Blisters, midge bites – and a backpack full of memories
THE LAST WILDERNESS by Neil Ansell (Tinder Press £18.99) BEL MOONEY
SOLITUDE and wilderness are two challenges that would frighten most of us, yet for people like Neil Ansell, they are essential.
In the past, the writer has explored remote, often challenging, places — and now, based in Brighton, he must head north for his ‘fix’.
His destination is the far west of the Scottish Highlands, where ‘rugged peninsulas reach out into the Atlantic like the fingers of an outstretched hand’.
To put this in perspective, it takes as long to get there from Glasgow as it does to travel from Glasgow to England’s south coast.
In an attempt to reach the essence of Britain’s last great wilderness, Ansell sets himself the challenge of returning five times in 11 months, in all seasons.
Yet he faces more tests than just ‘weather beyond all hope of keeping dry’ and the stinging torture of midges or wet feet blistered to a hobble.
As a child, he suffered from ear infections that led to him becoming deaf in one ear, and now he is gradually losing sound in the other: ‘One by one, I am losing my birds . . . my hearing is a retreating glacier that is shrinking unconscionably fast.’
But the glass is always half-full. Hearing loss, he muses, ‘has helped make me an acute observer’. Noticing how seals raise their heads as their tails arch upwards, he calls them ‘a little colony of smiles’. Beautiful. His first visit in November is horribly uncomfortable, as you might imagine. On subsequent visits (March/April, May, September and October), he experiences every sort of weather, observes rock pipits, otters, eagles and whales and meets unwelcome strangers.
One lesson learnt is that humans can be rubbish. Or, rather, leave rubbish. On a wild promontory, Ansell comes across a pile of plastic wrappers, beer cans, even a pair of walking boots. The campers who had bothered to visit a pristine place of beauty could not be bothered to carry their rubbish 100 yards to their car. He is astonishingly restrained; my own rage would have burnt the page.
Ansell’s journeys are interrupted by upsurges of memory: places he has been, animals he has seen and so on. He always travels light (sometimes without even a tent), ‘but I have a full stuffed backpack of life that comes with me wherever I may go’.
During his year of visiting the wilderness, Ansell becomes afflicted by a new burden — the knowledge that he is far from well. The ‘gripping pains’ of a heart condition leave him weaker and, on one occasion, terrified when, miles from anywhere, the crushing agony in his chest becomes unbearable and an ambulance is (obviously) out of the question.
He finds extraordinary consolation — even healing — in the lash of ice-cold raindrops against his face, reminding him he is alive.
The Last Wilderness is a testimony to reticent courage. Ansell accepts the body’s failings as he has no choice. ‘If I could no longer climb a mountain, then I would climb a hill . . . My health might be abandoning me, but I was able to be here, sitting under my tree in this most beautiful of spots, and I was grateful.’