Jonathan Humble, Features Writer
In Boots Like These … Kendal Mountain Festival Goes Virtual
All photos by Paul Scully (Literature Festival Director)
A tented basecamp village springs up overnight in the Brewery Arts Centre, the main arteries of Kirkland, Highgate and Stricklandgate throb with quilt jacketed bodies, snatched conversations about mountains, wilderness and outdoor inspiration are overheard in the melee, fit-looking fell runners limber up by the War Memorial and commerce thrives as we’re encouraged by the organisers to ‘share in the adventure’. In 2020, with the present restrictions and changes due to Covid 19, sharing the adventure will look and feel a little different …
Those who know me are well aware of my interest in the outdoors. Coming from the industrial plains of Goole, where as a youth I'd regularly hike from The Viking pub on Western Road, to The Station in the town and onward to The Lowther and George by the docks on a Saturday night, I've had to adapt in order to live in Cumbria where the best pubs are on hills or across lakes and it rains quite a bit of the time.
Webbed Feet
Thirty-six years of living in the Lake District has not only toughened me up and given me webbed feet, but the magic of Wordsworth and Wainwright has made a poet of me, to the extent that in 2017, I was asked amongst other local writers to read a selection of outdoor themed poetry at the inaugural Mountain Literature Festival in Kendal.
Part of the established Kendal Mountain Festival, the new events included award winning author Karen Lloyd hosting at The Waterside Cafe Bistro with the evening featuring author Christopher Nicholson who read from 'Among the Summer Snows', acclaimed poet Helen Mort, writer and filmmaker Simon Sylvester, co-founder of the Kendal Poetry Festival Pauline Yarwood and others of equal note.
Last year’s involvement during the festival, the most successful so far, included the reading of work with an environmental theme at ‘Spoken Word and a Pint at the Library’ with Geoff Cox, Beatrice Stanley, Faye Latham, Gary Liggett, Caroline Gilfillan, Mark Carson and Barbara Hickson, while at The Brewery, Polly Atkin hosted the Open Mountain literature event promoting greater diversity, highlighting and celebrating writers who for various reasons are under-represented in the outdoors, under the title ‘Inclusion and Connection’.
2020 will be different...
In 2020, from 19th until 29th November, things will of course be different. The Kendal Mountain Festival (patrons: Sir Chris Bonington and Leo Houlding) often cited as the largest and most varied event of its type in the world, celebrating its 40th anniversary with the backdrop of a global pandemic, will be ten days long and a completely online event.
Typically, the organisers of the festival view the enforced changes as a ‘huge opportunity to Share The Adventure with the world, pouring all our effort and energy into creating a new, amazing digital experience’.
Still attracting filmmakers and film premières from far and wide, TV producers, adventurers, top brands, athletes and speakers, books and exhibitions covering all aspects of mountain and adventure sports culture, the programme will through necessity be more virtual in nature. More details about booking tickets can be found at https://earlybird.kendalmountainfestival.com
The patron of the literature festival, Robert MacFarlane states: "The Festival celebrates the relations between people and places – between landscapes and the human heart – as they play out in culture and especially in literature. It's many and varied events seek to emphasise connection and community in an age of division."
In Boots Like These
During the height of lockdown, I wrote a poem, In Boots Like These, published by Inspired By Lakeland in their anthology Through The Locking Glass about the importance of the landscape to the human heart …
In time spent away,
where horizons are blocked
by walls and masks and breaking news,
where road and high rise
substitute for river course and hill,
and setting out to stretch your legs
you’d also need a head space,
I have to close my eyes to breathe.
In this mind’s refuge I’ll wear these boots
to get to where I want to be.
I’ll stumble over rock and root,
and fray some holes in woolly socks
by Solway’s muddied tidal shores,
to Saltom Bay and Silecroft Beach.
I’ll imagine days on rutted coastal track,
the kittiwake and Irish Sea for company,
as eager laced, I’ll take on routes
from which there’ll be no turning back;
those proper walks in boots like these.
I’ll push old limestone crag beneath this body;
compel the Silurian world
from Hutton Roof to Cunswick Scar.
I’ll work the eyes and feed the heart
with views in Lyth of birds that soar
as cadence clears away
dead weights upon this chest
that drag and snag and catch the throat.
I’ll use the rhythms of this mind
where thought and distance coalesce
to fade these binding cares; locked-in despair.
I’ll seek clean air by Bassenthwaite,
where rippled clouds reflect in thought
and softened colours move with leaves
the stuff that flows through passing trees.
I’ll trek from low to high terrain,
where clearer views perceived as real
reveal such hidden sentinels that raise the skies.
I’ll scramble streams in Easdale Ghyll.
I’ll plod and push the limits
as fresh rivulets of rain
blend on tired skin with sweat,
pulse synchronised with hard-earned breath,
senses in turmoil becoming clear,
sounds tuned and tempered,
life refocused in revelation,
the world revolving
and this mind made free to feel again.
I’ll live and breathe in boots like these.
where horizons are blocked
by walls and masks and breaking news,
where road and high rise
substitute for river course and hill,
and setting out to stretch your legs
you’d also need a head space,
I have to close my eyes to breathe.
In this mind’s refuge I’ll wear these boots
to get to where I want to be.
I’ll stumble over rock and root,
and fray some holes in woolly socks
by Solway’s muddied tidal shores,
to Saltom Bay and Silecroft Beach.
I’ll imagine days on rutted coastal track,
the kittiwake and Irish Sea for company,
as eager laced, I’ll take on routes
from which there’ll be no turning back;
those proper walks in boots like these.
I’ll push old limestone crag beneath this body;
compel the Silurian world
from Hutton Roof to Cunswick Scar.
I’ll work the eyes and feed the heart
with views in Lyth of birds that soar
as cadence clears away
dead weights upon this chest
that drag and snag and catch the throat.
I’ll use the rhythms of this mind
where thought and distance coalesce
to fade these binding cares; locked-in despair.
I’ll seek clean air by Bassenthwaite,
where rippled clouds reflect in thought
and softened colours move with leaves
the stuff that flows through passing trees.
I’ll trek from low to high terrain,
where clearer views perceived as real
reveal such hidden sentinels that raise the skies.
I’ll scramble streams in Easdale Ghyll.
I’ll plod and push the limits
as fresh rivulets of rain
blend on tired skin with sweat,
pulse synchronised with hard-earned breath,
senses in turmoil becoming clear,
sounds tuned and tempered,
life refocused in revelation,
the world revolving
and this mind made free to feel again.
I’ll live and breathe in boots like these.
Over the years, Kendal Mountain Festival has had wide implications and benefits for Cumbria. It invests money into its community outreach and schools programme. I’ve also read that the festival is one of the reasons young people are attracted to Kendal as a place to settle. At its heart, the festival aims to inspire people to explore and enjoy mountains and wilderness, to live and breathe, and I for one, wish it continued success in these weird and changing times.