“What are men to rocks and mountains?” - Jane Austen, Pride & Prejudice

This is more of a personal reflection than that of our family’s journey, but I want to talk about mountains. As I look out of the bedroom window of the apartment we are staying, due west of the city of Chiang Mai rises the twin peaks of Doi Pui and Doi Suthep, of the Thanon Thong Chai mountain range.

And they are glorious.

A certainty of solid form being brushed by whips of cloud, the result of earth-rendering violence played-out at a snail’s pace. They are a silent sentinel surrounding the city, and a constant reminder of the power of nature, and the powerlessness that people have in the face of it.

I’m not the most travelled person - before meeting R I had ventured out from England’s four walls (though not solo), either with family as I was growing up (France, the USA, the Netherlands) or inter-railing around Europe with a couple of friends/bandmates, busking and instantly moving-on when stopped by the police for busking and subsequently being instantly moved-on. Since meeting R and understanding that travel was simply part of who she is, my horizons have broadened, especially since starting a family.

But I’ve never really seen mountains.

Sure, I grew up in Cornwall, where we have the awe-inspiring high point of Brown Willy on Bodmin Moor (stop sniggering - and it’s probably best not to Google it), but at a still-respectable elevation of 420 metres, it falls somewhere short of the two peaks I can see from the fifth floor right now (1700 and 1600 metres).

There are certain geographical features that some people simply have not yet experienced, in pretty-much any form, and when they actually do encounter them, it feels like something intrinsic has changed for them. It feels vital. It could be the first time seeing a river, a canyon, or of course if one hasn’t experienced the ocean.

For me, it’s mountains.

The only other time I felt similar was a week’s sanctuary in Nepal halfway through six-weeks backpacking across India, a few years ago. India, ancient, vibrant and incredible, is also a sensory overload, and we have often looked back and wondered what the hell we were thinking, taking a 9 and 7 year-old with us, particularly when checking into hotels where we were apparently sharing lodging. Specifically with cockroaches. But anyway, our stay in Nepal was a tonic; seven days spent at Chitwan National Park, before re-entering the dust-covered chaos at the Sonauli border and making our way down towards Kerala. It has attained a shimmering dream-like quality in my memory, as we let our bodies and spirits relax and renew, and we would spend often long periods of time sat at a viewing platform, looking over at the Himalayan foothills.

When I say I find mountains awe-inspiring, I mean it. It’s not as simple as just finding them beautiful; there’s also that bolt of fear that comes from deep within — an instinctive reaction to the experiencing of something so vast for the first time. You look. You see. Your brain registers that it’s a mountain. You know what a mountain is, of course, but at the same time some ancient long-dormant part of your DNA has awoken, and is frantically sending warning signals. It is big! Big things can be dangerous!

It is a tidal wave of rock, frozen in time, but nothing is ever truly still.

We are on the same path, but we are moving at a different pace, that is all.

A Note on Mountains.

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