The mountains and the mist
on climbing high and feeling low
It has returned slowly, like a mist rolling in over the hills.
It was noticeable in May and then in June I got ill—a few days of sneezing cold, followed by 2 weeks of fatigue and fog. I visited the doctor and he told me there was a 3-week virus doing the rounds and noted it was strange that it was doing so in June. He’d had it himself and apologised for not having any answers beyond that.
I told him my asthma had also flared up after the virus and was greeted with the familiar blue and brown inhalers. I mentioned fatigue and told him that although it had been worse recently, I’d experienced life-sapping fatigue on and off, since the pandemic, since the burnout and the depression. He told me to come back if that didn’t go away.
After a busy few months, I decided I needed time away and headed for the mountains. This time, south Snowdonia, staying near the Nantcol waterfalls. The waterfalls were also 10 minutes from the base of the Rhinogydd mountains, which had been recommended to me as beautiful yet rugged and off the beaten track.
My energy was strained packing to go away, things requiring more work than usual, a constant ache of effort. But the campsite was serene and serenaded by the tumbling river washing its way through. The first day I found myself worrying about various things, from work, to relationships, to my future and everything in between. I couldn’t stop flitting between problems, trying to find the redemptive facts, even though there were no obvious problems to solve at this time.
I took an easy day exploring and got an early night. After 9 hours of unexpectedly good sleep, and waking up to the sound of a running river, I felt no better. By midday, the anxiety was non-stop and I was starting to feel panicky: a sense of impending doom and terror, of being overwhelmed. At this point, an alarm bell went off and I pulled up and asked: what the fuck is going on?
I could feel a sphere of panic in my chest and saw how the topics of my concern were no longer relevant. The sphere latched onto anything. The judgements were terminal in all directions. After an embarrassingly long period of fighting this, of trying to get a toehold, I realised: this is anxiety. Anxiety of this kind used to be a regular occurrence when I was struggling with panic attacks and the generalised ruin they leave in their wake.
Back then it was familiar: a sense of worrying about individual things, and a slowly escalating sense of doom, covering its tracks and keeping me facing outwards. It would flourish into the intensity of a bad trip or a crushing comedown, and I’d be swallowed up by a distinct sense that I was about to lose my mind.
At the time, I explored many ways of dealing with this. ACT, CBT and traditional therapy. They all played a role in calling anxiety’s bluff, but it was a book that gave me the day-to-day tool I used the most: Dare by Barry McDonagh. Rather than promoting anxiety management, the book offered a simple method to challenge and embrace anxiety. It felt facile when I first learned it, but with each repetition, it seemed to grow in power. Sometimes, a few minutes of repeating the pointers would diminish the anxiety by 70 or 80%. It would feel like getting my mind back. I religiously used this 4-step process of defusing, accepting, embracing and re-engaging for years. I have a clear memory of reading the book early in my recovery and emphatically telling my ex: “The next time I’m struggling with anxiety, make me read this book again.”
After the major panic disorder subsided, it was less frequently required, but the pointers still automatically surfaced once or twice a month when anxiety spiked: whether through overload, alcohol or too much caffeine. I hadn’t stepped through the process properly in some time, but the sequences of pointers were still there, to my surprise, if a little rusty around the edges.
This bout of anxiety was fierce. Perhaps the worst flare-up in 5 or so years. It took patience and persistence. I listened to the audiobook version of Dare that I’d bought and downloaded years ago for just such a moment. It settled and grounded me. Once I correctly identified the enemy and stopped getting lost in its distractions, I was able to land on solid ground.
My other book choice whilst this was all unfolding was appallingly unhelpful: Cormac McCarthy’s Blood Meridian, a tale of a young boy who joins a roving group of scalpers in the American South during the mid-1800s. It is a brilliant and bleak novel, horrifically violent and existentially draining. I was relieved to finish it on Day 3. Some of the images took much longer to fade.
The next day was the first mountain-appropriate day, wind and rain receding, and it was like being reborn: the background static had disappeared and I couldn't believe—only 12 hours ago—how awful I’d felt. It seemed like a bad dream: like I’d been in another dimension. In its absence, it was hard to see how it would ever return.
I drove down a narrow lane through the Cwm Nantcol valley to park at a farm (“give the farmer £3”) and started ascending Rhinog Fawr. There was not much of a path but the walls streaming across the mountainside offered some consistency of direction.
It was a steep climb with some scrambling required. The mountain teased a summit several times before revealing another incline, but I finally got to the top and felt exhilarated to be up high, with views down to Harlech Beach and across the Irish Sea. It was warm and clear, mirroring my internal state.
On top of Fawr I followed my route and came to a deep gulley. Peering down, I caught sight of the prescribed descent and responded with “fucking hell.” There was no path but instead a sharp scramble through granite boulders, some small, some car-sized. It was more technical than anything I’d done to date, but satisfying once I got into the flow. Full concentration, full body engagement. Moving like a crab with hands and legs working in tandem, shimmying, stepping and pausing to sight a way down that wouldn’t drop me into the wrong valley.
After reaching the bottom and crossing a boggy valley, I started the next ascent onto a plateau that would afford me a slightly tamer route up Rhinog Fach. Whilst filtering some water I spotted another person, after 3 hours of solitude. I greeted him happily but he seemed put out.
He’d done the same route as me, moved over the next mountain but then lost his way. “I couldn't find any way through” he repeated several times. This sounded strange knowing how open the base of the mountains were but he seemed defeated. “I tried for an hour to find my path down and then gave up. I’m heading back the way I came. Better safe than sorry.” I offered help but he was set on this course of cation. I told him my plans and he looked at me blankly.
Suitably shaken up, I reconsidered my own route. I knew I was descending from a different mountain than him, so I wasn’t as concerned about finding a way down. However, it was getting hot and the first summit/descent had been long and taxing. The original plan was to repeat all of that twice over, first with Rhinog Fach and then Y Llethr afterwards...
Sensing my wavering, Rhinog Fach stared down, looking steep and impenetrable. I decided to skip its summit, scrambling its lower slopes, crossing over the rippling lake of Llyn Hywel and finally joining the lung-busting path up to Y Llethr. From Y Llethr the route home was comically simple. A gentle, straight decline on grass, following a wall all the way down. Every path is a treat in the Rhinogs.
I went back a couple of days later with a friend and we took a slightly different route, before joining the same climb up Y Llethr. Struggling to speak, we paused on the steep climb. I found a soft, mossy seat and looked out over the lake.
The wind dropped away and there was a beguiling silence. The view, the presence, was hypnotising. How can such an enormous presence coexist with such stillness? We could hear every squeak a bird made 200 metres in the distance, alongside intermittent petrol grumbles from a tractor, miles away and hundreds of metres below. We sat in silence for some time and I had a literal peak experience.
The rest of the trip was uneventful but restorative—more mountains; kinder books. I felt refreshed, but shortly after getting home, I felt it again.
Beyond the short, sharp attacks of anxiety, a deeper malaise: low energy, low mood. Cynicism, defeat and internal collapse in the simplest of situations. It’s a regular companion now. It was subtle at first. But reflecting back, it’s been moving in for a couple of months, like a thick mist blanketing a valley. It doesn’t feel subtle anymore.
Each day is different and unpredictable. I’m still working part-time, and still get energy from writing, coaching and consultancy. In fact, coaching has picked up some momentum in the last month and working with others is rewarding and energising.
The fatigue is strange. It’s not tiredness or physical limitation. Clearly, I’m still able to climb mountains. I still get to hot yoga regularly, which is no walk in the park either. The fatigue is a holistic attack on vitality and volition, and it seems to come and go at random. A free day of no responsibilities can easily careen into exhaustion and resignation, accompanied by a part-physical, part-psychological congestion that I feel most obviously in my chest. Sometimes there is a line-of-sight into unhelpful ways of thinking that inflame things and I can partially untangle myself. But other times, it’s debilitation without reason.
Outside of the day-to-day, there have been other exotic, self-inflicted influences: some illuminating IFS (Internal Family Systems) work and continued TRE (Trauma/Tension Release Exercises) with a skilled facilitator. I consciously doubled down on that work with spiritual aims over the last few months, and it crescendoed into unfamiliar and difficult territory. Conversely, there are also regular glimpses of freedom and release in meditation, which make the daily struggles seem like a distant joke.
I told my therapist recently that there are so many things I want to do and that I just don’t have the energy. The spark to create and share is still there, but it meets some terminal, internal congestion and I feel flattened. Guilt is another companion. I've taken time off, I've done the right things. I've had enough time off. This isn't supposed to be happening.
But there is a desire for intimacy with whatever this is. I don’t want to go to war. I recognise it this time. I know this place. In the admission, there is a sense of release and the practical benefit of keeping it in view. I’ve named it early and started mentioning it to people. It creates a more awkward answer to “How are you doing?” but that question has to earn its keep once in a while.
For now, it’s just a part of my outfit; some days, an outrageous wedding hat that I cannot ignore, other days a cufflink that I only glimpse once. Some days it feels like making something of nothing—maybe it’s just a short-term slump? Other days it’s like I’m living in another world and everything has to change to get by.
What is helping at the moment? Reading, obsessively. You can follow me on Goodreads where I’ve been reviewing what I’m reading. I’ve read 20 books in the last 2.5 months and spend 2 or 3 hours reading every day. Some favourite recent reads are The Great Divorce by C S Lewis, Enduring Love by Ian McEwan and Underland by Robert Macfarlane.
Walking and being outside always helps and it’s a good time to be outside. I’ll be back in the mountains soon. I will also be going back to the doctor. Some of these symptoms are familiar from previous troughs in wellbeing but the fatigue is so physical and unpredictable that I wonder if there’s not something else at play. There’s no shortage of speculative diagnoses available.
How did this happen? Did I take on too much? Am I still just ill? Is this just burnout resurfacing? Why did the anxiety arrive just then? Is depression going to just rock up randomly from now on? What if I have no say in it? Am I just slipping into a swamp of my own making? Could I have done anything to stop it? What can I do now? What happens next?
These and lots of other questions are the ones I’ve put down for now. They promise some release but too easily fuel the very process they promise to solve. What makes anxiety or depressive feelings difficult is they seem to demand an answer or prescribe an action. They whisper that something is fundamentally wrong and implore you to respond from the worst possible place.
It’s futile to fight those feelings but you can count on more distress if you let them coax you into a premature answer. Because outside of the suffocating moods, life continues. Things are often, actually, quite ok and in glimmers and glimpses, this shines through. Other times, the mist occludes the mountain in toto, and you must move without bearing, with no sense of a way forward.
But however it feels—and with or without vision—the mountain abides and outlasts: its silent immensity untroubled by the mist.
This is courageously open and the hikes look amazing. Wish you all the best Dan.
Dan- I particularly love your insight on volition versus physical limitations in the context of fatigue. Journeying through the story with your climb makes the piece all the deeper. I appreciate you sharing it. Hope you’re well this week? Cheers, -Thalia