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Finding Solace in the Lake District
Chapter [VII]
SKIDDAW
How the Mountain Gave Me Back to Myself
You don't need to escape your life to find peace. You need to return to it more fully.
- Victoria Erickson
What is solitude when it is chosen - not forced?
I thought I came up here to disappear for a while.
But the silence didn’t erase me. It returned me to myself. The wind pulled everything out of me that wasn’t real.
All that remained was this strange stillness.
Not loneliness. Just space… to breathe, to imagine, to choose.
Maybe this is what it means to start again, not by running away, but by walking straight into what calls you back.
Tales from the Fells: The Hermit of Skiddaw
They say there was once a man who climbed the mountain and never came down. He turned his back on timecards and city noise, on wages that bought nothing of worth. With only a canvas, a kettle, and the company of crows, he built himself a life beneath Skiddaw’s silent watch.
He lived in a wooden hut, tucked into the slopes, where the clouds hung low and the seasons passed slowly. Some called him mad. Others, brave. But he painted what he saw, not just the ridgelines and rain, but the stillness between things. The life modern clocks forget.
He did not ask the mountain for anything, and so it gave him peace. In the wind’s hush and the heather’s hum, in each morning frost and fireless dusk, he found what he needed. The world below may have moved on, but up here, he lived inside a kind of truth.
Maybe we all carry a version of the hermit inside us… the quiet urge to turn away, to step off the path, to make something that cannot be undone.
Ascent via Latrigg
Walking up Skiddaw at sunset, I felt like I’d arrived at the right place, at the right time.
Not a cloud in sight. Just deep, clear blue above.
The mountain called me in its silence, beckoning. And so I went.
The trail was mostly empty, save for the odd kindred figure -
perhaps also relishing the solitude.
I passed Latrigg on my way, which framed the climb to come.
Skiddaw loomed from a distance, luring me closer.
Farmland fell behind; empty hills rose ahead.
Only the bleating of sheep and the rhythm of my boots accompanied me,
as I followed my shadow into the sun.
Am I seeking silence to escape others, or to listen to myself?
Have I mistaken longing for freedom with longing for meaning?
Approaching the Ridge
In just under an hour, I reached the base.
The path began to rise steadily, stone-lined and flanked by wild grass and dark thistles.
False summits teased me as I pushed up toward Little Skiddaw.
The trail felt timeless, as if shaped not by hands but by centuries.
Nature’s order made it feel sculpted and untamed all at once -
both exposed and enduring.
At intervals, I stopped.
All I could hear was my breath, and the hum of my own heartbeat.
Wind on the Summit
Climbing past Little Skiddaw, the wind surged.
The sun vanished behind the fell, my fingers froze, my face burned with sweat.
My legs climbed forward.
And then - the top.
Peaks stretched in every direction.
The sun began to return, softened now by a golden haze.
The summit lay bare, a flat rocky stretch with no shelter from the gusts.
I shivered, quickening my steps to the southern top, then on to the true summit.
I tucked behind a cairn, windbroken, gazing out toward Bassenthwaite Lake
where the sun hovered.
It was quiet again. Stillness, heavy and whole.
How do I stay still through all the noise?
Have I arrived at an ending? or circled back to a forgotten beginning?
Sunset from Up Top
The wind didn’t just howl. It emptied me.
Watching the sun gradually melt into the lake, I didn’t feel triumphant. I felt grateful.
This summit wasn’t a conquest. It was a reclamation of something I thought I’d lost.
The horizon gave me clarity. Skiddaw didn’t silence the world. It let me choose silence as resistance.
I was no longer running from life, from work, from burnout, from the noise -
but toward something. Not an escape, but a return.
I took out my notebook. The words came easily: this was a turning point.
Not dramatic. Just true.
I wouldn’t walk the same path as everyone else. I’d hike my own, and write through it.
I felt ready. Not to prove, but to explore.
Descent via Lonscale Fell
The sky dimmed to violet. A final orange glow etched the ridges as I descended Lonscale Fell.
My boots pressed into the earth, and I could feel the echo of seekers, wanderers,
those who had turned to these hills for refuge.
I wasn’t alone in choosing the mountain. I was part of something ancient.
As I turned back one last time, I didn’t feel loss. I felt light.
To climb a mountain at sunset is to accept the light will leave, only to return.
It’s not bravery. It’s belief.
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