The Shepherd's Life by James Rebanks Page B

only ever once climbed a mountain for leisure with my parents. We went for a picnic, and a gust of wind blew away the paper plates my mother had brought. Dad hadn’t wanted to do the picnic anyway; they had a minor row, and we retreated back to the farm. Fell walkers we weren’t.
    Wainwright created a series of hand-drawn and hand-written guides for walkers that explain each of the mountains of the Lake District. Originally these were produced and self-published as a hobby, but they became a cult classic in Britain and beyond, selling millions of copies. Each guide gives the reader an overview of the landscape, a series of views, some navigation advice on what can be seen from the summits, and accounts of the “natural features,” “ascents,” “summit,” and “the view.” Wainwright became a TV celebrity—the Old Man of the Fells. He empowered millions of people to take to the footpaths and climb the mountains. He created a new way of experiencing the Lake District—with people now ticking off the fells he wrote about—“doing the Wainwrights.” They are beautiful, thoughtful little books and exert a powerful hold on how other people see our landscape.
    So I was looking down at the landscape farmed by my father’s friends, and cross-checking it against the guide. It struck me powerfully that there was scarcely a trace of any of the things we cared about in what Wainwright had written. Apart from the odd dot on the map for a farm or a wall, none of our world was in those pages. I am wondering whether the people on that mountain see the working side of that landscape, and whether it matters. In my bones I feel it does matter. That seeing, understanding, and respecting people in their own landscape is crucial to their culture and way of life being valued and sustained. What you don’t see, you don’t care about.
    It is a curious thing to slowly discover that your landscape is beloved of other people. It is even more curious, and a little unsettling, when you discover by stages that you as a native are not really part of the story and meaning they attach to that place. There are never any tourists here when it is raining sideways or snowing in winter, so it is tempting to see it as a fair-weather love. Our relationship with the landscape is about being there through it all. To me the difference is like the distinction between what you felt for a pretty girl you knew in your youth, and the love you feel for your wife after many years of marriage. Most unsettling of all to me was the discovery that people who thought about this place in this way outnumbered us by many hundreds to one. I found that threatening to our very existence in an age when we increasingly had to do what we were told by politicians and the general public, but no one else seemed much concerned. I told my dad it was weird that none of these book people were much interested in what we did. His response was,
    â€œDon’t tell them—they’d only ruin it.”

 
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    We are on the tarmac waiting for school to begin. We are bored, so are kicking one another or our schoolbags. Some girl starts yelling at one of the lads. He has drunk out of the water fountain and she’s yelling that he’ll die if he drinks that. She says it is radioactive. We all stare at her like she is crazy. She is one of the smart kids that will soon leave for the local grammar school and we enjoy winding them up. Chernobyl had blown up a day or two before and according to this girl its radioactive waste was heading our way in the clouds.
    The lad at the water fountain looked a bit shocked at being screamed at. Then he smiled wickedly and drank some more of the water. She shouted at him, telling him he was stupid, that the clouds were spewing out radioactivity. Then we all ran around in the rain with our mouths open and our arms wide-open like sycamore seeds, filling our mouths with rain. She declared