to go vertical a fair bit has to slip away. I put everything beneath my desire for another climb, another route ticked off. I saw nature’s glories as a challenge to be overcome, conquered. I saw my desires standing proud above those that loved me; I saw my sins, my failures.
But it was more than that, I understood my life in the context of those around me, the people and places I was connected to. Death is a difficult reality for us to accept: that one day we will stop and the world continue. Religions and philosophies are one way of coping with the knowledge that we will all enter the great unknowable abyss.
Except that now I know that the abyss is not an end, nor a destination. The abyss is the human shaped hole we leave in the lives of others when we pass away and as nature abhors a vacuum, the hole slowly fills up as the generations pass and our trace fades away. With this realisation I sat down exhausted and the strangest thing happened; I fell asleep. When I woke my body had gone, but I was still here.
That’s when things really started to get weird.
