A new beginning

It’s almost September, time of new beginnings, but if something is beginning then, probably, something else has had to end.

Here’s my ending: four years ago last Friday my beloved husband Matthew died, with no warning, while staying with a friend in Chamonix. The first thing I knew was a knock on my flat door at six on a Sunday morning. I opened it, bleary-eyed, to see an acquaintance I had once worked with, the only London person my friend in Chamonix had been able to get through to. In the instant in which she handed me her phone and I heard the voice on the other end, my life changed forever.

With Matthew in the Malvern Hills, 2017. ‘Come here,’ he used to say. ‘Come and sit (or stand) under my wing.’

Year one I marked the anniversary by walking twenty-five miles of the North Downs Way on an astonishingly hot day, putting one foot in front of the other in a sort of daze, knowing only that I had to keep going because there was nothing else to do. Year two I was up on the Ridgeway – the prehistoric chalk path that runs across southern England from Avebury in Wiltshire to Ivinghoe Beacon north of London. The Uffington White Horse; the Neolithic burial site of Waylands Smithy; blackberries beginning to ripen in the hedges – I cried as I looked at them all. Year three I took myself to the Lake District, bivvying solo by Dalehead Tarn having arrived in the dark off a late train, and awake much of the night watching fireflies and the rising and setting of a gloriously full moon.

And this year?

This year the forecast was too bad for real hills, and I didn’t need to keep my feet moving – for the first time on an anniversary I was able to sit still and stay sane. So this year I hid away in my flat, with the blinds closed, reading 1960s thrillers - about motor racing, about nuclear explosions on Florida oil rigs - about, frankly, anything that meant I didn’t have to think.

It was fine. It was what I needed.

But now the anniversary has passed, I’m back to thinking. And - after the devastation, and the time standing dazed in the rubble - it’s time to start building something new.

Welcome, then, to this Substack. It’s the evolution of my blog, and of the longer posts from my Facebook page. It’s free; it’s unobscured by ads; and for the moment it’s time-limited - I’m making an initial commitment of a six-part series, sent out once a fortnight from now on.

Growth, resilience, recovery; death, life, joy, sorrow – they’re big topics, but they’re topics people keep telling me I know something about. That knowledge has been hard-won, has come from often-bitter experience, has just as often arrived with transcendent beauty - and has changed my life. This is the place where I’m going to try to communicate some of it. (It’s a risk. These topics are hard to talk/write well about. But I’m going to try.)

My premise is it’s worth making space for these things - things that are more real, less ‘goal-focused’, often quieter, than what the world forces to our attention day by day. Things which it’s hard to find space for, but which are what help us be more who we really are. More human(e) if you like.

There will also be pictures of mountains.

If you like this, please stay - and do introduce yourself below: I’ve learned that people interested in these topics tend to have a lot in common, so we might want to get to know each other. (If you’d prefer to stay quiet then do that as well - it’s simply a pleasure to have you here.) If you read this and think there’s someone in your life who might find it helpful, do share a link. What I’m building is something I’m convinced the world needs more space for, but it will need your help to grow.

Welcome again. Next up, in a fortnight’s time: why ‘Beyond The Mountain’? What does that even mean?

Until then,

Kate x

PS: if you can’t wait, and you haven’t yet heard it, then you can find my first attempt at speaking about some of these topics here.

Lake District, the anniversary - year three.