Warning: this article contains graphic images
The Scottish Highlands in summer. An outpouring of greenery so lush it seems almost febrile. Heather clad mountains rising vertiginously over glittering lochs. Herds of red deer marauding across silver moorland streams. At this time of year, the nights are so short you can blink and miss them. It seems as though the entire season is contained within a single, impossibly long day of the sort seen only in childhood.
I arrive in early July for an intensive 16-week course of activities including climbing, mountaineering, kayaking, canoeing and canyoning. First though, I must survive the 10-day isolation. The pandemic has stretched its long fingers even to this sparsely populated corner of the UK, and none of us new arrivals are allowed indoors together for the first week and a half. Faced with this logistical challenge, the course providers contrived a radical solution: three back-to-back wild camping expeditions.
Expedition 1: Air
“Take the canoes down that path,” instructs Jack as we disembark from the minibus hooked up to a trailer stacked with boats. The “path” in question is a slick, muddy track guarded at the lower end by a tangle of tree branches. We porter the canoes down to the bank and survey the shores of Loch Laggan. In the foreground is a strip of golden sand, a striking incongruity so far from the sea. A group of girls dressed only in dazzling white slips runs down to the shore. Whether they are Glaswegian lasses out for a bevved up week in the highlands or extras from The Wicker Man I cannot say.
We load our sealed barrels and dry bags into the canoes, then paddle off in pairs down the loch. I am fortunate enough to find myself in a boat with a former fitness instructor, and we soon leave the others behind.
That evening we haul our canoes out through cloying mud and pitch camp on a small plot of grass right beside the loch. As the drizzle dies away and the wind falls silent, the midges rise in a vengeful plague.
I’ve been in Scotland before and I know about the midges, but I am woefully unprepared for the onslaught. Within moments of unzipping my tent flap, the airborne piranhas are on me. With a wingspan of just 2mm, they look like innocuous black dots, but what they lack in size, they make up for in sheer numbers. I swat them vigorously from my exposed face and forearms, but for every one I squash, a dozen spring up in its place.
On this first expedition, we occupy ourselves learning basic navigation and climbing the surrounding peaks. The days are a welcome distraction away from the festering waters of the loch, but the nights are a living hell as my bites swell and itch maddeningly. It seems I have the genetic misfortune of reacting badly to midges. For some members of the group, the feeding sessions only leave small pinprick red dots, but on me they grow into angry, swollen welts.
The diminutive vampires are particularly attracted to my joints, and at night my elbows, ankles and waist bloat with the rush of histamine. In spite of my efforts to resist, I scratch the affected areas incessantly until the skin breaks. I double dose on allergy tables, douse myself in insect repellent and lather Anthisan cream over the bites, but still manage only a few hours of troubled sleep each night.
On our final evening, the fiends even find me squatting in the woods during a wild toilet session. They are scarcely visible in the dusk, but I feel them sinking their serrated jaws into my crotch. I yank up my trousers, and hop away, howling like an injured wolf. The next morning, we take the tents down (amid yet another swarm) and paddle away. The breeze is cool and gentle on my ravaged skin. I don’t look back.
Expedition 2: Water
After three nights in the wilderness, returning to civilisation is something of a shock. The lunch meal deal at Co-op is elevated from bland banality to a feast fit for a king. I stomp round the shop in my hiking boots and two-day old shirt, eyes drawn by every calorie rich snack. My companions are, if anything, even more frenzied in filling their baskets. Some of them have been living off nothing but cereal bars for the last four days. The staff seem unperturbed. I guess they are used to it.
With our food supplies replenished and hair dripping from cold showers, we set out on the three-mile uphill jaunt to our second camp. The village fades rapidly from sight and is replaced by open countryside. We cross a fast-flowing river and pitch our tents in a dubiously boggy area on the far shore. Jack, our expedition leader, recounts how, while camping near this spot last October, a river appeared from nowhere during the night and soaked all his gear. At least running water keeps the midges at bay.
Our next two days are spent tramping up and down largely featureless mountains, all of which seem to be called Geal Chàrn (Gaelic for white peak). We are divided into navigation pairs and take it in turns to guide the group to obscure points marked on the map by Jack. The terrain underfoot is saturated bog that squelches with every step. During a rare interval of phone signal, I go on BBC News to see if World War Three has broken out while I’ve been off grid. With my eyes diverted from the path, I wade straight into a muddy pool that overtops my boots and saturates my thick walking socks. I guess technology has its drawbacks.
Brooding grey clouds mass over the peaks that afternoon. Bulbous droplets of rain begin to fall and we pause to rummage in our rucksacks for gore-tex trousers and raincoats. “It’s just a shower,” I say cheerfully as I leave my waterproof trousers buried in the bottom of my pack. Mistake. The rain continues stubbornly for three hours.
By evening, the clouds have broken and I have arranged my wet gear on boulders beside the camp to dry in shafts of sunlight. A couple of walkers emerge round a bend in the river on their way down to the village. I am squatting barefoot by the water rinsing a spoon. I wonder what they make of my feral appearance, then decide I don’t really care.
In the wilderness, life is stripped back to the pure simplicity of survival. Where to pitch my tent, how to get fresh water, what food supplies do I have left. Against such imperatives, abstractions of the modern world like share ISAs and anti-virus software recede into unreality. I eat my simple meals with relish in the company of friends. I recline on a boulder, basking in sunshine after rain. I feel in my muscles the sweet ache of an honest day’s march. I am happy.
Expedition 3: Fire
The jetboil is a market leading, gas powered portable stove renowned for its fast boiling times. Its compact design consists of a neoprene insulated 800ml cup, a corrugated metal stand that doubles as a wind shield and a burner adjustment valve to regulate the flame. From chilly Scottish loch to rolling boil takes just 100 seconds.
Our final isolation expedition is a point-to-point, whitewater canoe tour along the River Spey. Our re-supply run into town goes more smoothly this time, as we are all now intimately familiar with our kit. In the afternoon we rumble along the A86, unload the canoes and pitch camp beside the road. That evening, I select a couple of sachets of chicken and mushroom pasta from my food bag and whip out the jetboil. The weather has been showery and I contemplate cooking at my tent flap, but some of the guys invite me to join them on a grassy mound.
I briefly consider bringing the small orange tripod to hold the gas cannister, but my hands are full and anyway I’ve zipped up the tent now. As always, the water is boiling in moments. I pour in my pasta sachet. A bottle of whiskey is produced from a neighbouring tent, and I siphon off a generous slug into the lid of the jetboil.
Drawn by the unmistakeable scent of scotch, a couple of the group approach the base of the mound and call out. I turn to toast their arrival, taking my eyes off the pot. The faintest breath of wind blows in from the east. The next thing I know, pain explodes from my ankle.
Whether it is the wind or a slight change in pressure from my feet, I’ll never know. All I can be sure of is that the jet boil tips and empties its molten contents into my right shoe. I leap up screaming and rip off first the shoe, then the sock underneath. A layer of skin goes with it. I snatch up my water bottle and pour the entire contents over my foot. It’s not enough. I still feel as if my foot is jammed in a raging fire.
“The loch,” shouts one of the group. Through dizzying waves of pain, I know he is right. I flee down the hill, wrench the lid off my barrel and yank out my buoyancy aid. Then I stumble to the shores of the loch, hurl a paddle into one of the canoes and push it out through reeds and mud. I fling myself into the boat, wrench a few frantic strokes to left and right, and finally plunge my foot into the mercifully cool waters.
The next few hours pass in a surreal daze of agony. I refuse to leave the loch until my right foot is well and truly numb, all except the ankle which continues to blaze like hell itself. Jack describes the state of my injuries over the phone to the duty instructor and decides I need hospital treatment. I am evacuated by road to the nearest emergency department at Inverness, a 90-minute drive away. There, I am dosed up with ibuprofen before a doctor arrives to drain the blisters and peel off all the skin over a fist-sized area. It’s how I imagine it feels to be flayed alive.
Eventually, the wound is securely bandaged beneath a Vaseline-infused mesh called a jelonet, and I feel almost human again. The consultant tells me that I have deep second-degree burns, but the nerves are intact, so I should make a fully recovery. I won’t be climbing any mountains for a few weeks though. I know I should be grateful for the reprieve, but it’s still a bitter pill to swallow. Close to midnight, I leave through the double doors in a wheelchair.
My new friends continue their training in the highlands, while I fly back to London to hobble around on crutches and let the skin regrow. Worse than the pain are the photos that come through every day of the group canoeing along rapids, climbing remote sea cliffs and canyoning through narrow gorges. As Christopher Hitchens once said, what really hurts is not that the party’s over. It’s that the party’s going on, but you have to leave.
I replay the incident in my mind over and over on a slow-motion loop. I know it’s doing my mental health no favours, but I seem powerless to stop it. With each retelling, I feel my ankle burn again.
I wonder if things might have been different. What if I’d never gone up to the mound to cook that night? What if I’d taken the tripod to stabilise the gas cannister? What if I’d placed the stove a few inches further forward or my foot a few inches further back? I wish with all my heart I could change these things. But I can’t. The river of time flows only one way.
The epitaph I leave to Edward Fitzgerald:
“The Moving Finger writes; and, having writ,
Moves on: nor all thy Piety nor Wit
Shall lure it back to cancel half a Line,
Nor all thy Tears wash out a Word of it.”
