Enjoy the Silence: Why Words Can Only Do Harm

It strikes me that oral or written accounts of hiking trips – the descriptions of trails, flora, injuries, tiredness, the supposed adventurous hijinks that hikers get up to - could only be of possible interest to another hiker planning to cover the same route and wanting to know what they’re up against, or maybe not… 

I borrowed a guidebook to the Kaçkar mountains of northeast Turkey a month or two before setting out thinking, as you do, that I would get busy reading it and be well briefed on the lay of the land before actually getting there.  I was wrong, of course.  It sat on my shelf and collected dust before I finally wiped it off and gave it back before leaving for Turkey.  With the exception of the useful map it contained there was really no motivation for me to read it.   I did try, but couldn’t do it. 

Apart from a very general background to the place you’re headed, you really only need a decent map and all the gear to be ready.  There’s very little return to be had from reading beforehand that ‘when you come to the broken cairn, turn left at the white rock to behold a glorious vista of post deluvian scree slopes and moraine…ten minutes vigorous scramble up this will bring you to a boulder strewn amphitheatre…’.  Why spoil the surprise? 

Then, at any rate, you’re doing the hike and trying to keep a journal about the days’events.  It doesn’t work, does it?  You’re too busy gawping at the…jaw-droppingly beautiful and ever changing play of light as the sun sets, basking the pinnacle rocks and snowfields in an ethereal magenta glow that cannot be copied with any paint pallette known to man….to bother writing about it.  And forget about recording it for posterity later in your tent at night by the light of a headlamp, wrapped up in your sleeping bag.  It’s more interesting to listen to the wind buffet the flysheet, or just…well, go to sleep because you’re tired from that earlier vigorous scramble.

There’s a Turkish saying related to travel that I like which goes ‘Yediklerin içtiklerin sende kalsın – gördüklerini anlat’.  Good, isn’t it?  Ok, it says ‘Whatever you ate or drank on your travels is your own business – tell us what you saw’.  Indeed.  There’s nothing more unforgiveable than boring others with descriptions of food you had while away.  Suffice it to say that, generally, trail food is crap.

You’re reduced to eating serial soupy concoctions involving quick cook noodles, sausage, a potato sometimes, and some soup mix by Knorr.  Each evening you try to vary it, but it’s always more or less the same thing.  It’s the kind of muck you would never subject yourself to in normal circumstances.  It only makes sense at the time.  At the end of a long day’s hike it seems like the best thing you’ve ever eaten.  The reason is twofold: you’re extremely tired so even a sushi-ed rat would taste like ambrosia, and secondly you’re watching eagles and hawks reel above you in absolute silence and the freshest of air, which is proven to make otherwise normal people temporarily insane, enabling them to knock back the trail slop. 

So why do we put ourselves through this if it’s all so bad?  Because we do.  It’s sweaty, uncomfortable, at times dangerous, often tedious, tiring, rewarding and the best sport on the planet, that’s why.  And as everyone knows, the word ‘sport’ is actually an acronym for sweat, pain, odour, repetitiveness and tightened buttocks, so hiking ticks all the boxes, really. 

However, knowing all that should be enough for the hiker who wishes to create a verbal picture of what they experienced.  Better not to bother.  So you’re only left with what you saw. Of course the best way to express this is through pictures.  That’s why people create ‘photo essays’ – basically a euphemism for ‘admittal that if you can, in a photo, see what I saw, then you don’t need me to tell you about it’.

So, the previous paragraphs are a long winded way of introducing my own photo essay on the Kaçkar mountains, though, in my defense, not half as long as had I decided to write down the several thousand words that the pictures say better than I could.

For those who might have come across this in a Google search for ‘Kaçkar’ while trying to get background info for their own trip (I don’t delude myself into thinking that anyone ever knowingly chooses to read this blog), I’ll mention that the pictures represent two hikes.  One was from Olgunlar village to Dilberdüzü, and the other was from the former to Yukarı Kavron via the Çeymakçur/Naletleme Pass in July and August 2010.  If you’ve got this far, you’ll know that there are certain books on the area which you can buy, and (not) read, if you’re so (dis)inclined.  Anyway, this is what I saw.