The Gentle Art of Tramping by Stephen Graham

Author:Stephen Graham
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing

16

Seeking Shelter

Sometimes, at high altitudes in the Alps, the Rockies, and elsewhere, one comes upon bleak, empty shelters built for protection against wind and snow. Ordinary tramping is not mountaineering, but, nevertheless, it leads one upon occasion to wild and desolate exalted regions. There seems to be no particular danger except that of failing to obtain provisions after supplies have run out. But there is a danger, often unforeseen; the coming on of a great storm.

A raging blizzard of snow is sometimes blinding and perishing. All is veiled in driving whiteness. The wind is piercing. After a few steps the track, if there is one, is lost; landmarks have disappeared from view, and it is safer to stop than to go on. Not a few people have met their deaths in an unexpected snowstorm in the upper Alps. They may be in fairly safe mountain country, but it is easy to misjudge distance in such circumstances, and go over a cliffside by a random step in the snow. Unless you can find some sort of shelter you are changed to a snowman in a few minutes, and get disgustingly numbed. Even if you lie down flat in the snow the storm pierces to your bones.

Fortunately, one can generally see a storm coming, and find a rock or a cave or some sort of kraal or shepherd’s house. The cave is a good place in which to await the storm and then watch it pass.

Thunderstorms may be almost as perilous as blizzards, and certainly more frightening. You are up where the clouds meet; the electric currents surge through you. Something dark comes driving up the wedge between the ranges, roaring below through the ravine. It is the oncoming wind and rain. Thunders, prodigious and bellowing, break out upon the right and left. You suddenly find yourself in an island of pale subdued light, with clouds rolling up to you from below. It is an experience worth having if you possess the nerve to take it calmly.

The lightnings are sometimes amazingly intimate, wrapping you, wreathing you, bathing you with fire, almost searing your eyeballs. Cross-cross, flash, blare, effusion, confusion. The explosions are dumbfounding and the many echoes confound in one great, infernal battle music. There is an oncoming enemy who always threatens, and never seems quite to arrive. Or you are in the midst of the mêlée with torrents battling across and across you. You get soaked, the knapsack gets soaked, the boots get soaked, the rock under you becomes a water channel; the cliffs on all sides discharge water against you, to say nothing of what is raging out of the sky.

Once more, it is better to watch it from a cave. There is the enormous advantage of keeping relatively dry. In a great storm a certain amount of rain is bound to blow into any cave, but there is the advantage of feeling safer, whether one is or not. The lightnings do not play quite so much about your eyes.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.