His tongue rolled dexterously over every syllable of his warning, relishing its taste: ‘it’s Baltic up there, boys.’ This wasn’t the first time we’d heard the summit of Cairn Gorm described this way. ‘Ye’ll be miserable’. 

The four of us were already wet from our journey from last night’s camp to the base station - an outdoors centre with a few rickety ski lifts packed away until the winter season - and this ranger was doing his best to put us off our ascent. Conditions were in his favour. Mist obscured the view beyond twenty metres away, our bags had inadequate waterproofing, and it was chilly even at this altitude.

We had set out for a week’s walking in the Scottish Cairngorms, to shake off the malaise of lockdown and get some air. Many others were having the same idea, and the park rangers were distraught at the amount of litter being left on the mountains. The ranger at the base station was getting the measure of us; he wanted to ensure that, despite our unspecialised tents, our unconventional dress and our unserious manner, we were up to the challenge. 

Having reassured him we wouldn’t be calling mountain rescue, we headed up, and up, and got very hot, and then reached the summit, where we could see rubble and mist. We got very cold, and headed down the other side, alongside a waterfall beating deafeningly on the stone, which we crossed, descending further to the place where we would stay the night: Loch Avon. 

The Loch haunted us that night. We pitched two tents on the least marshy area of the bank we could find. Shivering and struggling to sleep, I had an acute awareness of the water outside, silent and flat. Reflected through this disc, my mind felt small and scared.

Mind and body are continuous with each other; nowhere is this more evident than when walking in the mountains. We arose the next morning and set off quickly, allowing no time to be miserable. Silently, we mulled our pains as we walked. We offered them to the hills, and the hills leered back through the sparse heather with monstrous granite faces. 

On high ridges, we struggled against the wind. On rocky paths, we became feet, my boots hastening into the space of the boots in front, to tell the way for boots behind. We were a new, composite body wrapped in a common mind. 

That evening we found a bothy. A wood cabin with solid walls and a woodburner - with wood. We got warm, we dried off, we cooked dinner, we drank whisky until we were drunk. Joyfulness crept in. Staying up late into the night, we read poems aloud and I felt them viscerally like I’d never felt poetry before. They were Nan Shepherd’s poems about the landscape we were in. 

Firelight, the quiet heart of a little room

Hangs softly now that the wild hill rain is over 

This was prophecy. The next day the rain stopped, the wind calmed, and we walked through lower country with trees and gentle streams. The sun came out. We ascended peaks and the land moved readily beneath our feet. Another day went by, and we walked on then to Lairig Gru, to leave the mountains. Once through this pass, we crossed a valley and travelled along the ridge of a hill opposite the peaks we’d been amongst.

I looked back at them; at last they were visible together. It was a single entity, not mountains but one, multi-peaked mountain. I looked, and from it arose a wind which beat upon us with a ferocity I’d not felt before. The mountain howled at us. It roared with the turbulence of a child, upset that we’d got away. 

We'd been lucky. 

Quotations from Nan Shepherd, ‘Above Loch Avon’, ‘Loch Avon’ and ‘Fires’, in In the Cairngorms ed. Robert Macfarlane (Cambridge, 2014).