Coming down from the mountains can bring you greater perspective

As a young hiker, especially in my childhood, height and distance were all. True, I preferred walks that were picturesque and that took in decent views. But what I really wanted to know was miles covered and feet climbed (feet being better than metres because you’d get a bigger number).

Conquering a 10,000-footer in the Austrian Tyrol was an obvious manifestation. But even if we walked through local countryside to a pub for lunch, I would want to know exactly the distance covered.

And almost every outing would be accompanied by a member of the family warbling the chorus of that famous Scottish folk song, “The Bonnie Banks o’ Loch Lomond”, as I took whatever I could find by way of a “high road”: usually a bank running parallel to the path, or even rocks that I could jump between.

I find myself singing the same song now to my children, especially my son, who – just as I once did – sees higher ground as something to compete for, to win and hold. Sometimes, for old time’s sake, I’ll leap above him, but mostly he commands the heights.

If push came to shove, I would probably still choose a hill or a mountain over a lowland route. The thrill of a steep scramble is hard to beat; as is the sense of clearly defined accomplishment on reaching a tricky peak. The notion that height is might, is hard to shift.

Nevertheless, I no longer obsess over the footage of a summit in the way I once did. I pay close attention to contour lines on a map only when they indicate particularly notable features – or risks. The urge to conquer has been quelled; replaced perhaps with a desire to commune, and to be at peace with a landscape.

Mountains, for all their wonder and their majesty, are often not peaceable places. Winds and rains lash them; suns bake them. There is a fine line between their beauty and their treachery.

What’s more, mountains by their very scale tend to present a macro, distant context for our interaction with them. We end up awestruck precisely because we are puny by comparison: we convince ourselves that we, tiny humans, have dominated great peaks by climbing them; but we know in our hearts we are not their equals. No surprise then, that while we venture onto wild heights from time to time, we do not live on them.

By contrast, the places I once had less time for – little woods, unassuming meadows and valleys – offer a micro vision: a chance to examine the minutiae of a landscape up close, to blend in and be still.

Not long ago, I spent a day walking alone. It was grimly overcast when I set off from home and the rain soon set in; never heavy, but naggingly persistent. At first the paths were familiar; some the scene of early lockdown walks with the kids. But then I ventured into new territory: alongside a copse, across pasture in which sheep bleated their protest at the drizzle, then through farmland. In one field, the path narrowed, heading dead straight – and gently downhill – through a crop of flax. Gusts riffled the flowers, which brushed against my ankles and left me soaked.

Exiting the field, I found myself in a shallow wooded valley. I’d been there before, but had never come from this direction, and never in such unprepossessing weather. A little way in, I paused. There was no sound but the plopping of raindrops on leaves, and the occasional birdcall. Everything was green, of one shade or another: even browns looked green; the grey skies above were almost sage.

Nothing about it was spectacular. I was not awestruck by the power or the scale, or even the energy, of the landscape. But I have rarely felt more serene or more conjoined with my surroundings.

I won’t abandon the high road completely. But these days I’m content to take the low road too.