MEND OUR MOUNTAINS: MAKE ONE MILLION
After you helped us raise more than £100,000 for mountain paths last year, Mend Our Mountains is back – and now it’s ten times bigger. Carey Davies explains.
I
t’s easy to take paths for granted. Yet they can represent much more than a means of getting from one place to the next. They are the cumulative effect of countless individual journeys, and as such they engrave our liberty of the landscape. They testify to our common craving for nature. They demonstrate to the essential role of journeying within the human experience and the innate desire for movement, space and perspective. As an unconscious inscription made by the passage of feet, they are one of the most ancient and democratic forms of human geography, created through a spontaneous process of common consensus. A path often goes that way because previous generations, probably now long gone from this world, decided it was the best way to go. In the hills, when the clag is down and darkness
is approaching, a path can feel like the only tether to the rest of humanity, and if it peters out, marooning you in a mass of indistinct rock, there is almost a sense of betrayal, like some pact with the past has been broken. In the mountains and wild places, paths are the great leveller. Whether you’re laden with an expensive rack or carrying nothing more complex than a cagoule, whether you’re craving adrenaline or wanting to let the mind wander, whether you’re running, racing, riding or rambling, paths are the common denominator binding together our experiences. From the walker taking their first steps on a hill in training for the Three Peaks to the elite climbing wad on the way to the crag, we all use the same unassuming trails.
But those paths are vulnerable. And we all have a role to play in securing their future.
SUMMIT#88 | WINTER 2017 | 39
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