T
he act of climbing procures intense, vacillating physical and mental responses that are difficult to put into words – but Anna Fleming vividly communicates these feelings with insight and clarity. In her first book ‘Time on Rock’, Anna charts a 10-year relationship with climbing. Each chapter focuses on different
rock types, from early, indistinct memories of uncertain, faltering forays on gritstone and exploring the subjectivity of risk and failure on Aegean limestone, to an animated analysis of the terminology and recounting of ‘an epic’ on Gabbro.
“So the rock types, that was partly my obsession and fascination in writing the book. I really wanted to get into the nature of each stone and really sort-of penetrate those different rocks that we spend so much time climbing on, then also beyond that, the sort-of wider question was ‘How?’. How do those rocks then also shape the landscape and the people and the places? What's the difference between the Pennine gritstone landscapes and the North Wales slate quarries? Or the Cumbrian Fells with all those volcanic rocks and the Cairngorms with their big round granite plateaus or even the Cuillin on Skye with those jagged points? “I just became very interested in the geology from that very particular ‘climberly’ experience of how they make you move and how they make you feel. Which ones you enjoy more, which ones present different characters and experiences, and then that much bigger question of how they shape the nature of those places, the character of those regions and those environments.”
“Through intensive physical, emotional and creative work on the rock face, a climber can begin to sense the choreography and movement of land. We see in shapes, patterns and sequences; we place ourselves within rhythms of time, weather and geology.”
There is a duality to ‘Time on Rock’. As she paints a picture of compelling experiences climbing amongst choss and chimneys, Anna also invites you to engage with the history, culture and colour of the crags she has come to know too.
“In writing it, I really wanted to create a book that is about climbing but also puts landscape, place, environment and nature very much up front and at the centre. I put in my story of climbing as it was a bit of a trajectory to carry the book through, but really the focus of my interest was that much wider perspective of where we go to climb and what it means to spend time in these very special, distinctive places.” Anna chronicles her evolving interconnection with the natural world with a tone that has been compared to that of Scottish poet Nan Shepherd, who likened her days on the hills to a pilgrimage. In a similar vein, Anna identifies an almost ritualistic act and sentiment within climbing in the ‘Yorkshire Grit’ chapter, as she documents a deepening understanding of “the depth of feeling that can move between people and rock”.
38 | CLIMB. WALK. JOIN.
“There is that ritual thing, you know, where you're frequently going down to the rocks to climb. There's that surface level activity where you can just kind of call it training … But I also think there's another level with that activity that you can tap into which is much more about having contact with the world that we live in, with something that isn't man-made that exists within a much bigger scale of time and history. You're touching something, the weathered edge of a rock that was formed millions of years ago, you're climbing up it and you're touching that sense of history as well then, I think. The act of climbing, there's something quite primal about it in
terms of the fear that it can bring up in you, the way it makes you feel exposed. You’re sort-of feeling your humanity in quite an intense, primal way, which I think is a good thing. I think it's missing from a lot of human activity nowadays. So for me, climbing helps me to keep that contact with a much more fundamental aspect of humanity than you can’t get in everyday life.” Anna’s tangible descriptions of movement and sensation might
evoke a visceral reaction amongst the climbers and hill walkers within her readership, but this is not only a book for mountaineering types. With a sharp memory she recalls the intricacies of her environment and the motions of ascent, but the pages are punctuated with geographical and geological facts, historical account and personal insight too, a carefully researched and curated combination of information and anecdote. Anna strikes you as the sort of person you’d like not only for a climbing partner, but on your pub quiz team too. “This book charts 10 or 12 years of climbing and I never knew I was going to write a book when I started doing that, so I didn't keep notes. I've got a very good memory so I could remember a lot of details about some of the climbs, and sometimes I would go back to the places and revisit that texture, the sounds and qualities that you get when you're there and that feel of the rock. I also sometimes used photographs and even bits of video just to really see those particular details on certain rock climbs so that I knew I was recording it properly. Also climbing guidebooks, rereading some of the routes to make sure that I was doing a faithful description of them. “When I was actually writing up doing the climb, I'd say it was quite a poetic process, really. In terms of getting into the zone, this sort of quite particular writing-climbing zone, I would listen to a lot of music and really try and capture that visceral experience of climbing and also the rhythm that you get when you're moving on rock.”
“But during the intense fear and focus of climbing, that customary cultural practise of selective hearing is strained. The animal within stirs. In a moment, thousands of years vanish and I hear with the acute sensitivity of my ancestors.”
In ‘Time on Rock’, Anna explores the bodily relationship with rock
and climbing – the visible scrapes and scabs, the aches and strains and the heightened sensory perception experienced in the throes and thrutching of a particularly challenging route, a phenomenon that perhaps is difficult to explain to those that have never experienced it. “It's just like dialling up all of that sensory experience to the max and I think it is one of the amazing gifts of climbing and something
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