Fell runner and backpacker Norman Hadley shares a beautiful reflection on what it means to inherit and pass on a love of the outdoors
MOUNTAINS HUMBLE US. Whenever we stand in a corrie scooped out over millennia, from strata laid down over hundreds of millions of years, we face the Big Truth: we are but mayflies dancing on the skin of a loch or a tarn.
We can shrug with resignation at this. Or, if we have the fortune to meet someone who we fancy the pants off, we can make our tiny gesture of love and hope and defiance, and make new humans to take our place.
The years will pass, in a haze of oxytocin and exhaustion. You’ll turn the pages of the book, saying: “D-O-G, dog. C-A-T, cat.” Then later, perhaps, you might find yourself murmuring “This is a dragonfly, this is a guy line, that is Blencathra.”
You want them to see what you see, and to love what you love, but you know it’s only a gift if it’s given freely and taken gladly. They must be able to turn away from wild places and seek out more sybaritic pleasures in the worlds of the games console, the pizza parlour, or the nightclub. Maybe they’ll come back to the wild places; maybe not. The first lesson to learn about our children is they are not ours.
GENESIS
You may find yourself looking back at how you got into outdoor life. I was lucky: I was born into a fellwalking family. I was carried for the first two years, growing as plump as a miniature Buddha in the papoose. I was then set down in the sky-high bracken on my chubby legs and advised to walk. Someone up at the front of the party had the sandwiches and there was talk of a sweet at the summit, so I had ample motivation to keep up.
From the start, I loved it. I climbed Skiddaw at the age of two, scampering around the heather in a romper suit, running down and body-surfing on my belly like a penguin. By four, I was tackling the Scafells from Eskdale and trotting round the Fairfield Horseshoe in hand-me-down wellies. This felt natural to me – I knew no different.
By 17, I felt ready to expand from the Lakeland fells to the Highlands. My first solo outing began early one midsummer morning, alighting from the train at Achnashellach Station. I ranged across to Torridon over the lonely summits of Fuar Tholl and Sgorr Ruadh, before taking a circuitous tour of the Cuillin and Kintail. Wherever I descended to a glen with a phone box, I fulfilled my filial duties and rang home to say I was still alive. I was aware of parental anxiety at a literal level – I could repeat, if asked, that they were worried for me. But I didn’t really
