Laying on the rocks below Elgol, the whir of saltwater waves lapping the shore, birdsong, and motorboat dissolve the edges of this thing you call form. Now, a formless being wafts back to a time as old as these ancient mountains. The formless being is no more and no less a hand maiden for Neptune’s mighty ambitions. Here, on this beach, you are now in the far future to that distant past, and your two selves gladly acknowledge each other; the cool breeze swirling around like you two as wedding cloak, conjoining halves.

“It wasn’t long before … that privileged class of “curiosity men” reach[ed] Skye Shores, seemingly for the purpose of using the scenery to exercise their melodrama muscles…” (p. 162, The Black Ridge)

At the Sligachan, maybe nine miles by wing but 23 or so by tire from Elgol, a door-jam book The Black Ridge, which at 534 pages of reading plus another 18 pages of index, seemingly contains every poetic thing ever said about the Cuillin on the Isle of Skye. I won’t get in the way. But just so you know, I have managed to put in three days and 9,000 vertical feet, to confirm most of the things said. 

I keep waiting, staring really, at the Cuillin skyline, for something to change. It seems that at any moment they might do something. These are the ones I now know: Sgùrr Dearg – The Inaccessible Pinnacle; Sgùrr na Banachdaich; Sgùrr nan Gillean; Am Basteir; Sgùrr a' Ghreadaidh; and Sgùrr a' Mhadaidh. What it is they might actually do is unclear and unworldly. But hope is delivered at every view — from Glen Sligachan, Glen Brittle, and Loch Slapin.

All the names — quixotic, ancient-ish — defy sticking a landing in my American brain. I struggle to remember all but the easy ones. I decide Gillean is my favorite for very simple reasons. First, I can pronounce it. She tacks the northern point down with the attitude of Ridge Prefect. Big, obvious rules emanate from her — this is a mountain form, she says: it looks like this: ^. Then all hell breaks loose.

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Over Lamb Jalfrezi in a Dufftown three-star joint, several days later, we decide that to climb steep mountains is to enjoy looking at death. Just a little. To look down and see that there is nothing below but crag and drop; to see the promise of broken backs and unnatural geometry. To acknowledge that the earth is hungry with gravity, and for a moment in time, you don’t have the same hunger.

Sgùrr Dearg, the crown jewel of the climb was the first one for us. It’s the ultimate “get” for the Munro baggers, so it felt a little off that my first Munro was the hardest and most long-awaited for others. But so it goes.

After a three-hour approach with some warm-up scrambling, a comb-shaped massive hunk of gabbro rock is waiting on the top. That’s the Inaccessible Pinnacle. More than a dozen people had arrived before us so we had to move quickly to ensure we’d get into the climbing queue. Finally, when our hands met rock it was a blur of focus and urgency. We were roped together always, to each other and to the mountain, but it was fun to pretend we could have died.

What is a bragging right if it doesn’t include a wee threat to life anyway? 

All the climbers, it seems, pause the death-defying stuff “when they have a kid.” The great reassessment. I cannot relate. Does that explain my child-free midlife preoccupation with embarking on the riskier activities of people half my age?

In the long approach walks, my mind flits around typical mountain thoughts — what’s next? The Matterhorn (too technical, too crowded); Mera (a trekking peak in Nepal that’s under consideration for 2025, but high-altitude slogging is a different beast); the Dolomites (a good thought). Then we float the idea of a full Cuillin traverse next year, along different routes and ridges, and this is a good bone to chew on.

But, more importantly for now, I am still working out the mechanics of a safe abseil and considering if I’d ever gain the confidence to set up the system myself.

Malcolm, our guide, does the important work of handling the ropes and acting as the third leg on the table. Not only does he flawlessly guide us up and down with constant understatement (“There is just a tricky bit here” as we round a vertical corner with near-invisible holds and exposure for hundreds of feet) but he also mitigates the potential for arguing about way-finding. (He rates us “pretty mellow” for couple dynamics.) He also throws in history bits: the name Cuillin likely comes from old Norse for kjollen or the keel of a boat. That the local alcoholism rate is very bad (Locals: “In the summer we drink and fish. In the winter we don’t fish.”) And that in 14 years of guiding, he’s only had one person bottle out on the InPin and he’s also taken a dog up and over it. 

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I make a joke that my anthology by-a-woman-for-a-woman of women climbers will be called “Twenty Feet Behind.” The boys try not to crack up at my demonstratively feminist tick after three days in their longer-legged company. It's a fact that women will read about women in the mountains, but men (mostly) don’t. Those men will read about men in the mountains because that’s what 99% of books about being in the mountains are by and are about. 

But here, in these Scottish mountains, my generic type casts are not matching reality. In Skye, a guide we meet, Jill, and her client (who’s training for a 550-mile mountain bike race) dust us more than once. In the Cairngorms, a few days later, we are humbled by several trail runners with ponytails and impressive wind-chafed thighs, gliding from ridge to ridge. The local chain of mountaineering gear Tiso — also co-founded by a female adventurer Maude Tiso  —actually has an equivalent selection of mountaineering boots on display (unlike REI, which consistently underwhelms me with female technical footwear.) 

But yes, I do spend a good amount of time 20-feet behind — lost in thought, enjoying the silence, silently carping when I’m asked to catch up. 

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When we where training for Skye, we spent a few early mornings at Diablo Canyon on the edge of Santa Fe. I had some experience wearing a harness and belaying, but it was more of the snow variety and none of the rock-wall kind.

We spent hours bouldering, learning knots, and practicing up and down the walls of Diablo. I was pleased to learn it was easier for me than I imagined it would be, less frightening, and more exhilarating. What I liked best, in some ways, that you blinked and six hours had passed. The forced intensity of the exercise made everything else disappear. Our friend and teacher, D., suggested rock climbing was akin to a hot flame that just burned off all the crud in life.

And that is one of the secrets of getting up onto the ridge of the Cuillin to climb up a peak. Nothing else matters, there is no other time, no other issues to reckon with, no Google docs or spreadsheets or stakeholders or work. Just pure presence and relationship between you and rock, you and your fellow climbers on the rope.

The dialogue with time has a new velocity and it’s perfectly tuned to what you need if not what you want. Past, present, and future are compressed into perfect union.

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