The hill reaches out to me, imploring me to partake in a slow embrace.
I lean into her and like a small child disappearing into the hulk of its parent I am offered a place to rest and shelter.
I am tired of being strong.
Yet this is also an invitation to two-step. An intimate dance.
In the evening sun I am carried gently up. I am lifted.
I lean in closer, where my psyche and her gradient intersect. Gold and azure flutter across my vision in the shimmering light.
My feet like hands feeling out contours.
The remainder of me at a levitating listening tilt.
The remainder of her, if slopes were voices, a graduating Pennine lilt.
Poised and attuned I proceed, enquiring with the timidity of a happy explorer.
The heat of our relation is a vibration energy we create together: our music.
Sooner than attempting to conquer her I humbly petition submission. A mere mortal at the altar of mother nature.
Fathomless and majestic are hills.
Sensing my reverence, she lets me in.
She could resist me with the forcefield of gravity or channel a gentle headwind to casually shrug me off as would a field horse to a troupe of fruit flies in the balmy heat of summer.
Yet she lets me in.
For I am the crucible of the mountain lotus.
I take refuge in her deity. Dharma of highest heights. Power of my power.
With my body a sacrificial invocation I summon her.
With my heart I radiate all that she offers from above.
With my playful giddy soul I integrate the sacred fruitful emptiness of non-depending love.
Practised is the art of leaning into hills.
I have known of runners who deploy lingua franca ultimata: of tongues that speak of digging in when they hit the wall.
This is wonderful and eloquent and nuanced. Masculinity at its most beautiful.
I have no use for it.
I do not run in a competitive domain nor do I seek to. The nature of my enquiry is compassion not competition.
I play my part.
I go to hills with a feminine heart.
I am a child and the Pennine mountains that scatter the English north are a collection of single mums.
The steeper the hill the closer she holds me: the more intimate our conversation becomes.
One of my favourite dialogues is with a seven mile gentle to middling continuous climb that connects the Yorkshire mill villages of Heckmondwike and Tong via East Bierley and Drub village and Hill Top.
Of all my meditations, I most like talking to her.
Many’s the day I can’t stop.
Should I be troubled she knows what’s wrong. I go to her, she holds me close.
She holds me long.
When the pressures of modern life weigh heavy.
When I carry the cross I hear the call.
A guttural pull rises in my throat henceforth.
My tongue traces metal: magnetic north.
There will be a trigger: an event.
Clouds cover the sun and negativity will test me and most likely best me.
Lest I run.
If stillness is required I will honour it.
My blood runs cold and my skin pimples: energy chills.
At such moments it is all I can do not to take off and start talking to hills.
I have struck up very instructive conversations with the A62 between Leeds and Huddersfield.
Knowler Hill from Littletown to High Town.
Listing Lane up past Browne’s farm at Firthcliffe and then left on Fusden Lane for Cliffe and the Porkpie Chapel and then out over the Heathfield paddocks.
Hanging Heaton and Kirkby Overblow and the Gelderd Road from Gildersome out to Elland Road.
And Castle Hill.
Hartshead Moor from Roberttown Common to Windy Bank.
Nether Edge and Liversedge Hall Lane and Little Taylor Hall Lane and Gomersal Lane from the Mann Dam end up to The Wheatsheaf in Little Gomersal village. Steep as Knowler Hill, that! One in four.
Dale Lane.
The High Wood Road above Birstall village.
Briar Woods from Windmill Lane to the old Angel.
The New Farnley backs out to Drighlington.
Grenoside out past Top Red.
The ABC Steps from Ponderosa up to Norristhorpe village at Barber’s farm behind The Rising Sun.
Low Moor from Chain Bar to the Old House At Home.
Killer slants awash with conundrum and artful healing.
Knowing me before I to myself am known.
As I start out my body often darts off into the distance like greyhounds at the track.
It is the job of my mind to pull him back.
And say “Wait. This is Antic Hay* yet this is not the way.”
I lasso him into a more graceful canter.
A parched rain is this sly sheen of patient wisdom that ensnares and swerves in loops
And arcs and rainbow curves.
Like a scolded thing my body pulls up and I catch him up and on we go together.
Stronger in our unity.
Looser for our tether.
My curious body sponging up all the base sensations of the road like he never saw another.
And my mind at the reins like mother.
Somewhere in the middle - with a few miles banked - my mind will take leave of its monitoring station and fly off at dream speed like a jail-broken convict let loose across the dark orchards of freedom.
High-tipping it.
And now my body must become the anchor. Slowing things up to outflank her.
Finally, toward the end. Say, nine miles in with just a click or two to go: the reverse switch.
My body tightens up and sheepishly starts looking for get-out clauses.
Park benches. Grass verges. Any old alley. Diversionary causes.
Sly as a cat in the sun.
Now the direction of my mental override changes from jog to run: from pull to push.
Come on mate. It’s only ten miles. It’s hardly the summit of the Hindu Kush.**
He’s not listening.
I don’t blame him nor do I lambast him. He’s tired. He needs a hug.
In light brushstrokes of consciousness emulsion I focus on the hub of his forward propulsion - the glutes and calves: the piston cylinders that convert the up-down motion to a springing forward leap.
I paint a path for them lest they fall asleep.
I zone in with laser precision and his six ham-strings do the rest.
His stride opens up and adrenal courses through veins and off we go.
Home and dry. On reaching her crowne my body and mind drown
In the hope and glory of a new spun story.
Advancing armies of shade invade the hill in knowing smiles and the dying sun winks at me from a punch drunk scattergun sky.
Good old hill.
Mine host.***
How oft she and her ribbon of sisters abide to chair these long and winding mindless mindful mind/body debates.
All three of us retire, newly bonded reprobates.
Raw thrills.
It’s funny: I don’t remember when I started.
You know - talking to hills.
….
Footnotes and literary references;
*Antic Hay is a glorious English classic summer novel by Aldous Huxley.
** A Short Walk in the Hindu Kush by Eric Newby is a derring-do classic non-fiction diary account of British understatement and self-deprecating high endeavour.
*** The phrase Mine host references John Keat’s The Mermaid Tavern - circa 1810.
….
