vehicles had used it their skidding tyres had ripped the vegetation on both banks. A once-sacred meadowland was scarred with dried mud and the imprints of wheels, not animals. Dwarf rhododendrons had been desecrated, and rainbow swirls of oil coloured puddles in the track.
A sense of foreboding hung over me, and with every step I slipped deeper into a pool of dejection.
Fifty metres from the site of the idyllic terrace on which Keith and I had camped, the rough track finally came to a halt. Three cars were parked there; two Spanish, one French. Cardboard boxes lay strewn among the shrubbery, rotting after a shower of rain. Wine bottles had been smashed against a rock. Toilet paper fluttered from the branches of a pine tree, and tin cans were rusting in the stream.
‘Urban motorised man’, wrote Fernando Barrientos Fernandez, ‘has no responsible conservationist regard for nature.’
I walked sadly up to that special terrace to discover a metal workman’s hut positioned exactly where we’d had our tent in those cherished times of mountain beauty. Innocent days, they were. But now the site was desecrated, the valley’s innocence betrayed.
It was too late to think of leaving, so we pitched our tent without enthusiasm as darkness swallowed the ugly intrusions. Up on the Maladeta’s slopes a shepherd’s campfire glowed like a beacon. The glaciers were barely perceived, yet a shadowy profile against distant snows announced that the mountains still remained. But in the night I awoke from a disturbed sleep as a wind came from the west. It found a sheet of polythene and sent it flapping against the tent’s guys.
‘Where’, I wondered, ‘will the izard go to drink now?’
A version of this story appeared in The Great Outdoors for September 1978 and was subsequently reprinted in the 1981 anthology The Winding Trail, published by Diadem.
7
IT WAS THE NIGHTINGALE
In the summer of 2000 I was alone in the mountains, drifting from France to Spain and back again – climbing, walking, checking routes for a new edition of my guidebook. In high places there would be the croaking of choughs, a tuneless sound that was nonetheless an integral part of the mountain scene. Yet one evening, down in a valley, a much sweeter sound romanced my senses…
Driven from the mountains by a storm that washed the hills and threatened to drown valleys I came to an empty campsite below a plug of rock, upon which was crouched a tiny, cracked Spanish village – a dozen houses crowded among cobbled alleys, a church and a view of the High Pyrenees brooding under an evil sky. Although the storm rattled as I pitched my tent, the site was safe from flooding. The rain eased while I cooked and ate my meal, and only a light drizzle was spattering the flysheet when I drifted into sleep.
Suddenly I awoke to a sound made in heaven. Behind the tent a nightingale warbled and trilled its liquid song; a song that had no end, no sign of ending, it rose and fell and rose again and again, tossing notes to unseen stars as the hours moved toward midnight and beyond. I crawled out in a vain attempt to see the source, but all was dark save for the distant flash of lightning behind black, shapeless mountains. The nightingale cared nothing for that far-off storm, but sang as though all of life depended on it.
Next day the storm was forgotten, and the sun scorched a cloudless sky as I scrambled past waterfalls born of yesterday’s deluge and looked on peaks dusted with overnight snow that would melt by midday. Then, as evening drew in, I was seduced back to the nightingale camp and stretched out on the grass beside my tent as darkness fell. It was then that the nightingale returned and in an instant his melodies rippled through the valley.
Hour upon hour I lay, reluctant to sleep. The moon-free night was filled with beauty, and shortly after midnight the solo became a duet as a second nightingale copied the song from a tree across the way – note for note, phrase for phrase it echoed the melody in perfect pitch. Nightingales in stereo, sufficient to melt the coldest heart, the birds were romancing one another, and their love duet filled the night with what seemed like audible honey.
Eventually I drifted into a light sleep. When I woke again around 4am they were still at it! But now they were growing weary, the pause between each new melody a little more prolonged than the last. Yet still they sang until the very first stain of sunrise stretched across the eastern hills. Only then did the birds give their throats a rest. And I…well, I gave up on sleep and headed for the mountains once more.
8
TRAGEDY ON JEAN-PIERRE
Mike and I were brought up in neighbouring villages, started climbing together in north Wales, and several years later shared a rope in the Atlas Mountains. He had a natural talent on rock, and for a while we planned to open a climbing school in Snowdonia, but our lives took different directions and inevitably that dream faded. However, in 1977 the opportunity came to share a rope once more, so we headed for the Pyrenees with an ambitious list of routes, but from Day One things did not go according to plan.
Afternoon was well advanced when we arrived at the foot of Pic du Midi’s south-facing Pombie Wall, and by the time we’d pitched the tent shadows were marching across the face. At the same time the valley below was filling with cloud, and its tide was creeping up the hillside too, engulfing all in its path. Yet there were still climbers at work up there; about halfway to the top by the sound of it. We could hear their voices, the clatter of hardware, the ring of a peg being hammered into a crack. No doubt they would be facing a bivvy tonight.
Too late in the day to attempt anything ourselves, and before even making a brew, we were drawn towards the mountain while we could still see it, and we’d just reached the screes when the sound all climbers dread came to us.
Stonefall. A lot of it.
We looked up to see a stream of dust and a fusillade of rocks bouncing down the face. Large rocks, small rocks and a shower of stones began high up, then gathered momentum as they spun into open space. We automatically flinched and stopped in our tracks to see where they’d land, and it didn’t take much imagination to know that if any climbers were near that lot, they’d be dry-mouthed with fear.
In moments the face was swallowed by cloud, and as individual features disappeared the frantic crash of rock against rock gradually lessened and finally ended, followed by an eerie silence. Then the silence was broken by a concerned voice calling: ‘Henri.’
Silence.
Again, but more urgently this time: ‘Henri!’
Then louder still: ‘HENRI!’
There was desperation in that cry, but it was nothing compared with the sound that followed. A sound that broke your heart. From that sound a single word tore free from a mangled expression of grief. A single word one did not need to be a linguist to understand.
‘Mort!’
Mike and I faced one another, eyes wide with horror.
The clouds that enveloped Pic du Midi brought early nightfall, and the rescue team arrived as the last vestige of light was disappearing. The helicopter could first be heard in the distance, then it was overhead, where it hovered only about a hundred metres above us, searching the gloom for what seemed an eternity before it began to descend. In poor visibility there was no room for error, but the pilot knew what he was doing and set the chopper down close to the Pombie refuge, whose guardian had alerted the gendarmerie when I’d run in with the news, leaving Mike to try to make contact with the survivor. The chopper blades slowed,
