Amalfi Walks (2)

'... and what is the use of a book', thought Alice, 'without pictures or conversations?' LEWIS CARROLL Alice's Adventures In Wonderland

The Valle dei Mulini is an ever-narrowing ravine which, if you followed it far enough, would take you into open mountain country, and eventually to the top of Monte Cerrato (4314 ft), the highest peak dominating Amalfi. It's lush and it's beautiful, and I walked the valley path one hot, sunny morning as far as a high waterfall. At first you pass the ruins of long-abandoned paper mills...

Paper making was once an important industry here, and Amalfi paper was considered some of the finest in Europe. Only a couple of factories now remain. On the way I passed the intriguing-sounding Paper Museum - which made me think of other quirky and odd museums I'd either heard about or visited in Britain, such as the Pencil Museum in Keswick or the Dog Collar Museum in Leeds Castle (which, for all non-UK readers, is not in Leeds but near Maidstone in Kent!) But I digress (yet what is the use of walking and writing without digressions? Without digressions, a walk would be in danger of being simply a practical route from A to B, and a book simply a logical sequence of events or instructions). Which reminds me of Lewis Carroll's Alice's Adventures in Wonderland and Laurence Sterne's Tristram Shandy - novels which are pure diversion and divagation through and through. But I digress again...

So back to the plot. I shadowed the tumbling stream up-valley, then crossed it by this wooden bridge...

After a short, sharp climb and a few rocky scrambles I came to a waterfall - it must have been about 100 ft high - cascading down a tree-strewn cliff. It was so lovely, and so unexpected, that I had to catch my breath. I stood a while before this lacy curtain of splashing water, transfixed and transported. I approached it as near as I could without getting drenched. At its base, behind the final fringe of water before it hit a hollowed-out pool, was a mossy grotto, green and damp - no doubt the home of naiads or other water nymphs. Yes, this was one of those special places, those numinous places, those indescribable places (which nevertheless I've tried to describe both here and here).

I stayed there for what could have been moments - or was it an an eternity? Who can tell? This magical spot had carved a niche in my mind that I knew would be there for ever. That day I had the place to myself. In fact I'd seen only two other walkers all morning. Reluctantly I wrenched myself away. I followed part of a ferny gorge - the gorge that had amazed Goethe and other writers, artists, botanists and geologists when they'd discovered it many years ago - and returned to the wooden bridge and the main route...



Meandering back to Amalfi on a different path on the other side of the valley, I thought, not for the first time, how 'the most soulful places are almost always reached only on foot'...



The more effort you have to make, the more exposed you are to the influences of Nature, then the greater the likelihood of being aware of its beauty. What this implies is that the greater the self-sufficiency and the fewer the barriers imposed by equipment and man-made features, the greater the potential for heightened awareness. Being alone can further increase this awareness. These factors all point to the value of simplicity rather than complexity as an approach to life. COLIN MORTLOCK Beyond Adventure

Colin Mortlock

Colin Mortlock - rock climber, teacher, outdoors enthusiast, writer, author of The Adventure Alternative (1984) and Beyond Adventure (2001), inventor of the climbing wall. Can this be the only photo of him on the World Wide Web?

No human being is more or less important than any other human being.

No human being is more or less important than anything else in Nature. For human beings to regard themselves as in anyway superior to anything else in Nature is to take a stance of arrogance rather than of humility.

From Beyond Adventure.

Mad, Mystic Moments

Through the mad mystic hammering of the wild ripping hail/The sky cracked its poems in naked wonder/That the clinging of the church bells blew far into the breeze/Leaving only bells of lightning and its thunder Chimes Of Freedom BOB DYLAN

I've just returned from 5 days' camping and walking in the Lake District. Except for a damp and drizzly Tuesday, the weather was hot and sunny all week - though rather hazy for good photographs. It certainly wasn't a repeat of the thunder, lightning and hailstones of my recent Welsh trip - though the Dylan lines quoted above are more relevant than you might at first think. For I did experience some of those mad, mystic moments which ambush you just when you're least expecting it. I had one here (1st pic, a footbridge in Wasdale) and here (2nd pic, Great Gable from Wasdale) and here (3rd pic, water lilies on Muncaster Tarn).

I can't really describe adequately these moments. I'll leave that to the otherworldly poets, the spiritual gurus and the mystical writers. But they come at you without warning, disarm you, take you completely by surprise. They soften you, melt you, slay you. And then they're gone as quickly as the sun ducking behind cloud. They're evanescent.

Colin Mortlock in his book Beyond Adventure (Cicerone, 2001) relates one such mystical encounter (specifically with a raven on a Lakeland fell), and he generalizes thus about the defining characteristics of these spiritual flashes:

There was always the sense that I was experiencing something I could never really understand let alone explain.

They were unexpected and unpredictable. I would suggest therefore that trying to seek them would be counter-productive. I had hoped in my older and wiser years that my long, solo wilderness journeys would increase the likelihood of their happening, but I knew I could never make them happen. They were beyond control and more elusive than rainbows.

They were timeless. The ego or unconscious self was suspended; thinking was suspended. In terms of feelings - and words are inadequate here - individuality was replaced by a merging of performer and action, observer and observed, person and place.

They were immeasurable, and yet I felt they were of elemental importance in any quest for happiness.

The beauty of the experience was awe inspiring and unforgettable.

They could happen anywhere. They might be expected to occur at places of worship, gardens and in the presence of artefact and architecture which intensely affect the emotions. Inevitably, because of my own enthusiasm for adventure and wilderness, I could see the latter as the major environment for such experiences, and especially when alone. It is possible that being aware that such experiences exist, spending time away from other people, and developing a natural skill and a sense of place may help to create an atmosphere where they occur.

I could have sworn I met Colin Mortlock half-way up Sca Fell on Thursday morning. If not, he was a dead ringer for the guy in the photo on the back cover of his book.