Survivors on the Map

By A Survivor

Our journey begins at John O’Groats where new travellers are delivered by water in a crescendo of sound and motion. Many are welcomed by the Waiters-on-the-Shore and the cliff tops are festooned with blue ribbons. If you stay for long enough you might even see a few pink streamers fluttering in the wind. Sadly, some little travellers were given only a lukewarm reception. And then there were ‘The Others’. These are the ones whose arrival provoked deep disappointment or even hostility from their Guardian-the-Guide who had been staring out to sea with misty eyes. But now the reality of the little traveller’s being had shattered the Guide’s dreams and the perfect travelling companion had disappeared from the horizon. Few of the Guides had training and many had no navigational experience but in spite of this most sheltered their new companions from the gusty wind, turned south at the signpost to Life and went happily on their way. Some Guides had not volunteered their services but many of them collected their Charges and excelled in their journey. ‘The Others’ Guides’ wandered about in a disorganised fashion, while overhead, raucous gulls crapped on their little companions; then ignoring the signposts they began their journey in a totally different direction.

Many people travel happily through Scotland enjoying mountains, lochs, waterfalls and woodland with no more than an occasional fall to mar their progress. But for a few their travel Guide is unhelpful or even brutal, sometimes disappearing for months. Frequent changes of Guide leave the new traveller feeling confused and wondering about her own identity which has become tangled with that of the Travel Guides. Some Guardian Guides provide food, soap and water but are deaf to the language of Scotland. The hapless traveller might come to a particularly pleasant place along her journey but the view is obscured by mud which has been thrown onto the window. Sometimes the nights are cold and the Guide demands to be given the traveller’s blanket but the generosity of the little traveller is not enough to satisfy the Guardian Guide. Many Guides carry young travellers up mountains and keep them safe from the Monster-in-the-Loch but for some when the Monster looms its fearsome head the Guide sneers, uses words to beat the little traveller or shouts until she is silent, then says, ‘I don’t believe there is a monster in the loch because if there were the little traveller would cry’.

But when they reach Ben Nevis it is time for the little traveller to scale mountains for herself. When the infant traveller arrived at the base of the biggest mountain she could see lots of little people being helped up the mountainside by Experienced Climbing Instructors. Each new traveller was handed over to an Instructor and her Guide-at-the-time made a loud sigh of relief for this to her was an (all-too-brief) respite from the burden of her duties. As they began to climb, each trainee was given a paper map. But this time the Instructor frowned at the eager infant and sent her away to another Climbing Instructor. But The-Other-Instructor shook her head disapprovingly and sent her back again. As this short walk between them was repeated like steps to an evil dance, the infant’s feelings of worthlessness concentrated into a thick sludge and her shoulders began to droop. Eventually she was sent around the mountain to a different starting post but the New-Instructor hardly seemed to notice she was there. Eventually in her eagerness to conquer the mountain, the little infant summoned up boldness from within and asked when she would begin her climb. But the Instructor looked down from her great height and laughed as she told the infant that she was not yet ready. Though the words fell on her with the force of gravity, the infant boldness was slow to ebb and she took a map from the stack. But the Instructor snatched it back, saying in a hard voice that there was no point in taking a map she could not read and the infant boldness dissolved into shame. She stood there silently as The Instructor handed out maps to new arrivals, saying, ‘Next’, ‘Next’, ‘Next’. Then her face transformed into a smile as she greeted a cute little boy. She took a map from the stack, gave it to him, and then they were gone. His name was Next.

More little travellers arrived at the base of the mountain and Climbing Instructors came to meet them and they walked right past the little infant as if she wasn’t there and went on up the mountain, leaving her overtaken and alone. Roots sprouted from her feet and bound her to the ground. She was becoming so fat, unhappy and ugly that nobody wanted to be seen with her. The infant began to think she no longer existed and had become a ghost. Eventually boldness returned and she ripped out the roots and decided to climb the mountain alone. The little infant spent a lot of time and effort trying to get a foot- hold on the mountain’s steep and rocky path but however hard she tried no progress could be made. Eventually she gave Ben Nevis a hefty kick, turned her back on it and walked away defeated. Coming towards her were lots of little people each with a spring in their steps and a smile on their face. She hung her head in shame, terrified people would find out that she could make no sense of the map signs, knowing everybody else going her way was beautiful, clever and important. They had climbed the mountain and not only marvelled at the view from the top but grown strong and confident knowing that they were capable of climbing more peaks along their journey. She could hear them talking excitedly about their adventures as they went past. But what she had learnt was that she was The-Most-Stupid-of-Them-All and that she alone did not matter. People began to leave trailing roots of pain.

Disappearing backs made a wave of loneliness but the sight of all those smiling faces crushed her being with the evidence of what she had missed. Meanwhile if they noticed her at all, they made complaints that her miserable and hunched façade was spoiling their view of the scenery. Every time she came in sight of a mountain she would hide in the dense woodland because if nobody knew she existed they would not find out she had failure etched into her soul. For a brief spell, the traveller’s body grew taller and the emptiness within enlarged but when food became scarce her ribs made bony lines on her torso and growth ceased as she blundered along alone, brain fogged by hunger but ever vigilant for little hills which would give away her secret shame.

For ‘The Others’ there was no opportunity for fun, their Guide struck them down with boulder words that left craters in the soul or fists of iron that dented bodywork. Even though the traveller lived with a famine of approval, the Guide demanded offerings of admiration and gratefulness in return. The image of a Care-Well occupied the traveller’s mind as she clanked her empty bucket along the ground. The noise to others was irritating so they too lashed out at her. Lots of travellers would cool their feet in streams but our Guides would not allow us to linger or took us off to ugly places. Even if a Witness stumbled across our path they did nothing to intervene and hurried on their way as we were beaten with rocks that came in many shapes and sizes, sedimentary, igneous and metamorphic.

One day a Climbing Instructor dragged this traveler out from the woodland and took her back to Ben Nevis. When the instructor gave the traveller a map it burned her hand and her only wish was to hurl it far away. The traveller was pushed up the mountainside in full view of tiny travellers long since outgrown. It was a deeply painful journey where each hard won ascent was marred by barbs from the Instructor and the scornful sneers drifting down the mountainside from fellow travellers ahead. The reward for progress was to be faced with yet steeper inclines, a relentless journey of torture to the top with no celebration at the summit. Amputated self-esteem left this weary traveler crippled, innocently thinking the worst had arrived then seared by each new episode of despair. Maps continued to be decorated with enigmatic symbols. The Guide’s only consistency was inconsistency. She could find rocks to hurl from grassland and vanished into the crowd. This traveller’s most deep and vital organs were damaged by branding but though her life was sculptured into abandonment and long silences that had nothing to do with peace, some attached their own labels, ‘Spoilt’, ‘Dim’, ‘Attention Seeking’, ‘A Bad Influence’. People read the labels on display and considered punishment or a U-turn to be in order. Desperate aloneness drove her to seek strangers for nurture while fearing such drastic steps would lead to disaster. It was imperative to conceal the intense pain which threatened to flood out and reveal her plight in this dessert of uncertainty.Survival depended not only on concealing the soft tissues but also the favoured hand. The Guide could reach both with uncanny accuracy and painful consequences.

These hapless travellers emerge from Scotland, desperately clinging onto their thistles. They enter the Lake District as unprepared adolescents, frequently admonished for continuing to speak with a Scottish accent, while secretly trying to stay safe using West Country wisdom. This whole area is characterised by high and low places. The fells can be treacherous, the path being clearly defined one minute, then obscured by low clouds rolling in the next. It has the heaviest rainfall in the UK. Their travelling vehicle continues its journey up and down steep passes and wild open beautiful, sometimes desolate places. The traveller longs for encouragement and praise for she has relinquished her fear and holds a map in her hand but instead her Guide threatens to abandon her. Whenever the traveller is happy and enthusiastic the Guide scowls. Gifts are snatched back and smiles are warped with cruelty. The Guide promises fresh air and delivers poisonous gases. When the traveller falls into pot holes of despair the Guide threatens her and blames her for the trouble she is causing. The Guide solicits attention and praise from companions, dazzling them with stories of importance and achievement which they fail to see as the fictitious inventions of a sick mind. People lean on the traveller’s bruises and demand admiration for the brutal Guide. The traveller is separated from the world by stripes of cold hard metal where narrow fields’ of view show monotonous concrete and the threat of violence. When a wheel falls off the car, The Guide does not repair the vehicle. So the journey becomes terrifying as the car continues along the journey lurching from side to side. The scenery becomes a blur and the traveller feels nauseous. All hope is lost.

In this state of trauma and imprisonment the traveler reaches Yorkshire. With fear in her heart she eventually manages to escape the Guide’s vice-like control and leave the stricken vehicle. A more reliable model is acquired but the traveller has learned to live from day to day because there is no certainty and plans are likely to be scuppered by violence.New companions are sought but the traveler can no longer connect and people appear as if on a film screen, inaccessible transitory figures who never face outwards into the traveller’s world. She continues to be haunted by the bad places in Scotland and Cumbria, sometimes fearing to sleep or waking from nightmares screaming and fighting. Any beauty in her mind is obscured by the pain of being beaten down. A screensaver of horrifying snapshots runs dormant in the brain and makes forays into the workspace at inopportune moments, taking more than a single key stoke to shift it. The nausea from her terrifying journey is slow to leave but her energy is great.

Unfettered by her incompetent often destructive Guide she should be free to enjoy this new place. But other travellers talk of their journey through beautiful Scotland which has left them with feelings of contentment, strength and confidence. The hapless traveller can’t understand what’s going on and to make up for what’s missing, makes jokes and smiles a lot and tries to hide her weak and trembling legs under long skirts, which sometimes spontaneously transform into kilts, and people stare and make her blush. Eventually she breaks her heavy silence, shapes air into truth and admits that she found Scotland a long and painful road with ugly places hidden between the rocks. The happy travellers’ minds are full of wonderful images so they look at their unfortunate companion suspiciously and say things like, ‘Why did you go to those despicable places’ or ‘You’re making it up, there are no places like that, I know because I have been in Scotland and Cumbria’ and they turn their backs on the hapless traveller and walk away.

So the injured traveller struggles alone along her journey (having shed her scare-giving Guide) and people make judgements and harsh comments about her disheveled appearance which has been cultivated to repel the opposite gender in an attempt to exist safer until someone says, ‘Take these pills and all will be well’. But the traveller’s legs grew leaden, her body ached abominably with each step she took and her companions become much disturbed by inappropriate mirth even though no alcohol had passed her lips. The traveller’s body swells as her life shrinks to nothing and people say she is lazy and see her as a burden and tax drain to their hard earned income. The injured traveller hires herself a personal jet and from time to time takes a flying visit back to Scotland or The Lake District in search of the wonderful places she’s heard about and missed seeing the first time round. And these sudden, untimely and inappropriate flights cause much consternation and criticism from the happy fellow travellers, who sometimes shake their heads and make cruel jokes.

So the injured traveller mostly keeps it a secret that she has this void inside her which is the place where the fortunate travellers can conjure up images of snow-capped peaks, sparkling water, haggis and Kendal mint cake which they shared with a Guide who was safe and nurtured them to the border of Yorkshire and beyond. Until one day the burdened traveller comes across a group of people from many places south of Cumbria, who know about the bad places hidden between the rocks. Together they are introduced to gifted Helpers who know how to listen and hear what is being said. As these people start talking words and emotions are ejected like water from a pipe with airlocks, releasing pressure in short bursts from an overloaded storage tank. The gifted Helpers show the travellers a map of the UK and together they explore the old places and try to find paths that lead away from the ugliness towards something better.