Hello again! It's been a while hasn't it? Six months or thereabouts, in which I've either had nothing to say or lacked the energy to say it. Mostly the latter, as my life has been utterly dominated by football for months. I've eaten, slept, dreamed and wept football, to the exclusion of everything else that I enjoy doing. (Of which more, possibly, another time).
But I've just spent two weeks on holiday in the Lake District, in which not only has there been No Football, but there has been plenty of time to do things I love with LittleBear. And among the things that LittleBear and I both love are climbing fells, obsessively collecting things and messing around with data analysis. To our great joy, we are able to combine these particular passions... (bear with me, all will become clear!)
For those not familiar with his oeuvre, a gentleman by the name of Alfred Wainwright lovingly and laboriously climbed, and wrote about, the fells of Lakeland, creating seven gorgeous pictorial guides to the fells. In these, he provides a multitude of ascents, descents, ridge routes, maps, line drawings and opinions. Across the seven books he describes 214 such fells, now collectively known as Wainwrights. A collection that some people attempt to "bag" by climbing all of them. A perfect opening for LittleBear to climb things and collect them.
And having climbed a fell, LittleBear and his mother require a means of tracking which ones we've climbed, how high they are, which books they appear in, when we climbed them, and indeed how old we were when we climbed them. (First ascents being what counts here, there are many old and dear favourites that we've climbed multiple times, and fully intend to keep climbing). We spent many happy hours, while the rain sheeted down outside, playing with spreadsheets and finding ingenious ways of representing all the data we were accumulating*.
And this graph was particularly illuminating. It shows the accumulation of new Wainwrights as I age.
There are five distinct stages to my life:
The Early Years
From just before I turned five, until my late teens, I gradually climbed new fells, under the care and guidance of my parents. I didn't choose them, I just went where we went, mostly enjoying it, but with a tendency to grumble about only having little legs. I was very much a camp-follower.
First Marriage
Then I became an independent adult, going on holiday without my parents or brother, but instead with TheEx. From twenty to my early thirties is the period of my life when I lacked/lost all confidence. I didn't trust my map-reading to navigate my way on new fells; I didn't trust my driving to manage the mountain passes over to new valleys; I remained stuck in the familiar and the routine. Not helped by TheEx's view of me that I wasn't capable of being intrepid or confident or brave. I lived down to his expectations. The lack of new fells was only one expression of that stagnation.
The Arrival of BigBear
With the arrival of BigBear as a partner, and not just a friend, I began to discover the pleasure of doing new things, of exploring and of challenging myself, while sharing it with someone who believed in me. I drove over Wrynose and Hardknott passes for the first time. I climbed Scafell Pike for the first time. I stretched by wings and began to discover I was capable of so much more than I had believed.
LittleBear's Earliest Years
My wings were clipped a little with the arrival of BabyBear at age 37. While carry-able in the early years, it was a heavy carry and not conducive to tackling much in the way of a significant fell. I got the occasional day pass, during which time BigBear or a noble grandparent would look after BabyBear for a day, but those were the days to re-acquaint myself with my favourite, nearest-and-dearest fells, and not to branch out into the unknown, alone. And the weight of motherhood, while carry-able in the early years, was a heavy carry and not conducive to tackling much in the way of a significant new challenge.
LittleBear Starts Climbing
And finally a couple of years ago, after conquering almost all the nearest-and-dearest fells with us, LittleBear's obsessive streak had him begging for new Wainwrights, which demand I happily conceded to. And by exploring LittleBear's interests, and enthusiasms; by needing to reach outside my comfort zone so that I can be the mother than I think he deserves, I have become even braver.
* For those who might wonder how it is that I know the exact date on which I have climbed fells stretching back to my own earliest years - at the cottage my family own we have always kept a "Log Book", in which every visitor writes a diary entry for the day's activities. This provides a lovely record of our family stretching back over half a century. Perhaps my favourite entry, by GrannyBear, was the terse three-worder: "Rain. Children horrible." I have no doubt she was right.
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