Ben Vorlich on a Saturday in July isn’t the place you’d choose for a bit of quiet, let alone to contemplate time and the irreconcilable truths of the human experience. But sometimes you don’t know what you’ll find up there.
That morning, my daughter, my dog and I winkled a parking space out of the South Loch Earn road. It was to be the hottest day of the year, but right then it was overcast and grey, the hills cut off at half-mast. While we assembled ourselves, a group of four men in early middle age from the next car down strapped on their lightweight gear and set off, loud and hangover-bold. My daughter’s eyes narrowed. Life is a competition, and here was a clear challenge. She’s a runner and sport climber. I’m a dog walker, and twice her age, but I knew we were in for a rapid ascent.
We overtook them before we were out on the open hillside. Daughter and dog trotted past easily. Me, not so much. But even I was feeling energised by the excitement of elevation. It’s a sensation that must be buried deep, from a time when being high in the hills offered security, early warning, the possibility of escape. Up along the beautifully engineered path, we rose into the clouds. The path isn’t everyone’s idea of the wilderness experience, but I’d rather this than ragged scars gouged in the hillside.
Deep in the cloud, the sensation was of a cold steam room. The air wet and refreshing; the internal body temperature close to boiling. The overconfident men lay far behind, but daughter and dog were taking no chances. Occasionally they’d pause to allow me to close the gap, then speed on just before I reached them. They overtook ascending parties on the long slope; I’d gasp past many minutes later. The odd smug early riser descended with a zen-like expression. They had seen beyond the clouds. On I toiled, up through the grey.
And then, of course, the light returned. The cloud thinned, took on a yellowish hue, in the way that death is often represented in film—a misty, liminal zone leading to bright, euphoric light. We were out into the sun, starting the ascent again, this time above a pale ground. The nunatak peaks to the north and west were brown islands. Now we had breached the clouds, there were none above, only fading condensation trails left by aircraft after their long night out over the summer Atlantic.
The summit was busy. We lingered only until the middle-aged men were visible as tiny specks on the ascent path before pushing on to the sterner stuff of Stùc a’ Chròin. From the bealach, there are options on to the summit. My daughter was keen on the most sporting route, but I suggested that it might be too much for the dog. Before the dog could contradict me, enough competition appeared on the steep but safe route to make it interesting for my daughter, and we were off. By now, the sun was less welcome than it had been. I arrived on the summit plateau gasping. Even the dog threw herself dramatically into the scant shade of a boulder. ‘Quick, give her some water!’ instructed my daughter. I sacrificed my entire personal supply, and the dog immediately perked up.
We settled down among the summit rocks for sandwiches. Dry sandwiches in my case. I registered that we were sitting in exactly the same position as my mother and her school friends on a similarly sun-bleached July day in the late 1940s.
It’s the only photograph I have of my mother anywhere near a hilltop. She wasn’t a hillwalker. She grew up close to here, in Callander, just beyond the Highland Boundary Fault Line. It’s where I grew up, too. The hills were a function of the place. She loved them. Pined when she was away from them. But it didn’t mean she felt any obligation to climb up them. Not often anyway. It was enough that they were there, always, a backdrop to everything else you did.
So, Stùc a’ Chròin was a rare outing, but one she’d often talk about. By bicycle to Ardchullarie More, through the trees to the head of Glen Ample and on, up the unrelenting, punishing slopes to the ridge that runs from Beinn Each to The Stùc. The return was via Edinample, where someone’s Dad with a delivery van left their bicycles. Then there was the 14-mile ride home, past Lochearnhead, the Kingshouse, Lubnaig and the Pass of Leny, downhill through the evening light. It was a long day out.
There’s no sign of fatigue in the summit photograph. They’d be in their late teens. The girls in summer dresses with perfect hair, the boys in long trousers and neatly rolled shirt sleeves. No Gore-Tex. No hill gear at all. According to my mother, one of the highlights of the trip was the moment one of the lads lost his raincoat down the northern cliffs and, rather than return home coatless, risked it all to climb down to retrieve it off a ledge.
My mother was here in this exact spot ten years before I was born. My daughter is older than she was then. I’m much, much older. Three-quarters of a century had ticked by. But we sat there, three generations on a summer’s day. This summit hadn’t changed. The sun had drawn all the cloud from the glens. The lochs were bright and glistening; you could see a long way. Almost 75 years.
I sat there in the stillness and heat, a bee buzzing somewhere, and said nothing about the photograph, or about my mother or how her adventure had suddenly intruded into ours. There’s plenty of time for my daughter to have her own thoughts of this kind. Meanwhile, she silently preserved the trip with her phone.
We descended the long way, round the west flank of Vorlich. The usual bogs were dry and cracked. Before long, the sacrifice of my water reserves led to excruciating cramp that left me flat on my back on the track, wailing and moaning. Another connection. My mother was prone to cramp, right to the end. It must be genetic. I lay there with tears in my eyes while my daughter marched on, out of sight. But the dog came back for me.
Image: Image by CallamBarnes from Pixabay