Fissure

Death was waiting for us on the platform at Ribblehead Station. Well actually it was Mikhail who sang so beautifully and looked so cool in the evening sun that he must be without sin because he’d be so very, very, easy to forgive.

And so began an interesting journey that took us to artistic interventions in Ribblehead Quarry on Friday evening, across 12 miles of Yorkshire dale on Saturday, culminating with our assent of Ingleborough at 7.00am Sunday morning in 50mph winds. The idea was that by Sunday we’d be vulnerable - and vulnerable we were. Hectored by mountain rangers to stay down we huddled like a penguin colony against the wind, grinning and gurning at each other (depending on our skin’s elasticity – work it out) in amazement that we’d made it.

During the assent two ideas came to me: firstly that we were bodies in extremis - well as much as it was possible for a bunch of middle class wannabes to be – and secondly that this is what some people actually had to do to escape a grim fate.

To feel oneself tried to the limit of endurance but have to carry on alters the focus of preservation from the other to the self. What better illustration to show what happens at the immanent end of life, when all other considerations are irrelevant, that we are drawn upon our own resources and instincts for life, for the will, to continue? We find what we need, what has worked for us in the past, and we use it. We use it all.

The second consideration was in applying this idea to people who are in the process of escaping malfeasance of some kind. I remember hearing of stories gleaned from refugee women who were asked to bring objects of significance to a museum focus group (how to make British museums relevant to ethnic minority groups). One story tells of a woman who brought a humble cooking pot. She carried it over the mountains in deep winter, heavy in her pack and it’s been close by her ever since. Why? Because it belonged to her grandmother and to one of her earliest memories, it symbolised everything she lost in her flight for life. Her grandmother’s hearth, her love, her homeland. A simple pot that cooked food to nourish a family, to grow them strong, to help them work the land, to make more food, to nourish a family, to grow them strong…

What euphoria was shared with our fellow travelers in that descent from Ingleborough – that we were always going to be safe was never really in doubt. The mountain rangers like sheep dogs invested in our protection and we, like sheep, allowed it, happy for someone to be in charge. The euphoria came from knowing that in gamba sono ancora. Our boys and men were safe, our homes were still ours, our cooking pots weren't wanted because our families were fed, nourished, thriving and there’d be hot food for us at base camp, smiles and congratulations.