The small things that make the long hiking days bearable and give some moment to breathe and settle my mind into the environment are a bit overlooked. The big spaciousness and broad images of hill tops, lochs and glens take most of the space in my phone. Big things are magnetic, exhilarating, and exciting. They make me want to run and scream some days, others it makes me feel small and irrelevant in the magnanimous time these things exist. Their time, a concept, we can only imagine and conceptualise but have no practical understanding of their lives beyond what they mean to us. The ancient hills, eroded through glaciations, the lochs and rivers empty or full across many centuries, changing but (so far!) always existing.
the smaller the thee small thing, the slower the time feels
The small things may not be there the next time I walk that path. They might go unnoticed in the totality of their existence, unseen from being to end. Some streams will only run once and then, like nothing ever wet that crevasse, plants, and moss will grow and its existence short but productive, leaving moist in the soil to need life to exist. Most of us are like that, will cease to exist without many traces and will become soil. Other’s their memories or their deeds will live further, but eventually, too, fade away and be forgotten. You know that moment when the two hobbits are leaving behind the rest of the fellowship, stressed , anxious and filled with dread, something tiny and yet wield the strength of hope and foretelling happens. The light of the sun shines through the trees and hits on the decapitated stone heads of the statues of kings of old time. Frodo notice and calls on Sam to look at them and for that second they hope and strength is restore.
forests floors are other worlds, worlds one day we’ll be food for
The small things can make big things happen. You know that moment, when the two hobbits are leaving behind the rest of the fellowship, stressed, anxious and filled with dread, something tiny and yet wield the strength of hope and foretelling happens. The light of the sun shines through the trees and hits on the decapitated stone heads of the statues of kings of old time. Frodo notice and calls on Sam to look at them, and for that second they hope and strength is restored.
By now, the small things become big things, their impermanence an act of rebellion and surrender against the fleeting of their existence, like saying out loud…” I am here, right now, and I shine”. Maybe not tomorrow, may be, never again… but now. They take up space, they create memory, they change the mood. They change time. The time they exist is to us what we are to the ice eroded hills, a nothingness. Yet, just like us, can change everything. For good or bad, in the eye of time. (I hope you can sense in this my environmental claim).
A butterfly on a Munro… the biggest ben and the smaller bagger…
I It is almost midsummer night and the strawberries in my garden are still a greenish white unripe colour. Last year, today I returned from the East2West trail, and I was eating strawberries from my patch every day. Summer is not yet here and I can feel it. There is a lingering tiredness that reminds me of the old rat race life back in the Netherlands. Therefore, instead of pushing through long trails, I took some Munro days and pushed hard through my leftover winter blues.
There is a big difference in the type of fitness necessary for munro bagging or long-distance mountain trekking. It is not just the gear you carry, but the energy expenditure management, the feeding and drinking pattern and the rest between strained efforts. In both cases, I have found myself walking distances between 12k to 40k in one day and elevation gains of 1500m (in Scotland). While on a munro day you carry a max of 6 kg of luggage, I have carried about 18 kg through my long trekkings.
The only munro I hiked with a backpacking tour was Ben Lomond. It was the first and the last I bagged with a giant backpack. When I got to the top, the people who kept passing me as they ascent with no bags started clapping. I didn’t really know I was going beyond the normal efforts. I usually begin my munro days after a well slept night in a bed and a good breakfast, ride, walk, and return to that same good bed, food, and shower. Trekking finds me day after day sleeping outside in a tent, on a mat. On a munro day, I might stop twice for food, a snack stop and a lunch stop. On a hiking day I will stop at least 3–4 times, take a good stretch, drink and eat regularly snacks. The energy expenditure might be similar, but I don’t get to rest and stuff my face the next day. Thus, they are unique in timings, confort and recovery. Now, I wonder, how can I do both through a very lengthy trek, from the borders to Cape Wrath?
Big bag day up Ben Lomond, 2021
For my next challenge, I have been studying maps and reading stories of a longer cross-country hike in Scotland. tHis unmarked path requires both, long days of walking and going up some munros, bealachs, and walking along ridges while carrying gear to overnight and food for several days. I am not sure that I can make it this year, work, family business and my current fitness level might need more time to get ready for this demanding trail. And, spring is just over. So the goal is to do this next year May and June. Meanwhile, I am taking the rest of this summer and autumn to train, test, asses gear needs, navigation, food, etc.
Beinn Bhrothain, 2026
Ia m not sure why I am taking on this personal challenge. I am sure I will be thrilled to spend 6–8 weeks in the hills. I am not a competitive person, I can’t care enough about anything to compare myself to others or to waste my energy on building a false sense of superiority. My achievements in any areas are to prove those interiorised critics from childhood and teen years how wrong they were. And to spend time outside, in silence, with myself reflecting, rethinking and thus rewiring myself.
I’ve been up 5 Munro’s in the last two weeks and I’ve learn so far that, I need lighter gear, that I will need some navigation tech and not just my OSMap app/paper maps and that I will have to re think shoes, as trail runners have been useful but will wear off sooner than later during such a long trail… Oh, and that I shouldn’t do leg day before a hike.
Back home, my body is very achy, there is still mud under my nails, and I am hungry all the time—the aftermath of the mad two weeks in the wilderness, carrying all I needed on my back.
The trail depression kicked in as I left Eigg last Monday, and I was being driven to Fort William. After I finally got hold of the damn parcel I wondered if I could continue. But my left hip begged me for a rest, so I headed back home with the bus, feeling like there was more to be done than I did—an insatiable hunger for wild things.
The path I traced followed some places I’ve seen from afar, in other walks, or while travelling by wheels. Places like Loch Erich and Ben Alder, Dalwhinnie, Glenfeshie, Rannoch Moor, Glen Nevis, Glenfinnan and Knoydart I’ve seen from afar, and my mind would fly over there and imagine how it would feel to be alone in the middle of these landscapes. Like the first time I visited the Highlands, it was in 2016, and I was travelling with my friend Chita’s family to Elgin, where their ancestors had left Scotland for Argentina in search of a better chance at life. As we drove through the A9 from Edinburgh, passing by Dalwhinnie and the distillery, the landscape opened up, and I felt as though I was in the middle of a dreamscape: remote, wild, and desolate.
Somewhere of the A9, close to Dalwhinnie, from the moving car, 2016.
Back in the Netherlands, the flattest country in the world, I would stare at this picture, dreaming of hills again. My life was then very different, and I was in the midst of the worst storm I had ever experienced. I fell in love with this country all over again, after my first time visiting, just before Eli (my 6’6” teenager) came to exist, and I travelled with my sister. On the trip, we took the train to Fort William to Glasgow, and there I saw Glen Nevis, and once more I dreamed of roaming those green hills with the one who was my fiancée at the time. Sadly enough, he was not as adventurous as he painted himself and never wanted to come to Scotland with me, so here I was, freshly separated, and my first trip was to Scotland.
Ben Nevis from the start of Glen Nevis
Now that there is a bit of background on why this was not a competition or a mad last minute idea but the stitching of a long time desire for existing in places I had visualised in very tought times of my life, I hope to have draw a picture of the kind of feelings I had when I set out to walk from Stonehaven.
I left Inverness knowing what I was getting myself into. The last long trek I did happened just after lockdown ‘really’ finished and I had delivered my dissertation. I wandered for about five weeks, covering over 500km on foot, with no deadline or goal other than to be out there.
Glen Elchaig & Loch na Leitreach, 2022
Then, around the summer of 2022, I fell ill. Whether it was long COVID or Lyme is still a mystery. I was partway through the Cape Wrath Trail, and as I approached the bottom of the Falls of Glomach, I felt strangely tired and feverish. Shivering, I set camp by a wee forest just about where the Iron Lodge is, in Carnach, and by now, I had a full-blown fever. I curled up in my tent for about 16 hours, unable to move or eat, just drinking water. After a long sleep, I could start moving again; however, I had pain and itches everywhere, especially on my back. I took my phone and made pictures to assess what was going on, and there they were, about eight ticks on my back, just under my bra line, then two on my legs, and one on my arm.
I walked from Carnach to Doune so I could ask someone to remove them from my back. I could see them with my phone, but could not reach them. I had a knot in my stomach all day. Some lovely lady from New Zealand was kind enough to remove them one by one, and with a lot of pain, I went to Skye to get some advice on what to do. They sent me to my GP, who, by all odds, dismissed the possibility of Lyme but suggested that long Covid was the culprit. After this event, I was tired all the time, and I had almost no energy to trail or to do long distances. I work from home and have to take naps every day, as I get drowsy and struggle to lift my head around 10 am and 2 pm. A few times, I was out and about for less than 4 days, and then I was so tired I couldn’t do anything physical for weeks. It wasn’t until February 2023 that I began training again. The one thing I never failed to do was the Glen Affric way—every year since 2021, at some point in the spring, summer, or autumn, I have been up that way.
Knoydart & Kintail from Sleath peninsula, Skye, 2021.
Completing this path this spring marked the culmination of nearly two and a half years of relentless training and many years of yearning to be back in the hills after I landed in Amsterdam from Quito. Spending some time in that flat country helped me realise that what I loved was being outside in the wild, putting myself through tough paths, and learning to stay humble and alert. The world of people has a way of taking you off track, making you feel fluffy and comfortable, even drowsy, but something in me is relentless, enduring, and strong-willed, and intuitively knows how to fight a good fight and come out better. No matter what you put my way, I will break through and find my way to what brings me joy. And I find joy, as I am safe in what I love, those feelings expand to others. Like a fireball, like a star, bringing warmth, inspiration and laughter to whoever I cross. Some people stay forever, some go out of their own will. Sometimes you’ve got to let them go, too. Not everyone knows how to love a wild woman.
Over the last few years, I have focused on eating, sleeping, and letting go of habits, people, and places that had depleted my energy, both physically and mentally. Somewhere on my Instagram, I wrote that this trail wasn’t a competition, it wasn’t to show anyone anything, but to test where I stand and ensure I know exactly where I want to go now. Clearly, I am better today than I was then. But something really lovely happened at the end of the journey, while sipping a pint of Guinness in Eigg. I saw my teenage self being very proud of who I am today.
This is an introduction to the stories to come, which may inspire others to take on a challenge, perhaps not the same. But to take the same attitude, the same mindset, and put it to work in their lives. And make their child selves proud too.
