To Climb Steep Hills

by IQBAL HUSSAIN

I’ve always loved the countryside, despite growing up among the cobbled streets, smoking chimneys, and red brick terraces of a former northern mill town. Since I was a boy, I longed to walk among thickly wooded forests, trail my hands through a field of grasses, follow the scent of woodsmoke, and wake up to the call of larks and be lulled to sleep by the tu-whit, tu-whoos of rousing owls.

Instead, I made do with a long, thin patch of green that bordered the top of the street, with the Leeds and Liverpool Canal beyond. Depending on my mood and energy levels, this overgrown wild strip masqueraded as a blistering hot desert, a steamy tropical rainforest, or Bilbo’s Shire or Mr. Tumnus’s Narnia. I didn’t even need the neighbourhood kids or my siblings to play with. I’d spend hours alone in its verdant embrace, lost in thickets of rosebay willowherb, brambles, and Japanese knotweed, not returning until the light began to fade and my mother’s voice brought me back to reality and dinner.

My family had no such affection for the outdoors. It was a means to an end, a space they had to traverse to get from A to B. The goal was always to reach a neighbour’s house, a shop, the mosque. They found the thought of spending time in the countryside alien, dismissing it as being for goray, or white people. Occasionally, Dad took us for drives in the Darwen Moors, but we remained inside the car the whole time. Mother stayed at home. “Drive in the hills?” she’d say, aghast. “Why would I do that?” She preferred the familiarity of her kitchen, a pan of bubbling oil on the hob and a Pendle Hill of kebab meat before her. Father was little better. As we hurtled up and down the country roads in his Ford Capri, I’d suggest we stop and go for a walk among the hills. “For what, walk?” he’d say over his shoulder. “We have car, no? Much faster.” To demonstrate, he’d put his foot down, yell “Chall, Basanthi!” as though geeing up a horse, and render the wild beauty of the moors to a green and brown blur.

Things didn’t change until I went to university, in north Wales, where I finally found myself surrounded by the lakes, mountains, and forests of my childhood imaginings. I made up for lost time, spending whole weekends trekking and exploring with other members of the rambling society. Each time I returned home during the holidays, Mother expressed concern not only at my shedding of puppy fat, but also my glowing, sun- and wind-burned complexion. She would move my head from side to side, tutting and muttering under her breath. She’d spend the duration of my visit plying me with a mountain of chapattis, curries, samosas, and pakoras, determined to send me back with a few of the pounds she thought I’d lost unnecessarily. She was of the generation that equated plumpness and light skin with positive connotations. In Pakistan, labourers, servants, and farmhands tended to have darker skin, while the pampered wealthy stayed indoors, preserving their fairness and heft.

Where my family feared the outdoors, I embraced it. It was somewhere to escape to. It hadn’t been that long ago that Conservative politician Enoch Powell had made his infamous “Rivers of Blood” speech. The largely lower working-class population of our town was made up of former mill workers who’d come over from the Mirpur region of Pakistan during the 1960s and the local white population, who’d had to learn to live with a growing number of brown strangers in their midst. Like oil and water, the two didn’t mix. The town had marked areas where each of the two groups lived, such as Whalley Range (Asian) and Shadsworth (white). Woe betide if the worlds collided. Race riots were common—I spent much of my secondary school years running away from the skinheads who gathered at the gates to do a spot of “paki bashing.” Even in our own neighbourhood, we’d walk past walls spray-painted with the initials of right-wing groups such as the National Front and the British National Party. It was little wonder I found peace and solace in the wilds and vastness of the countryside. The only thing that could harm me there was an adder or a misjudged step on a gravelly descent.

My first partner, Alexander, cemented my love of the countryside. Finally, I had someone on my wavelength with whom I could explore the outdoors, and not just during the weekends at term-time. Alexander had grown up surrounded by countryside on a majestic scale, namely the Malvern Hills in Worcestershire. These gently undulating hills form the centrepiece of Elgar country. Made of some of the oldest rocks in England, they span eight miles, with the highest point around 1,400 feet above sea level. My little strip of land by the canal would fit many thousands of times in their footprint.

Whenever we visited Alexander’s parents, we’d spend much of the weekend walking in the Malverns. There were several points from which to ascend them from town. Leg muscles would be put to good use, tackling the winding road that took us past St. Ann’s Well, where we’d fill our water bottles with the naturally flowing spring water. Minutes later, we were already able to look back and indulge in breathtaking 360-degree views. The vistas got bigger and broader and more impressive the higher we went. The wind whipped around us, tugging at our scarves and making percussion from our flapping North Face jackets. We shouted to make ourselves heard, leaning into the wind, tiny figures in a Lowry painting.

The novelty never wore off. We climbed the hills in every season, taking in the yellow gorse of spring and breathing in its scent of toasted coconut, walking among the purple and orange heathers of autumn, and marvelling at the grasping branches and twisted trunks of winter. If we were feeling particularly fit, we’d eschew the paths that wound around the hills in gentle zigzags, opting instead for the vertical trails created by rabbits, with springy hummocks of grass acting as steps. Depending on the time of year, we’d gorge on wild blueberries or pick bluebells, campion, and buttercups to take back to Alexander’s mum. At other times, we’d find a spot in the lea of the wind and look up at the kestrels hovering overhead, as billowy white clouds formed and melted above them.

At the highest point of the Hills, known as the Worcestershire Beacon, we’d trace the lines and names on the metal plate on the orientation table, spotting distant hills, all boasting names as exotic to me as those of my siblings to Western ears: the Lickey Hills, the Wrekin, Cannock Chase, the Black Mountains, the Ridgeway. We’d reward ourselves with a cup from the flask of tea Alexander’s mum had given us and thick wedges of her homemade apple cake. For those precious moments in time, ahead of other hikers, with the wind threatening to blow us over, we were alone and on top of the world. Our cheeks would be flushed red, our hair dancing as though ruffled by invisible fingers, our hearts beating loud in our ears despite the booming gusts and the cries of wheeling birds.

As the sun set, it bathed everything in a mellow golden light. Fields that had been green on the way up were the colour of ripe barley on the way down. We cast long, slender silhouettes before us, Giacometti figures reaching out into the future a few seconds away. Having enjoyed our final “ten more minutes,” we set homeward, crunching our way along the winding trails, heavy legs moving of their own volition but too tired to attempt the near-vertical paths we’d sprung up like gazelles just hours earlier. Freed from the prying eyes of London suburbia, we held hands, fingers entwined, swinging them between us with the gay abandon of children, revelling in the last rays, watching the sky turn orange, then pink and, finally, violet. As the heavens caught fire, we stopped and kissed. All around us, swallows and swifts chased insects on the wing. A blackbird serenaded us from a gnarled old may tree. The wind caressed our rosy cheeks. With few walkers around at this crepuscular hour, the love that dare not speak its name found its voice on those majestic hills.

Other trips followed. We spent many weekends at a friend’s cottage by a riverbank in Hay-on-Wye. It had no electricity or taps, so we pumped water from a well, kept the damp from our bones by warming ourselves before a log fire, and read to each other by candlelight. At night, as we lay in a towering bed straight out of “The Princess and the Pea,” the house spoke its own language around us: the wind whispered in and out of gaps in the windows, floorboards creaked and cracked, and the woodwormed oak beams above our heads shifted and settled like aged bones.

In the mornings, we’d splash and bathe in the river, daring each other to stay in the cold water for a minute longer. Once towelled dry and dressed, we’d plunge into the surrounding countryside, ascending Hay Bluff or the eccentrically named Lord Hereford’s Knob, rucksacks on our backs, compasses in hand. We’d return from our explorations hours later, tired, hungry but content. During lazy afternoons, we sat on the stone doorstep, modern-day urchins with bare feet in sun‑warmed grass, eating homemade scones, waving away wasps, and listening to the calls of cuckoos in the nearby copse and the gamelan babbling of the river, swollen after a night of rain.

We drove to a remote cottage in north Wales, not knowing quite what we were getting. We arrived in the middle of the night. With no streetlights, we were thankful for the paint spatter of stars in the black velvet sky, mindful not to wander in the direction of the rumbling waterfall which was behind the flint-walled house. Inside, we found Post-it notes addressed to “Mr. and Mrs. Rogers,” welcoming us and pointing out how to operate the oven and turn on the TV. We agonised all night over what the reaction might be from our hosts the next morning. Our fears were unfounded. They didn’t bat an eyelid, their only sign of surprise a drawn out “Oh—oooooohhh” before they asked us if we’d slept well and did we want our eggs poached, fried, or scrambled? After breakfast, we stepped out into an enchanted new world—the thatched cottage was at the top of a steep rutted track, with no neighbours and every shade of green as far as the eye could see. And, always, the roar of the falls.

The years passed. We saw more sights and travelled more widely. We stayed in huttes constructed of whole logs in the Black Forest with Alexander’s extended German family. Here, finally, was the forest of my childhood dreams. Thick, dark, and magical, just like from a Grimm’s fairy tale. We’d come back and eat spätzle and munch moon-shaped lebkuchen with mugs of proper hot chocolate. We visited Malta, incredulous that one place could boast so many incredible churches. We braved snowstorms in New York, experiencing cold like we had never experienced before, not even in a stone cottage by the river in a driving gale in the middle of winter.

The farther we roamed, the more we moved apart. The two events weren’t connected, but I learned that first love might not be one’s only love. As new horizons surfaced, our needs changed. After four years, we hugged each other for the last time. Alexander’s hair still smelt of woodsmoke from the log fire in the cottage. As much as we didn’t want to call it a day, we couldn’t fight the inevitable. There were some things that not even the vastness of the great outdoors could fix. Nothing could hide the fact that the latter months had been spent in the shadows of clouds as they’d sailed like ghostly galleons over deep, ice-hewn valleys. It took kindness to let each other go. And time for broken promises to be forgotten, empathy for hurts to be forgiven and space to find each other again.

Even after all these years, those early days spent in the countryside with Alexander are imprinted in my mind. We were explorers together, making our own rules, going where we pleased and being answerable to nothing and no one. The world was young, as were we. It was the making of me; it was the breaking of me. I cherished every dappled moment. If I close my eyes, I am instantly transported back to those halcyon, carefree days of endless sunshine, open hearts, and adventures yet to be had. As the sun dips beneath the horizon, two boys bathed in gold wend their way down the hills, singing, laughing, arms draped, teasing each other, marching, running, skipping, sliding, giddy from the excitement of having communed with nature, of having dared to love and having been allowed to be.