By Kristen Pond, Ph.D., Margarett Root Brown Chair in Robert Browning and Victorian Studies

This post is about a spectacular trip to England’s Lake District where I retraced the nineteenth-century adventures of Harriet Martineau and Dorothy Wordsworth walking through the hills. But I am not going to tell you about the peaks I ascended, the many paths I traversed, or the views that I beheld. I am going to tell you about not going on.

A walk in bad weather makes you aware of many things related to your physical body and the natural world around you. You notice your skin in a way you hadn’t before your rain jacket started sticking to it. Aspects of the trail change, too, like the piles of rocks created by all the other hillwalkers.

Rock pile.

These piles of rocks, erected not just at the peaks but along the trails as well, seem useless and even annoying sometimes – humanity’s disruption of nature, the egoist mark of “I was here.” But the first time you attempt to navigate a foggy path in the rain across a flat bog of a mountain, you feel thankful to see one. The rock piles become necessary, beacons of hope that other people went here before you and that it will be alright. You become energized by the sense that you are not alone and the day is not as dismal as before.

Bad weather also reminds you that nature is not just there to cater to your holidays and everyday enjoyment. It is doing its own thing, and as a walker, you just join in and hope for the best. Bad weather can make it seem like nature is against you (which might be taking things too personally), but it is a humbling reminder that our bodies set physical limitations. The discomfort of walking in a cold rain or the danger of high winds when walking ridges brings you close to mortality. Harriet Martineau describes one frightening walk she took during a storm: “I am on a walking trip of 5 days with a dear niece & nephew from Birmm . . . Yesy, we happily had a guide in crossing Blake Fell, – from Emerdale water to Crummock. We set out in brilliant sunshine, – saw the thunder come up from the sea, had a vast wind, first in our faces, & then suddenly in our backs (throwg me flat) & then the storm closed down upon us & round us, while we saw, far far below, the vales & lakes lying in the calmest sunshine. In 3 minutes we were wet through & through, – waterproof knapsacks & all.” [i]

So much of our emotional and psychological state on a walk is tied to whether or not we are physically comfortable. This is why the outdoor apparel industry is robust: bodily comfort really matters, and often, walking in nature endangers bodily comfort. I spent many walks mentally evaluating if I was hungry or not and wondering when I could justify a break to eat my lunch. I triple checked each morning that I remembered my chapstick and extra socks. Dry Feet! Oh what I would do to keep dry feet—like walk an extra quarter mile just to avoid the boggy area on a path.

Muddy boot.

If the forecast does call for rain – do you still go for a walk? In my case, the answer was yes. I was only in the area for a week and I couldn’t waste a day just being inside. But walking in the rain, even just a steady drip, prevents us from experiencing many of the things that motivated us to walk in the first place: to enjoy views, the sunshine on our faces, and the sounds of birds and other wildlife. If you are walking with a rain jacket hood, your view even just a few inches to your left or right is obscured. At that point, you become locked into your thoughts and bodily sensations. Your concentration is spent determining where to step to avoid wet spots (even if they’re everywhere, you have to make a good faith effort to keep dry feet).  Hiking blogs advised us to choose walks in the woods or by waterfalls on rainy days, and to avoid peaks and ridges. The deaths on Striding Ridge and Helvellyn I was told about happened most often in rainy, foggy weather.

Striding Ridge.

Martineau mentions the treachery of ice in winter rain along even the most simple, mundane hike to a nearby waterfall called Stockghyll Force in Ambleside: “I found that in the winter, when I scrambled a few yards over a convex mass of ice, thinly covered with snow, which completely enveloped the road. I then fell, and could by no means get up again. Every attempt to move, ended in my sliding further to the edge of the little precipice” [ii]

Stockghyll Force Watefall.

When the weather fails us (or fails our expectations, rather), it is frustrating. But perhaps even more frustrating is when our bodies fail us: when we don’t sleep well the night before and feel tired before the walk even begins, when our legs or lungs become exhausted before we want to stop, when hormones just make your body feel off and you end up thinking more about your physical discomfort than the natural beauty around you.

Looking out at the view.

Bad weather and tired  bodies: both can be reasons to not go on. The day I decided to walk in Dorothy’s footsteps up Scafell Pike with my sister was not an auspicious weather day. There are several ways to climb the ascent, but we decided to follow Dorothy’s track by starting from Seawaithe farm. Dorothy rode a cart from her friend Mary Barker’s home in Roswaithe, Borrowdale. We rode a bus from Ambleside that dropped us off in a tiny town called Seatoller and we walked a mile or so down a road that ended at Seawaithe farm. [iii] By the time we started ascending out of the valley, it was like someone had tossed a grey blanket over us and the mountain. It was cold and drizzly, with no visibility. As we climbed higher, the wind became unbearable. I laughed to myself when I remembered  Dorothy’s journal entry about this walk from 1818. Her goal had not even been Scafell—she only ended up doing this peak because the weather was so fine that day!

But how shall I speak of the peculiar deliciousness of the third prospect! At this time that was most favoured by sunshine and shade. The green Vale of Esk—deep and green, with its glittering serpent stream was below us; and on we looked to the mountains near the sea. . . We had attained the object of our journey; but our ambition mounted higher. We saw the summit of Scaw Fell, as it seemed, very near to us: we were indeed, three parts up that mountain; and thither we determined to go. . .

The Sun had never once been overshadowed by a cloud during the whole of our progress from the centre of Borrowdale; at the summit of the Pike there was not a breath of air to stir even the papers which we spread out containing our food. There we ate our dinner in summer warmth; and the stillness seemed to be not of this world . . . We certainly were singularly fortunate in the day; for when we were seated on the summit our Guide, turning his eyes thoughtfully round, said to us, “I do not know that in my whole life I was ever at any season of the year so high up on the mountains on so calm a day.” [iv]

Dorothy describes the magnificent views from Esk Haus, and how the sight of Scafell in the distance made them determined to summit that peak rather than stopping. The weather fed their ambition.

Kassie and me (left) on the summit of Esk Haus.

Not so for my hike 200 years later. When we got to Esk Haus—the original destination of Dorothy’s hike—we had to ask ourselves: how important is it that we get to the top of Scalfell? It was a good question, and I didn’t have an immediate answer. I would not see any beautiful views from the top, so that wasn’t a good reason to press on. Plus, we had been fortunate to bear witness to lots of those views earlier in the week. I had already learned that I didn’t need a peak to make my walks feel worthwhile.

A beautiful view.

In fact, I had been actively working to walk in a way that was less goal-oriented and more rambling. I wanted to revel in the small things around me; to notice the valley, not just the vista. I felt the constant pull to press on instead of sit and relax. I had been practicing going slower, choosing to sit just a bit longer before going on. But now I was faced with the question: do I go on? What would it mean to just turn back, to not reach our goal? To not walk exactly the way Dorothy had? Then I remembered that this was unexpectedly my third year in a row returning to the Lake District to walk. I knew I would be back. With a laugh, I told my sister that the peak of Esk Haus was Dorothy’s original goal, and that was good enough for me. I added my rock to the rock pile—which admittedly was my ego wanting to say “I was here, I made it this far”—but this time it was also a reminder that I only went this far, that I did not go on. I was cold and miserable, and maybe, it would be a good reason to come back.

I thought a lot about not going on as I trekked down the mountain, about all the reasons why not going on is sometimes a good choice for self-preservation and for the relationship with one’s walking partners, to remind us that nature is not answerable to us. My twinge of regret at not scaling the second peak was quickly replaced by gratitude as we dipped below the gray drizzle in the valley to calmer air and warmer temps.My tired legs could not imagine having gone longer.

A valley beneath the clouds.

If we aren’t careful, walking can become an outlet for  our cultural obsession with forward progress and achieving goals. My walks in the lake district showed me that sometimes, walking is about not going on. Turning back, sitting still, walking a circle, changing one’s mind, changing one’s route—all of these practices make walking more than forward motion. Sometimes a good hill walk means you stop. And in that stillness you might notice something new, about yourself or the landscape around you.

A slug.

[i] July 6, 1846. Letter to H.S. Tremenheere, 64 in The Collected Letters of Harriet Martineau, vol. 4, edited by Deborah Logan.

[ii] A Year at Ambleside, 81. Edited by Barbara Todd, Bookcase Publishers, 2002.

[iii] You can see a map created of Dorothy’s route by Paul Westover here.

[iv] Wordsworth, Dorothy. “Reading Text of ‘Excursion up Scawfell Pike’.” Romantic Circles Praxis Series, edited by Michelle Levy, Nicholas Mason, and Paul Westover, 2023, romantic-circles.org/editions.2022.DW.SP-reading.html.