Norman Hadley Best Outdoor Feature
Published as ‘ From Lakeland with Love ’ in The Great Outdoors July 2024
The judges said : Excellent . Beautiful writing . Vivid , personal , sad at times but also uplifting . This packs a punch , and it ’ ll stay with us .
Main image : Fuar Tholl above Achnashellach , Coulin Forest of Wester Riss with their knitted doll and teddy , sizzling sausages in a pan and sleeping through an electrical storm before switchbacking home over the ridge from Calf Crag to Helm Crag . They loved it .
Fast forward to the present , and Time came back , to collect my dad . Now he and Mum are reunited , their mortal remains intermingled at that summit cairn . More flowers to lay , that will dry and wither .
THE WHEEL TURNS
Shortly after Dad died , I got a text from my daughter . She and her boyfriend were contemplating a backpacking trip and did I have any advice on tents , stoves , routes ? They got kitted up , with the occasional light-touch guiding hand . I think I ’ ve become less doctrinaire in middle age : there are as many ways of defining the best tent as there are people , landscapes and weather patterns . I passed down a stove and some pans that I no longer needed . I could remember buying those pans when I was a sixth-former with floppy hair and dodgy skin .
My wife and I already had a holiday cottage booked in Lochcarron so the youngsters travelled North with us . Laying out the maps , we looked at routes they could reasonably attempt . I sketched out a plan that grew steadily harder as they progressed , so they could find the level that was right for them . There were plans A , B and C , with multiple escape routes .
So , with a quiet laugh at the circularity of time , we found ourselves dropping them off at Achnashellach one midsummer morning . A hug and wave and up they vanished into the Coulin Forest , tottering under huge rucksacks in a cloud of youthful optimism and midge repellent .
The Worried-about Becomes the Worrier
Of course , the phone box is not the central communication device it was in the eighties . They agreed to send us the occasional text to say they were OK . We asked them to include the position and sending time with each message , because sporadic connections could make a delayed update more confusing than radio silence . I knew that when they looped behind Liathach , they might as well be Apollo astronauts , traversing the dark side of the moon .
I can now inform you that there is no upper limit on parental imagination . In that private realm before sleep , I pictured every conceivable mishap : flash flood , rockfall , gas explosion , wolf attack . Between both generations , we ’ d prepared for all the plausible scenarios . As for the wolves , they would just have to stay hidden in their lairs .
As it panned out , no limbs were lost , no fangs were sunk into human flesh . Three days later we collected two suntanned youngsters from Shieldaig , sleepy but wellnourished , a little midge-nibbled but not too tick-ridden . Back at the cottage , there was feasting . Meat was devoured , drinks quaffed , first drafts of tales were told , ready for later embellishment . A grandfather was toasted .
A mayfly is gone , but the dance continues .
Winter 2024 – 25 OUTDOOR FOCUS 19