Ben Lomond - Our First Munro
I love walking. Around towns to find great coffee or food, through gardens to find my favourite succulent, through the wilderness to just experience the beauty. We don’t get too much proper wilderness in Scotland, but we do go out walking and explore a lot.
Up until recently, thanks to my *clever* planning, most of our exploring has been through beautiful fields, forests or valleys. To see a castle, or a waterfall, maybe admire ancient trees. Only occasionally there is a hill.
It’s not that I don’t enjoy the challenge of walking up a hill – as fit as I feel some days, I do get short of breath going up and up for too long. While I am working on that part (yay cardio gym time…!), sometimes I feel that walking to the top of a hill – or Mountain, if you’re tough enough – just for the sake of it, can be a bit dull.
What about the view?! You say. Well, I say we live in Scotland and the chances of a view from ‘the top’, unimpeded by mist or rain, is limited to those magical dry days. Like the one we got when we set off up Ben Lomond.
Andy finally convinced me that we need to tackle a Munro – a Scottish Mountain taller than 3000 (!) feet – while we are living here. He had been floating the idea for months and finally I was feeling fit enough to agree. The sun was shining on our Saturday, so we laced up our well worn boots, picked up some delicious bakery treats and set off for Ben Lomond.
Right by the bonnie banks of Loch Lomond, Ben Lomond stands tall as the most southerly of all the Scottish Munros. A mere 40 minute drive from Glasgow makes it so accessible that it is one of the most well worn Munro tracks.
Once we arrived, full of croissants and coffee, we set off and immediately started climbing. Only 15 minutes in and we were stopping alongside some other climbers to shed layers. That is how good the weather was – Australians were warm enough to be taking off layers in Scotland on the first weekend of Autumn. I knew we were onto a winner.
There isn’t much to say about the long, hard climb that came for the next three hours. It was so damn beautiful. It was so damn hard. It was lucky Andy was there to hold my hand when it got even harder, and fortuitous that the vista was there, basking in the Scottish sun, to give me an excuse to keep stopping for photos (catch my breath). The peak of Ben Lomond featured in many of these photos, helping Andy to egg me on to the end.
We weren’t the fastest climbers – a few couples, families and many Munro baggers (read: people somehow fit enough to do this all the time to tally how many Munro peaks they can climb) overtook us on the way. But we had a good rhythm and we made it to the final climb in decent time.
The temperature dropped, we layered up and looked up toward the familiar peak we had been plodding toward these past three hours. Cue the clouds – grey and rolling in, from some realm beyond my comprehension, they enveloped the mountain as we climbed the final stairs.
The picture perfect day had disappeared, literally before our eyes. We were climbing in a cloud and I have to say, it was not as fun as I had dreamed – cold wet and oh so Scottish. And we pushed on.
Without realising we were finally there, we rounded a corner and amidst the fog, a pack of people were gathered. This time we had made it! Straight to the trig point to photograph the evidence and then to sit and reflect, looking out towards where the view might have been.
Disappointed as we were that the clouds have rolled in, I spent most of the time sitting on the edge, eating bakery treats to help my wobbly legs, but feeling proud that I had done it.
It might not seem like a big deal, and even to myself at the time I didn’t realise how important walking up that mountain was for me. I have had the most incredible time since moving to Scotland, but at times it has been really hard. It is especially difficult to not have a long term goal to be working towards.
Leaving a high paced job to effectively focus on my creative endeavours and passion projects has been such a privilege. But occasionally, Andy’s generosity and kindness to help me do this, also feels like an easy way out, and that gets me down on my bad days.
Walking up that mountain was an accomplishment for me. I worked hard, complained a little, and faced some disappointment, but I still made it. I saw some beautiful moments through the fog up there, and now I see the poetic meaning in that.
Living always for a far off ‘end’ goal can put a lot of pressure on a person. It has for me my whole life; with study and work and buying a house, even when I loved putting my time and energy into those things. Living for a short term goal, being supported by my love and then making it to the end, disappointments and all, I think the experience of walking up that Munro sums up perfectly what I have been testing out these past months.
Learning to live more in the moment by searching for and fulfilling my short term goals has happened to me a little by accident. I now honestly enjoy spending my days finishing a scarf I knitted, planning and cooking a tasty new recipe for dinner, walking to a new coffee shop to support a local business (and continue my quest to find the best coffee in Glasgow). I plan less and end up experiencing just as many new things.
I am not in denial – I know one day I will go back to work and my daily grind will contribute to my ‘long term career goals’. Once I work out that that is, I will look forward to it. I just also hope that when I do, I remember to make time to find happiness and fulfilment in the simpler parts of my days; when cooking a delicious meal and winning a board game can somehow feel like as good an achievement as making it up a Munro.
For the record, the walk down was beautiful and the clouds parted when we were about an hour back down the mountain. I am still working on what that part of then narrative means for my sourdough baking skills.
