On Prayers and Ben Nevis
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On Prayers and Ben Nevis
How I climbed the highest point in the UK, and maybe learned something about prayer
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My foot slid out from under me on the wet, rounded surface of the stone step and in slow motion, I just sat down rather than fight it. I wasn’t hurt, but I was shaken. I almost never fall when hiking, and this spot was one of the very few places in the last few miles where that could have happened and left me uninjured. I sat, resting my tired leg muscles for a few moments, still able to appreciate the beauty around me, and the view from high on the side of the mountain, while feeling just a little worried about how tired my leg muscles were and just how high on the mountain I was.
I’ve done a lot of hiking over the past few years, and with my asthma, I’ve had to work just that much harder to build the respiratory endurance for prolonged uphills. I’ve always breathed a sigh of relief when the trail leveled out or started going back down, but this day I was definitely joining the up-is-easier-than-down club. I had thought I would make better time going down than up, but the last mile or so I was so shaky, I had to use every ounce of mental energy just to stay upright.
If this were a television show, we’d now flash back to about ten hours earlier. I’d been awake since 4 am, both because I was a bundle of nerves and because I was in the Scottish highlands and it was already getting light. I tried in vain to go back to sleep, but finally got up, got dressed and started making myself some toast. One piece and a partial cup of coffee was all I could get my stomach to accept. I’d planned to eat more. I remember hoping it would be enough.
The air bnb we were staying at was literally right in front of the bus stop I needed. We’d been in the UK for two weeks without hiring a car and the local bus that would get me within a mile of the trailhead was the one that departed just a few feet from the front door. I still walked out fifteen minutes early and swayed under the clear plexi-glass dome of the bus shelter watching the village wake up around me.
The bus pulled up, and I breathed a sigh of relief that my intel on them having contactless pay was good. So many little things to navigate, but this turned out to be pretty easy after all. I needed to ride eight stops, but quickly realized that the driver only stopped if there was someone waiting to get on or off. I pulled out my phone and watched our progress on google maps instead so I would stand up at the correct stop.
Once off the bus and on my feet, I felt a sense of relief. This was something I knew how to do. A short road walk led me to a trail that would connect to the trailhead for the Ben Nevis Mountain Path. While I wake up many mornings and go hiking, this was a challenge unlike any I’d attempted. Ben Nevis is the highest point in the UK rising to 4,413 feet above sea level, and while I’ve summited mountains taller than the Ben, I’d never started my hike at actual sea level before. This would be almost 45oo feet of elevation in all, in just 4.9 miles one way. Except I wasn’t even there yet. I stopped by the river and applied sunscreen and bug balm, grateful that the infamous midges that were supposed to be so bad this time of year had yet to make any kind of appearance. I had 1.4 miles to go just to get to the trail head.
With all the hiking I’d done, I didn’t figure turning a 10-mile day into an almost 13-mile day was really that big of a deal. I’m chuckling as I write this because as prepared as I was, I still had no idea how hard it would really be.
I was all by myself until I passed the bridge leading from the visitors center, and a person immediately fell into step behind me. I turned left onto the mountain path and could already see at least a dozen people in front of me, getting rapidly smaller as they wound their way up the trail. We were going through a series of pastures, climbing over the stiles that separated each one from the other, and we were already going up. There was hardly any variation: just up and then steeper up. A slope to walk up, or stones turned into stairs. Up and up and up. Many were faster than me, but I also spent the day leap-frogging some of the same people. I’d pass them, then stop to rest, they’d pass me, then I’d find them again further up when they stopped. The valley floor dropped further away, houses became tiny squares, and cars disappeared from the pencil lines of roads.
Just over half-way up, I stopped for a snack, perched on a rock above a slope that dropped away steeply in front of me. I could see all the way to the Loch I’d waded in with my kids the night before, the village we were staying in just a clump of tiny squares. The woman next to me sighed in wonder and said it was like the view from an airplane, only we’d walked up there on our own feet. The group of 20-something girls I’d been leap-frogging pulled up next to us chattering and laughing as they took their own break. An older man who was hiking with them said something about the number of people up there, and indeed there were hundreds. A constant, near unbroken line of people taking one step after the other, trying to make the summit.
“Yeah, there are a lot of people up here,” I answered, “but look how many people didn’t wake up today and decide to climb a mountain.” I gestured at all the tiny clumps of buildings making up several villages and towns now in view. Below us, people were going about their day in the shadow of the Ben, but we lucky few were getting to make our way up its magnificent slopes.
I shouldered my pack and continued on, only to be passed by that same group later on, until they stopped again. I didn’t stop. I was grateful the steps had given way to flatter ground, but that only lasted until we got to the scree. Scree is loose rocks that cover the slopes of some mountains and the last mile and a half or so of the Ben is all scree. The rain started again and I was grateful I hadn’t taken off my rain gear. I zipped my jacket back all the way, and pulled the hood up against the drops and the wind. The grass and mosses got scarcer and scarcer and the rocks became more and more pronounced until all that was left were rocks. The clouds grew thicker and thicker, and I paused, the sudden silence a break from my feet continually crunching rocks for a moment.
“There’s the cairn behind me,” I thought.
I could barely see it or the people near it. They were all just dark shadows in the mist, and far enough away I could barely hear them either. I rotated back forward. I could make out the cairn in front of me a little better.
“Okay,” I thought. “As long as it doesn’t get any worse, I’m still going up.”
I was probably a third of a mile or so from the top, and I really, really didn’t want to stop that close, but I didn’t want to risk being lost in the mist with steep dropoffs nearby either. I was running gps on my phone, and I always carry a battery backup too, so I could have retraced my footsteps if I’d really had to. Knowing this gave me the confidence to push on. The rain slacked a little bit and the cloud density thinned ever so slightly. I knew I couldn’t be far, just keep going one cairn to the next.
And then out of the shadows emerged the ruins of the weather observation center and I’d done it! All that was left was to join the queue for pictures with the trig point that marks the exact highest point of the summit. There were no views up there in the thick cloud cover, just a buzz of electricity among the hikers as we climbed up the trig point and took each other's pictures. We didn’t even exchange names for the most part, but we’d done it, one slow step after the other.
All that was left was to hike down. Almost five miles. Of nothing but down. On wet rocks, in the intermittent rain. I told myself after I got off the scree, I’d be fine. I’d struck up a conversation with an English guy named Ross that I’d been leap-frogging going up. That helped pass the time on the relentless shifting stones. I passed that group of 20-something girls still climbing and mentally patted myself on the back. I might have gotten passed by a bunch of people but I’d summited at least 20 minutes ahead of a group of people half my age.
I thought I could go faster off the scree, but the rocks were so damp and slippery that it was in fact slower. Every time I looked up, the valley didn’t seem to be getting any closer. I’d summited only about 20 minutes later than I’d planned, but the trip down ended up being over an hour longer then I’d thought. I had to stop and rest a number of times because every muscle in my legs and core was engaged in staying upright. I was maybe a half mile from the trail head, and I was mentally preparing myself for the fact that I had over a mile after that to get back to the bus stop.
“It’s mostly flat, you can do it,” I sternly told myself, all the while wishing I had some other way to get back. If only there was someone who could give me a ride. Did I pray for that? I’m pretty certain it doesn’t matter whether things are “official” prayers or not, more conversation, or just breathing, being with Creator God.
A woman in her early sixties passed me as I rested and I smiled at her. I’d talked to her on the way up. She’d been fascinated by my rain kilt that I wear instead of rain pants. I caught up to her at the first stile waiting for her husband who was somewhere behind me.
“I’ve officially joined the up-is-easier-than-down club,” I laughed as I climbed over the stile.
She laughed and agreed with me, and we stood there for a moment until her husband caught up. Then she and I started chatting and it turned out she’s an Episcopal priest from San Francisco. As we talked, in the back of my head I thought, “I would accept a ride from her,” but I was too shy to ask outright. However, we were exchanging details about our travels, and I’d mentioned we’d done the whole trip with public transportation.
She paused for a moment, “How are you getting back to your family tonight then?”
I laughed a little bleakly, and bravely stated, “I’m walking a mile or so from the trail head back to the bus station.”
“Oh!” She exclaimed promptly, “We can give you a ride at least to the bus stop, or maybe we could take you home! Where are you staying?”
“Caol,” I answered, naming the village, “what about you?”
“Corpach,” She replied.
“Oh, Coal is between here and Corpach,” I said, miming a map around the shoreline of the Loch with my hands.
Her husband caught back up to us at this point and she turned around. “This is Anna, and we’re giving her a ride home.”
“Okay,” he seemed unsurprised.
I was so grateful, I could have cried. I only had to make it to the visitor’s center now, a visitor’s center that still had one bathroom unlocked despite being closed. The disadvantage of climbing a mountain with almost no trees is there’s almost nowhere to go hide and pee. Bathrooms and a ride home were true trail magic indeed.
Before coming to Fort William, we’d been in Norwich where I’d spent the time visiting Julian’s shrine and reading her revelations in full for the first time during some rest days we took while we were there. In chapter 6 of her long version, she describes prayer: “For the goodness of God is the highest prayer, and it comes down to the lowest part of our need. It vitalizes our soul and brings us to life and makes us grow in grace and virtue.” Fr. John-Julian commented on this translation saying, “Note that Julian describes prayer as changing the one who prays…”
And I had to wonder if what had happened in that interaction was my desire or prayer for a ride put me in the place where I was willing to accept a ride.
I wrote briefly in Inward Apocalypse about my changing and sometimes complicated relationship with prayer, and I still haven’t “arrived” at a place I’m comfortable. But then again, maybe that’s part of the point. I’ll keep you posted.
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“I wish I could still believe in God, but I can’t be a Christian anymore because of ______” Fill-in-the-blank with racism, misogyny, homophobia, toxic capitalism, and so on. I’ve had this conversation with different people almost word-for-word over and over. White American Christianity has so defined God that many people cannot separate God from the toxic theology they were taught.
But this isn’t the God I see in the Bible. The Bible shows us a God meeting people where they are and nudging them towards justice and total thriving for all: shalom. The Bible details arcs of justice and societal reform. If we understand how radical those arcs were in the context of the day, we can extend them forward into the future and figure out how to work for justice, total thriving, and societal reformation in our day.
I grew up in that first world view. Come along, and I’ll tell you the story of how I escaped, and I’ll show you a theology that I believe paints a more accurate picture: a faith for the common good where everyone thrives and no one is left out.
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Anna Elisabeth Howard writes highly caffeinated takes on shalom as a lens for everything from her front porch in Hendersonville, TN where she lives with her husband and two sons. She is a community organizer and movement chaplain with a background in youth and family ministry and is a graduate of Fuller Theological Seminary. An avid hiker and backpacker, many thoughts start somewhere in the middle of the woods, or under a waterfall. She is a regular contributer to Earth & Altar and her latest book is Inward Apocalypse: Uncovering a Faith for the Common Good.
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