Scafell (left) and Scafell Pike (right) from Great Moss
In England, wild camping is an activity that is generally discouraged and is usually dependent on getting landowners’ permission. However, in isolated spots, such as Great Moss in the Lake District, it seems almost laughable than anyone owns the land and, in places like these, you can pitch a tent and not encounter anyone else for days. Great Moss is a vast, flat area of marshy ground near the headwaters of the River Esk, surrounded on all sides by England’s highest and grandest mountains with their evocative names: Scafell and Scafell Pike, Esk Pike, Bowfell and Crinkle Crags. From Great Moss – a five-mile walk up the Eskdale valley from the hamlet of Boot – these mountains present their wildest aspect: craggy, precipitous, treeless, and remote from either roads or buildings.
Scafell Pike, evening on the first day
Scafell Pike, dawn on the second day
I camped alone at Great Moss for two nights in unseasonably warm weather at the end of September this year, with a few isolated sheep and the occasional croaking of ravens for company. Here, mobile phone signals cease to operate and one is forced to focus on the basic essentials of living: preparing water and food, washing, and sleeping. Carrying everything on one’s back means leaving behind most of what we now regard as basic entertainments – a computer, television, even books. In my trip, the sense of aloneness was heightened by the short days, with darkness descending more quickly here – the sun disappearing behind the crags at 5pm and not reappearing again until 8am.
So, why would anyone want to expose oneself to this level of solitude? The nature writer Robert Macfarlane, in his book The Wild Places, argues that being alone in the wild has the potential to give us perspective on ourselves, our concerns and our place in the world. Yet, Macfarlane is also blasé about his own sense of vulnerability during his wild camping experiences, even as they are often characterised by intense cold, danger, and fatigue. For me, the experience was initially more frightening than liberating – for most of the first night I battled with anxiety and a sense of dread. Yet, once I’d relaxed the following day, the slowness of the passing of time became something that could be embraced as wondrous, the rituals of everyday life taking on a kind of mystical significance – bathing in the rushing stream, cooking in the twilight, waking to see the sky full of stars.
Scafell Pike, early morning on the second day
Scafell Pike, evening on the second day
Scafell Pike, the second night
By relaxing into the rhythms of silence, the world – narrowed to the views of the mountains from my tent – took on a kind of renewed simplicity. With my camera – my only luxury – the experience became framed as a series of almost-identical views of Scafell Pike, to which I had faced my tent on the first evening: in the last rays of sunlight, at dawn, in early morning sunlight, in late afternoon fading light, and in the pitch black of the final night. It’s almost as if the world had temporarily revealed to me its most basic origins, the mountain being the always-has-been presence in a world of ceaseless flux: “And there was evening, and there was morning – the first day. And there was evening, and there was morning – the second day”.