Reflections on hiking in the Highlands

I’m singing in the rain / Yes, singing in the rain
What a glorious feeling / And I’m happy again

Those are words sung by Gene Kelly, the sort of music my father loved and could elegantly dance a foxtrot to. These sweetly flowing words seem so totally opposite to the actual feeling of being soaked through, the cold wind blowing rain in your face all the time, the slippery boulders, mud and puddles a constant threat of sliding and falling, the sombre grey clouds above being no solace. Heavy rain in the mountains!

Delight or disaster? From Gene Kelly’s lyrics you will glean where I stand. Let me illustrate with a walk I did with Jonathan Caddy in February 2016. It had already started raining when we went on our walk somewhere not far from Coylumbridge. Walking many miles to the foot of the hill (Carn Eilrig), we saw paths turn to muddy streams, burns raging swollen with water, the landscape blurred with horizontal rain and wet snow – water seeping under our caps while we were facing the fierce wind. By the time we plodded up the long hill slope covered in deep wet heather, our expensive high-tech “breathing” rain gear had completely soaked through. The water became warm on our heated bodies though.

We all were in good spirits. I enjoyed the wildness of nature, the force of the wind. I felt enveloped in a world of water and relished the strength of my body. I saw laughing faces around me when we briefly paused on the windswept summit.

I think that happy, even glorious feeling of walking in the rain comes from the tangible connection with the forces of nature and the awakened forces of our own body in response to that. Besides that, little room for thinking – we had to pay constant attention to slippery stones and the unexpected bursts of wind that could topple us. The wind was kind of blowing any thought out of our minds. This rivals meditating!

We crossed a raging torrent along a slippery bole laying across it and walked the entire wet muddy path back to the cars, not a dry thread on our bodies – except for one of us who was wearing the cheapest of rain gear that didn’t “breathe” and had stayed perfectly dry.

The discomfort only came in the cars, on our way back to the warm and cosy home, to the steaming bath, to the hot shower, to the cup of hot chocolate!

February-2016