Spectrum Magazine 16th May 2010

Wonder world and the dread of not knowing

A short parable to start with…

Two years ago I had the fine experience to find my self in Kalymonos Greece on a climbing trip. It’s a limestone festooned island with black volcanic ash beaches. It not over developed, not tacky and kind of rustic, run down and nice. We were climbing in a small group of people who all new each other but not that well. After a late start, as we were waiting for the sun to leave the cliff so we could climb in the cool I reached the top of my first warm up climb. It was a 30m route sitting on a big cliff 100m off the sea on a raised beach. The last two moves of the route involved climbing through an exposed layer of fossils embedded in the limestone matrix; quite beautiful.

As my partner lowered me to the ground, I just happened to comment that I thought that it was amazing that we were playing and taking pleasure from a structure that a billion years ago had been at the bottom of the sea. A shell, which was once alive, had found itself as crucial hold on a rock climb. My partner then said that this was not true, and that the world was only 7000 years old and that all fossils were put there by God as a test of true faith. I was flabbergasted! ‘Evolution is an unproven theory’, he continued. Well the latter point may be worth debating whilst stoned in a tent somewhere in the high mountains to pass the time in a storm. The fossil “test” assertion, however, was absolutely impossible to argue against. The cold logical conclusion that every thing was a test of faith is clinically final; end of argument.

From my earliest excursions in the North West of Scotland, I have wondered at the rocks. The beauty of 1000ml year old Torridonian sandstone, which already prehistoric, contain even more ancient river wash pebbles. The huge folds in the Lewisian Gniess in the cliffs above Kinlochewe, signal ancient forces pushing the crust of the earth with unfathomable pressure, 2500ml years before any thing walked in the tropical forests and deserts of Scotland, when our ancient mountains were high mountain ranges.

To the struggling climber they are just an inconvenient change in friction. But to me they are an unimaginable mystery in time. Imagine the next time you walk on Sullivan that this beautiful form is just the crumbling stub of a once great mountain, which could have been tens of thousands of feet high.

The pebble beaches of Tiree are strewn with hundreds of different rock types all rounded off into fist size pebbles all from different eras. They are some of the oldest rocks in the world, there for you to touch. Sitting on top of this West Coast Mountain at the junction between the ancient sandstone and the Gniess, to me is truly a spiritual experience. It does not have a text laid out in front it, to try and make sense of the vastness of creation. It has no pacifying psalms, torahs, verses or chants to try and explain the wonder. It leaves me open, with no answers, no creed, no tribe, rules or dogma. I do not need an answer. Touching this land, these rocks, walking in this fantastic landscape fills me with a wondrous joy. I know that I am part of this universe and that the material that made me, the crystals of the rock, the fingers of the wind and the waves on the beach, are all from the same source.

We live in an ancient and incredible land. The mountains lochs and beaches, all tell a tale of an incomprehensible time line. From where it comes from I do not know, where it is going; only time will tell. But here, just now on this mountain watching this sunset, its beauty makes me cry with wonder. The next time you have the chance, pause on your walk, climb, ride or run, put your hands on the earth and thank whatever creation you believe in, that you have the gift of consciousness.

Spectrum Magazine 25th April 2010

Photo by John Trudgill

6.Creaking in the Sun

In the old days, when I was trying to climb hard all the time, we were always bouldering in Northumberland and trying to climb in Spain or in a Winter Sun destination. The hope was that when the cliffs of Scotland dried off, in the spring, we would come out of the winter in tune with the rock and moving well.

These days I am not chasing the hard grade train anymore. My sporting activity is more in tune with the seasons. Climbing in the spring, mountain biking on wet days, Road biking some days where there is time pressure, mountaineering on long routes in the mid to late summer, Rock Climbing in the Autumn cool, drinking and eating whilst waiting for the ice, ice climbing and snowboarding in the cold winter and ski-touring in the warm winter days. It has its own rhythm dictated by the turning of the earth. We maybe the last couple of generations able to enjoy this cycle. The treat of warmer winters and wetter summers may mean that soon we will have to become kayakers.

But today the sun is working its magic, the leaves are still not on the trees and the earth still smells dormant. Life just below the surface is still wary of getting zapped by a late frost. The venue for today’s climb is Weem forest near Aberfeldy. There is a small group of cliffs here, some steep, some slabby. It’s a great early and late season area. With routes of many standards and reasonable quality, it’s well worth a visit.

But firstly I need to find all of the bits, buried in the Garage. Sport Climbing, where you free climb on the rock using the rock features for you hands and feet and a rope clipped into pre-placed bolts in the rock, is the goal today. Apart from the obvious rope and gear, I need to find some extras that can help the day go smoothly; zinc tape to protect tendons and finger joints, superglue to stick down torn skin flaps, and nail clippers to trim the digits so the blackboard scrape on the rock is avoided.

As the days are short, there is a bit of hurry up on once the decision has been made to go. As the motorway rudely runs out at Perth, it’s time to suffer the pain of the A9, but today its quiet. Even the traditional pre climb café stop is sacrificed, as crag hunger is stronger. A short walk up to the crag feels longer; the memories of last spring conveniently compressed. When we reach the crag it seems very small and some of the lines are seeping with water, the ground water pressure still out of balance for the climber. There are many familiar routines, laying out the gear so it does not roll down the hill; apples especially are prone to trying to escape their snack fate at the cliffs. I really feel at home at the cliff, the smells, the noise of the gear, the feel of the rope, it’s a process and routine which is a subconscious precursor to the challenge ahead.

We are essentially horizontal world dwellers, we live in a world of flatness, 99% of our human existence is spent in shopping centre’s, offices, concrete, carpet and tiles. It’s a cruel fate, a modern life devoid of variation. So stepping from the flat to the vertical is even, after 35 years of climbing is a wonderful step into the unusual. Before I leave the familiar, and the take the step onto the extraordinary, I check my knot, a simple set of twists in a 10mm thick piece of nylon, not much really between fun and disaster, safety and not. I put climbers chalk on my hands to dry the sweat and to aid the grip. I rub them together to get rid of the excess; they sound dry and feel cool. A cloud of white dust slowly drifts away from my hands. I check my knot again, an early season tick, and I step onto the rock. The rubber on the shoes bites into the gneiss crystals, I step into the 3^rd dimension.

Scotland on Sunday Column

Welcome to Duncan McCallum's blog which will contain my weekly column for Scotland on Sundays Spectrum Magazine. The first column appears on Sunday the 28th of March. Additionally I will post a number of articles and photographs I have previously written for Scottish and UK National newspapers.