Zen and the Art of Being Out & About

Another gloriously miserable day on the North York Moors, the sort of day where fog clings like a wet blanket over everything, damping one’s bones. I heard later the Great North Air Ambulance had been grounded due to poor visibility. It is, as ever, a perfect day for a bit of being out and about.

In the distant past—before we all became enslaved to GPS and our glowing little screens, now even strapped to wrists for instant gratification—navigation on such occasions was a delightful exercise in futility. The ‘clag’ would descend, and all sense of direction would evaporate into the thick mist. Back then, real mountain men carried compasses. I still do, of course, but safely ensconced in my rucksack, as a sort of talisman of bygone days. Out of sight, out of mind. If I do remember to take it out, it offers the illusion of knowing where one is, but alas, it cannot measure distance. Ah, distance—that most perplexing of puzzles when trudging through the fog.

There are three charmingly unreliable methods to gauge how far one has walked: pace counting, timing, and ticking off features on one’s map, rather like a drowning man clinging to driftwood. None of these, naturally, are prefect.

Pace counting, a delightful relic from the Boy Scouts, when we were required to know how many paces covered 100 metres on a football pitch. Of course, this is utterly useless when ploughing through knee-high heather or wading through bogs where every step feels like a battle against the elements. And do not imagine for a moment that your count will remain the same uphill, downhill, or anywhere in between. Adjustments must be made—though how one is to make these adjustments while being lashed by rain and blown sideways is anyone’s guess.

Timings are equally laughable, requiring you to know how fast you normally walk, as if one’s speed remains constant across all terrains and gradients. A charming notion, but hopelessly impractical unless you happen to be an automaton.

My personal preference is to keep my eyes glued to the map, religiously ticking off features, a tactic that serves well enough when the landscape offers many features to match it to. I gain comfort from having a map in my hand, my thumb firmly on my last sure location. But on a featureless moor, shrouded in thick fog, this method is about as useful as trying to navigate by the stars in a blackout. It is then that one must fall back on those other, woefully inadequate methods. This, of course, requires foresight, a virtue I find myself lacking more often than not.

Still, I managed to cross Hutton and Guisborough Moors this morning without incident, though I confess it was more due to familiarity than any great navigational skill. After half a century, one becomes rather acquainted with the paths. And yet, even for me, when the world vanishes into a grey murk, I was reminded how it is remarkably easy to misjudge how far one has gone. Or perhaps I just prefer to blame the fog.