Mountain Huts and the Slipperiness of Joy

At the time I couldn't work out what to write about climbing Mount Mulanje. It felt like something profound and beautiful had occurred, something worth writing about, but I wasn't really sure what it was. I realised today [last Friday] that I knew what it was all along - it just didn't seem 'deep' enough to write about.

It was this: sitting around in sleeping bags on a wooden porch, drinking sugarless tea and eating plain rice out of a big pot, exhausted and excited, with friends.It was the feeling of walking a long, hard day together, and then sitting down together to breathe, and be tired together, and laugh, and listen to arty acoustic music off someone's ipod. There is honestly no more beautiful thing than to be able to relax with people you love.

But here's the thing - I'd been trying to relax with people I love for years - a hundred days and nights and a hundred different parties. But rarely, maybe never, has it felt like those evenings in the mountain huts. And I reckon it's because that experience - the real peace of friendship - is one of those frustrating slippery things that disappears when we look for it, but seems to turn up unexpectedly when we're concentrating on something else. At parties, or going out, I've always been so intent on having a good time that something inside me is tense. I'm so keen to enjoy my friend's company that I can't just be with them and love it for what it is.

But on the mountain, it was different. We were there to climb a mountain. And it had been a hard and beautiful day and tomorrow was going to be harder and more beautiful, but in between there was this incredible, wild-flower growth of gentle, unshakeable, love. We were truly comfortable in each other's company. We could talk about nothing at all or the meaning of the whole universe and in a way in made no difference. Because whether we were spooning for warmth or shivering outside with someone having a fag, we were together. And it was good.

And the happy ending is that I found this again recently. The other week I was helping to run a kids' camp thing with some mates from various churches all over the country (cool, non-posh bits like Wigan and Sunderland). And it was properly exhausting. But the snatched moments, after the kids had gone to bed, or in the kitchen, or when we were really supposed to be working - the stumbled upon minutes of delightful togetherness - were just beautiful. I love those people, and I love them so much better because we have done good, hard work together year after year. I trust them. I enjoy them. I laugh at them. It's friendship how I reckon it was built to be, and it's epic.