260 of Scotland's 282 Munro hills..? 19 12 26 (20) 2025 2 5

No, what it was was this book I was given as a Christmas present by my younger son P and his wife J, entitled "Mountains of the Mind" by Robert MacFarlane, a Scot, that I dipped into right away: reading a few of the comments about it, before the dedication to his Grandparents, and then to Chapter One entitled Possession which began with a book The Fight for Everest of his Grandfather's where he was staying as a 12 year old for the summer...

And before reading much further I came across his feelings after reading 3 times that same summer, Herzog's account of his triumph upon reaching the summit of Annapurna, despite his loss of fingers and toes due to frostbite, and the lesson he took from Hertzog's book: "that the finest end of all was to be had on a mountain top -- from death in valleys preserve me, O Lord"

Here it has to be said I part company with MacFarlane on a number of counts although as I later mentioned to my other son S who, together with his family of Sa, his wife, A his elder son and E his girlfriend these past 3 years, and younger son D, all of whom came to stay over Christmas day and Boxing Day, he also had read the same book and likewise found it inspiring…

To begin with, as i have no doubt recounted earlier in these blogs, I had never read any books aged 12 except for comic strips and text books and my reading novels for pleasure would have to await a further 6 years when I first read The Long Walk by Slawomir Rawicz, a Polish army lieutenant, about an escape from a Gulag of the Soviet Union in 1941 by walking the 4000 miles about 6000 km via Lake Baikal across the Gobi Desert to India, via Nepal and the Himalaya, perhaps inspiring me to further reading…

Of course en route to climbing the 260 Munro hills that I have climbed thus far would occasionally lead to my reading accounts of others and their exploits in the hills but very early on I decided against reading the accounts of others on the hills I wished to climb, preferring instead to find my own route to their summits, and only ever reading other people’s accounts subsequently in order to facilitate comparisons. The chief reasons for this was that I didn’t like the way Guide books spoke in such authoritative terms as if they were the experts and we the readers were all lesser mortals…

 

Perhaps I should also point out that as a 12 year old I was already an accomplished climber of for example drain pipes. Together with other boys we used to get up to all kinds of climbing activities which strictly speaking were not to be recommended: liking climbing onto our school roof and exploring its roof spaces…One small slip during such adventures and we may have lost our lives too or been seriously injured but fortunately this didn’t happen to anyone in our group.

                                       

When I grew up perhaps it was a natural step that I took to climbing rock faces, but when I think back I would say I did my best climbing without reference to any guide books. And now with only 12 or 13 hills left I would have to say I have been enjoying the challenge of these hills ever more keenly as they have become more isolated on the one hand, but when my experience of climbing them has increased also.

So provided my new book doesn’t encroach on my climbs of the few remaining Munros on my lists I shall look forward to reading a fellow climber’s account, perhaps more keenly because of his evidently different nature to that of mine?

Pics from my main new hills from 2019