TIME ON ROCK

A Climber’s Route into the Mountains By Anna Fleming Canongate

■ ‘On the rock, time behaves differently,’ suggests Anna Fleming in her engaging memoir, which chronicles her development as a lead climber and offers readers a privileged induction into the ‘outdoor ballet’ that is traditional climbing.

‘Trust friction,’ Fleming tells us. Skin is all important. Touch is what unites body and mind, connecting the climber with the surface, but also with the wider landscape and, by extension, a region’s history and its people – industrious Romans, Scottish herders, or Welsh quarrymen roped up in fustian jackets and bowler hats. With a book that lends itself to introspection, it’s pleasing that reflections never veer into self-indulgence. While highly evocative, Fleming’s writing is concise and informed by the concrete. What lies both before the eyes and at the fingertips is beautifully rendered.

Fleming shares fully of the challenges and failures that accompany any mastering of craft; the satisfaction of weaning out ‘victory from the meanest of circumstances’. Indeed, rock can be unaccommodating. And while trad climbing may feel like an artistic practice, it’s also potentially fatal.

Managing stress, headspace and focus is, of course, critical, yet Fleming reminds us constantly that climbing is multidimensional. Her own thoughts range over topics as diverse as the Highland clearances, the long extinct reptile genus Gordonia and the passion of Kate Bush’s Wuthering Heights.

Climbing vocabulary is a delight. There are the ‘sequences’ and ‘problems’, the ‘crux of a climb’; there’s ‘choss’ and ‘soloing’, ‘topping out’ and the descriptive verb to ‘mantle’; there are the ‘dirty routes’ with cracks full of crud, and the ‘archaic routes’ worn smooth by many hands. The trad grading system itself warrants special mention with its ‘Mild Severes’ and the ‘Hard Very Severes’.

There’s talk of ‘choreography’ and of ‘climbing flows’ that arise when mind and body mould to the forms. There’s also the complex grammar, the alien language and the architecture of the surface, the ‘threedimensional unfolding’ that absorbs the climber, and indeed the lucky reader who, thanks to Fleming, requires neither confidence, commitment nor extreme skill to venture into such realms.