The Old Man of Storr looms overhead, scowling behind veils of gust punctuated by the rain’s hard pellets. The wheels of my Fiat 500 crunch over the loose rocks sprawled over the car park embanking the single-track road. I marvel at the fact that busloads of tourists somehow come up here in their throes and throngs, units of poncho’d admirers waddling up this trail alongside Cuillin-hardened hikers. I crane my neck to see what I can make out through the windscreen, a shifting collage of trailed rivulets. That ancient rock stands stoic in all its gloomy glory. With a sigh and a grumble, I gee himself out of the car, change into my hiking shoes on the rim of the boot, grab my wee rucksack and set out.
Trails, hiking, always start with an awareness of loud internal chatter. To say it had been a rough couple of months would be a crude understatement. A west of Scotland upbringing has informed my mannerisms to the degree I don’t give much away, least of all to myself. That curt nod of the head, drawn mouth, shrug of the shoulders when confronted with stomach churning, life-altering news. The charade put on the impression to many that I was able to weather many a storm. Today is just another, matched by the blowing gale outside of my head. The bitter words of my very recent breakup still pinged around my imagination, as did latent feelings of suppressed love and heartache. Sara’s tearful expression was haunting, her hurt my burden. Thrown into this mix, last week I got an absolute bollocking from my overwound line manager after forgetting to hit ‘send’ on a class registration. ‘YOU’RE THE MOST UNPROFESSIONAL TEACHER I’VE EVER SEEN!’ I took this with a few grains of salt, putting it down to overwork and the kind of everyday histrionics that seem to be accepted in my school. But it had still put a limp in my walk. And, just over a month ago, my granny passing away. I know it’s been rough, all of it, but something inside is jammed, stuck. A bit like the time when I was a wee boy. My brother Ross had forced a toy stegosaurus into the VHS slot in the living room telly. I had been raging about it for days, lamenting that ‘I wanted to watch Lion King again!'. But looking into Ross’s pained, earnest expression told me everything I needed to know; he hadn’t sabotaged his brother’s enjoyment on purpose. He was just different. Down’s Syndrome was the term the adults all used. To me, he was simply innocent in so many ways. He didn’t mean it. With that acceptance came some peace.
The wind howls through outcrops of the penitent rock, whistles through holes in the ancient cliff faces to the Old Man’s behind. A pair of intrepid hikers blast past, poles in tow, neglecting a greeting in favour of reaching their destination at all costs. The trail is beginning to pick up and up. A few times, my feet slip on the loose rocks as I reach out in front to catch a fall that never comes. Each time I nearly lose balance my line manager’s violent cherry tomato features burst back into mind, scowling like a pantomime villain. Each time I brush her aside and keep going.
All of a sudden, the piercing call of an eagle comes bursting through the sky from above those slippery cliffs. Even the power rangers-clad hikers stop in their tracks to admire this magnificent creature as it circles its kingdom in search of scuttering rodents below. Its wild, intelligent features jitter from side to side, defying the wind’s chaotic course. Something inside me shifts, subtly yet quite distinct.
Half an hour or so slips by. The Old Man’s stony face is now about another 500 metres. Every step is moving me up. I raise my knees with a renewed grit, defying the elements and the undulating terrain. I even throw off my hood and welcome the slapping of windy moisture on my smarting cheeks. A defiant smile begins to spread across my face as I use my hands to push down against aching thighs, zigzagging up the final ascent. Nearly there.
When I arrive at the flat and stony summit, nestled against the Old Man’s chin, a vibrancy courses through my veins. Turning round, the land lies near still. Poetry in motion. The trail pockmarked by tiny, shuffling anoraks. The alternating shades of grass blowing this way, then that. And the sea, choppy and foreboding. The sun splits the dark clouds, casting shafts of gold across those ancient plains. Suddenly, some latent calm comes rushing up my spinal cord and bursts like sparks into my brain, freeing me from the monologuing loop.
Life, I see, is a journey. It’s neither all hard nor easy, but each chapter must be faced with the one thing I had been missing over the last wee while: Hope. Without hope, it all just begins to feel like one long, monotonous uphill struggle. For too long, I had been putting my faith in abstract notions of fate, providence, karma. Call it whatever you want. I’d resigned myself to the idea that I was losing control over my life and slipping backwards into wellsprings of misery because of it. As I look out over that vast, rugged landscape, I appreciate nature’s pure chaos: its jutting rockheads, defiant promontories and crashing waves. An overwhelming feeling of appreciation for it all, for just being here, begins rising up within me. Some knots of anger in my stomach start undoing themselves; some trapped energy travels its way up my body into my throat. Opening my heart to this idea, the clouds part and I see the true beauty of the world, simply appreciating the moment for the first time in as long as I can remember.
I spread my arms wide and shout.
‘YALDI!’