Just Another Mountain

by Sarah Jane Douglas

  Following tradition, I placed a rock on top of the cairn, as did Paul. Then, extricating the prayer flags from my bag, I attached one end securely to the base of the cairn while Dawa tied the other to a large boulder at a higher point. Paul and Dawa said nothing at all, respectfully stepped back and went down to the lake. I took the urn from my backpack and carried it to the cairn, Nuptse behind it like a towering tombstone.

  Carefully, thoughtfully, I scattered Mum’s ashes. I paused briefly, aware and upset that these were the fragmented remains of my mother. ‘It’s been a long time coming, but I did get there in the end, like you said I would. I can let you go now, and we can both finally be at peace.’

  When the cross had been removed, rocks had been displaced and a recess in the centre of the cairn left gaping open – almost as though it was known that I was coming. I placed the urn inside then walked to Paul. He had a photo that I wanted to put into it along with a simple message. Standing back, I could never have imagined a spot in which such perfection, beauty and peace existed. It was an incredible final resting place and I felt confident that it would remain this way, undisturbed for at least another thirty-nine years and more. No words passed our lips. I was touched by the feeling expressed in Dawa’s eyes, which he lowered as he walked purposefully by. He set about rebuilding fallen rocks from the cairn with great fervour, blocking in the urn, keeping its secrets preserved for ever. He wasn’t Dawa Sherpa any more; he was Dawa my friend, and I was glad I hadn’t done all this on my own.

  Absorbing the setting, we three sat on a rock and ate some jelly babies, lost in our own thoughts. After all my troubles and failed relationships, feeling as if I’d been wandering aimlessly through life, I was finally confident I was on the right track. I now understood that, like being on a mountain at high altitude, life was a test of endurance. You just had to be patient, and know that no matter how tough things may seem there is always a way through the difficulties. You had to learn to accept the things you couldn’t control but be brave enough to change the things you could. My mum’s death had hit me hard; I had felt so adrift and alone. But while I would never stop missing her, I could find a way to live with my loss. Giving myself physical challenges had started me on the path to healing. Understanding her life and accepting her death had helped me to understand myself better. And, above all, I came to realise the importance of having people in my life to support me. Now I have a partner who loves me unconditionally, and I have a great friend in Mel. And, of course, I have my children. As I sat there on the rock I wished that I could see them and hug them tightly.

  With the weather beginning to close in we had to leave. I thought about John, and how pleased he would be to know that we’d made it. I took a photograph of the empty expedition Base Camp and lingered, wanting to stay, but having to go. Dawa, Paul and I collected some rocks, small, token reminders of this special place. As we travelled back over the hillside above Chukhung a massive bird of prey glided down the valley. Its colouring and long, wedge-shaped tail were unmistakable. It was the lammergeier, the very bird Gerry had said he would want to be reincarnated as, and I wondered. I thought about the embroidery Mum had stitched for Gerry, her wedding gift, in shiny threads of pink and blue Today is the First Day of the Rest of Your Life – and so it was.

  EPILOGUE

  Homeward Bound

  Ben Nevis — The Venomous Mountain, July 2015

  Early June 2014 was warm. Paul and I were back from our trek in Nepal and I was keen to spend as much time as possible with my sons after so long away from them. Hauling out our bikes, we took advantage of the weather and set off to Ardersier.

  My legs were on autopilot as we pedalled along. I thought about how I had long wanted to move back to the village where I grew up, to the place where my family had been together, alive and well, when everything had been all right. I thought about how I had talked myself out of the notion, telling myself that going back wouldn’t bring them back, and it wouldn’t be the same; reminding myself that the clock cannot be turned back. As the wheels on my bike turned I supposed it was enough to at least be within cycling distance of my old home.

  Ditching our bikes, the three of us raced up the sandy path, brushing through spiky gorse, to arrive at the viewpoint on top of Cromal Mount. A gentle breeze ruffled through my hair as I stood with hands on hips catching my breath. I swept my gaze across the familiar landscape until my eyes rested their sights upon Inchrye. This time there was none of the sorrow or self-pity that I used to feel when I took in the view of the old family home. I no longer felt embittered by those events of my life that had cast their dark shadows in me. The trapped, lost and lonely girl was gone; I now knew myself. I was my own woman.

  Just ten yards further along the road from my childhood home lay a row of seven south-facing terraced houses, their gable ends towards the sea, and in one of the gardens I saw a prominent ‘For Sale’ sign. When we climbed back down to the bottom of the hill my belly fluttered with a flurry of excitement and I went to take a closer look.

  Within a few days I’d made an appointment and returned to view the house. It wasn’t big enough for me and two boys. But the owner told me the property next door was twice its size, the owner had recently died, and the daughter was selling.

  ‘Was it Mrs Johnstone who lived there?’ I’d asked.

  ‘Yes, that’s right. Did you know her?’

  ‘Yeah. I used to live at Inchrye. Her husband Scotty and my grandad were great friends.’

  Whether or not the stars were in alignment, the timing was never more right. The final piece of my jigsaw was about to slot into place.

  Mrs Johnstone’s daughter remembered my family and we talked about the old days as she showed me around the house. ‘It’s not on the market yet. We’re still trying to sort everything out,’ she said.

  The place was in desperate need of renovation and modernisation, but that didn’t matter – it would be a real blank canvas. I could do it up in my own time; there was even room for an art studio where I’d be able to work on the paintings I had started after my accident. The good feeling I had about the house was inspiring, and something told me it was going to be mine.

  Within two weeks of putting my own property up for sale a young couple came to view it and soon put in an offer. I was ecstatic, and, with my mortgage secured, the wheels were set in motion.

  The last night in our flat was not without its usual disruption. Loud banging and shouts woke us at three in the morning. Looking out into the hallway, I saw and heard nothing. I went to the kitchen and opened the window. There was nobody out on the street far below. As I pulled my head back in I looked up and saw, to my horror, a pair of feet dangling above the window. Voices shouted again.

  ‘C’mon! Don’t be daft,’ said one.

  ‘You’re gonna kill yourself, come back up! We’ll help ya,’ said another.

  ‘The police’ll be here any minute! Get back in, ya fuckin’ idiot!’ urged another faceless voice.

  Leaks, slugs and bad neighbours: for so long it had felt as though we were being driven from the home where I’d wanted to belong with my memories of Mum. But as I closed the door on the flat for the last time I felt no regret. I was so much stronger now: the mountains had made me that way. By this point I’d climbed most of the Munros, just two more summits remained, which I would tackle together, and I’d saved the biggest mountain of them all for last.

  Togged out in kilts, ten of us met at Torlundy near Fort William and set out along the track signposted ‘North Face’. Our route swung us left and right and on and up before we reached a stile where great views of verdant green landscape with long grasses, heathers and pines opened up. Ben Nevis’s rocky north face glinted like steel in the sun, and white cauliflower clouds hatched and flourished amid the darkness of the crags, billowing upwards into a cerulean sky. Because the traverse of the Carn Mor Dearg Arete was too dangerous for my sons in winter conditions I had put off doing my final Munro outing till now, a year after our
return from Nepal. I really wanted both my boys with me, but at the last minute Leon had not felt up to coming. I missed his company, but smiled as I watched Paul and Marcus ahead of me, their dark-green kilts swinging freely with each step and my friend Mel forging the way ahead of everyone else.

  On the red summit rocks of Carn Mor Dearg the atmospheric conditions were dramatic. Light and dark shades were cast over the gullies, cliffs and buttresses of the Ben, and the arm of the arête, extending in a graceful, rusty curve, appeared razor sharp. The traverse was utterly involving. Rocks were slippery when it began to rain, and we became human aeroplanes, arms outstretched, until fear of falling to our doom finally forced us down onto all fours. A poor soul had died on a particularly narrow section of angled rock only two weeks earlier. After a short scramble a wide shoulder was reached before a bouldery ascent put us onto the flat summit plateau of Ben Nevis. We had ascended the mountain without meeting anyone, but here we were greeted by the sight of many people: Arabs, French, Indians and a group of Muslims sitting cross-legged in a circle, their voices praising Allah in song. It was a harmonious scene. Enveloped in white mists, our group clambered to the top of the summit cairn. Going higher still, standing on its trig point, I waved our saltire with pride, but the achievement I felt wasn’t just because I’d completed the full round of Munros.

  The journeys I had made by climbing all of the Munros, the trips that forced me to push the boundaries of endurance on Africa’s highest mountain and on the peaks and passes of the Himalayas, had all helped me to reconcile an inner journey. Cradled in the arms of valley walls, scrambling on crags and topping out onto ridges gave me the breathing space I needed to gain perspective; in those places I was freed of troubles from the past and worries for the future. Mountains taught me to live in the here and now. They showed me that although life is uncertain, it is also full of possibility. They had enabled me to cope with my problems; but there are other ways for other people.

  Nowadays I always check the weather forecast. I make sure I have my map and compass at the ready. I pack my rucksack with emergencies in mind. For as long as I am fit and able I will always return to my mountains.

  Postscript

  On a Sunday morning near the end of January 2017 I silenced the offending sound of my alarm and rolled over, lowering my legs over the side of the bed. I momentarily held the weight of my head in my hands; it was five-thirty in the morning. I was feeling drugged with sleep and an uncertain nagging that things were not quite right quietly tugged away inside.

  Mel and I hadn’t seen each other for a proper catch-up in ages, but the two-and-a-half-hour car journey to Bridge of Orchy in the west Highlands was quiet. I’d never felt such chronic motion sickness. If only my car hadn’t been out of action I’d have driven and spared us both from my whimpers and moans as we curved the seemingly interminable bends on the Fort William road.

  As soon as the fresh mountain air filled my lungs I felt better. And as we got moving on the long, stony track to Beinn Mhanach the heavy tiredness I’d been feeling wore off too.

  We ambled up the mountainside over clumps of waterlogged grasses, and for the majority of the day we were surrounded by thick mist. The weather didn’t matter. Our day wasn’t about the views; it was about exercising the body and mind, and having a good old chinwag.

  ‘There’s something I’m worried about,’ I told Mel. ‘I found a lump in my breast.’

  She looked at me. ‘When did you find it? Have you been to the doctor? You’ve had lumps before so this one will probably be okay too,’ she said. I sensed the concern through her feigned confidence.

  ‘Yeah, I once went to the doctor with one lump and came out with several more,’ I said with a laugh. But inside I felt sick. Sick because our exchange exactly echoed the very conversation my mother had had with me so many years ago.

  ‘But it does feel different this time. It’s totally solid,’ I said.

  Mel and I tramped on up to the exposed top. The wind baling over the summit was biting cold and, at once, the immediacy of several basic needs (warmth, food and a pee) became foremost in my mind. The mention of the lump in my breast was not spoken about again for the rest of the day.

  Three weeks later I was walking with Paul, back towards his parked car, my hand in his. Dead air hung between us as we drove away from the hospital. My head was swimming. The consultant confirmed I had cancer, and it was aggressive – just like Mum’s was. Sharp pain in my right breast caused me to wince. A doctor had inserted a marker – a coiled wire – into the tissue behind my nipple, so that if the chemotherapy they were going to give me shrank the tumour to an undetectably small size they would still know where to cut during surgery. Only after the operation, which I was told wouldn’t be until July, would they then be able to tell if the cancer had spread to my lymph nodes. And after surgery would be four weeks of radiotherapy . . . in other words, it was going to be a tough year.

  Even now every little ache or cough sends my mind into a frenzy and I think, has it gone to my bones . . . is it in my lungs . . . am I riddled like Mum was? It’s hard not to feel afraid when terrible memories of what happened to her are still so vivid. She was young, fit and healthy, just like me. Her lump was small and was operated on straight away, but it had still spread to her lymph nodes. My lump was colossal in size, so did that mean the odds were that rogue cells had already split off and circulated their malicious disease elsewhere?

  Am I a goner?

  Is this the beginning of my end?

  In the first week of ‘knowing’, my mind took me on a journey to hell and back several times a day. It was exhausting, and waiting to start treatment a strain. I’d had all kinds of fears about chemotherapy, but didn’t give in to these – I’ve witnessed enough in my life to know that when the mind gives up the body soon follows. Determination to survive kicked in.

  During the chemo, even when I was most unwell, I forced myself outside every day to feel the sea air on my cheeks, grateful to live right next to the beach in my beloved Ardersier. I walked. At first my body behaved like my dodgy car: motoring along at speed when suddenly, without warning, power was lost, as if I was driving with the brakes on. There was nothing I could do except adjust to the new rhythm and keep going.

  But it was going to high places that I knew would restore me best, so on my good days that’s what I did, I hillwalked. During the eighteen weeks of chemotherapy my feet carried me back over Meall a Bhuachaille, where I’d had that first snowy, solo walk; to Meall Fuar-mhonaidh, my Christmas pudding hill. I tackled Munros; Bynack More and Ben Lomond. I trod new ground over a few Corbetts in Sutherland and kissed off the whole stinking chemo thing by walking the 72-mile length of the Great Glen Way, tent and pack on my back.

  At first, the timing of my cancer had seemed unfair, and the irony of it was priceless – discovering the lump at age forty-four years and eighty-one days old, just one day older than Mum was when she died. But climbing made me strong. And having cancer has made me appreciate every single day of my life even more. I don’t care if it’s raining or windy or if the sky is clouded over. I put one foot in front of the other and off I go.

  It’s just another mountain.

  Acknowledgements

  You wouldn’t be holding this book in your hands if it wasn’t for the following people. First off I need to thank my mate Mel, not only for her friendship, but for having a celebration birthday dinner for her fortieth. If it hadn’t been for that I’d never have met her colleague and pal Fiona MacBain. Fiona, at the time, was writing her first novel, Daughter, Disappeared. We hit it off and agreed to help each other by editing our respective stories. Fiona, in 2015, then pointed me in the direction of Pete Urpeth at Xpo North, who in turn put me in touch with the renowned literary agent Jenny Brown. Jenny read my story and said she wanted to help. I felt blown away that someone with such credibility believed in me, and cared. I don’t have a degree in English or a background in writing in any professional way – in fact at school
I scraped through my Higher with a ‘C’ pass. So, although exciting, it was a daunting prospect to face the challenge of reworking my entire manuscript to bring it up to submission standard, however throughout this process Jenny was a source of great encouragement. My editor Simon Spanton was only a WhatsApp away. Pippa Crane, and my talented publisher Jennie Condell at Elliott & Thompson both put an astonishing amount of thought and effort into all the important final decisions about how to make my story the best it could be. Thanks also to copy-editor Linden Lawson. So to all of you who have been so instrumental in getting my story out there, massive thanks.

  Thank you to Hazel Macpherson, my mum’s oldest friend. And to Tony Kayley for reminding me about dodgy eggs and pink radioactive sausages.

  I am indebted to those of you who helped me get to the root of so many questions and for your kindnesses. Many thanks to Henry and Sara Day, and to the wonderful John and Sheila Peacock for taking me under their wing; to Laurence Smith, Jon Fleming, Neil Winship, Nigel Gifford, Crispin Agnew, Brummie Stokes, Bronco Lane, Dougie Keelan, Dr David Jones, Cattie Anderson, Sue O’Hara, Tom Lynch, John Muston and John and Durga Patchett, who all knew Gerry as a friend or colleague and were able to share their stories with me. And to Jill and Rod Owens, Gerry’s cousins, thank you so much for filling in the family history.

  Sir Chris Bonington’s generous Foreword is acknowledged with particular gratitude.

  Lastly, and most importantly, thank you to my long-suffering boyfriend Paul. And to my gorgeous Marcus and Leon, who are my whole entire world and without whom I am nothing. Thank you for a love which is reliable and true, and the best love of all.