Parity? What parity?

I'm fed up. This week appears to have been defined by the latent sexism that oozes from the outdoor world. I feel patronised, I feel voiceless and most of all I feel angry that in 2019, these attitudes still permeate our society.

Let's just create some background: 

I have been going into the hills since I was 2 weeks old, at 2 months I was taken for my first camping trip. Every time the weather was OK, I was taken into the Scottish hills. When I was too small to walk all the way, I was carried, as I got older I learned to find a rhythm and to tuck right in behind my father. Every summer holiday involved 'wild' camping (I hate that term - it's called 'camping'). I have seen, and stayed in, numerous bothies, I have cycled into remote places to climb Munros and Corbetts. I grew up passing the time in a tent crawling over maps, and I can still sit for an hour enthralled by every name, every contour, every possible route, that I can see. I was taught to do an ice axe arrest so long ago, that I can't remember when it was. I didn't have crampons but was taught how to use my boots properly in snow and how to cut steps if I had to. Someone must have taught me to navigate, but that too is lost in the mists of time.

There was, of course, a teenage rebellion, but in my 20s, that love of the hill returned, even if time and my job stopped me doing all the things that I might have wished. In my late 20s I took up sea kayaking, became a coach and a sea kayak leader. I have paddled over the Pentland Firth (twice), I have landed on Muckle Flugga. I have paddled though big seas and tide races, been involved in quite serious situations. I used to be in my boat four times a week in summer. I started climbing in my early 30s, on Orkney sea cliffs, on grit, in the Lakes, in the Dales, in Wales, in the Highlands and in Spain. I've winter climbed in Scotland, stayed in the CIC and been on the Ben in a whiteout. I have witnessed terrible things when climbing, that no-one should ever have to see and I have become indelibly marked by those experiences.

I cycle-toured from South Uist to North Uist with my parents at the age of 8, more recently I have undertaken solo bikepacking trips in Border Country and in the Highlands. I've been with friends on long distance trips through the Lakes, Dumfries and Galloway, and North Wales and Anglesey and I cycled the Way of the Roses in two days with my club. Not to mention, the long distance day rides and cycling trip to Mallorca.

A few years ago, I became entranced by mountain running, moving fast and light through the hills, being away from the cars, the noise, from social media and real life. At first I tentatively ventured out onto the moors, clutching my map, just in case, but soon, I knew every inch of that place, every stone, every stride pattern, as I weaved through the gravel and stones. The hills I ran got bigger and although major injury got in the way, these environments were not new and I realised that all my preexisting experience was valid, it was merely being applied in a different way.

In another walk of life, I am a researcher, I hold a high level research degree (PhD), I am trained to think critically, to take in multiple strands of information and to pick and choose which bits of that information are relevant. I have presented my work at international conferences, published in international journals. I spent most of the first 11 years of my career working outside. I know how to make decisions and to justify those decisions. This thought process applies equally to academic research and to decision making in the mountains or in a sea kayak. 

I am sure there are many other things that I have done that I have forgotten about, but in short, what I am trying to get across is that even though I am female, I did not just come up the Clyde on a bike. I have experienced numerous things that you probably know nothing about and I am absolutely fed up of being patronised, by men, with regards to what I do in the outdoors. I am sick of the presumption that I must be clueless, merely because I have a vagina. 

This week, yet again, I have had 'well done' because I posted some pictures of a mountain run - what's 'well done' about that? I used a map, planned a route and went out and did it. I took some pictures because it was, at times, picturesque. I haven't achieved anything special, there was no major race involved, or a major goal set out. Would you say 'well done' to a man? No, you would say 'looks like a great day out', 'I really like it round there', 'Have you been to X place nearby?'. So next time, think about why you are saying 'well done'. First imagine that the poster is male and if you think it would be weird or patronising to say 'well done' to a man, then don't say it to me.

Then of course, there was the outdoor clothing question. I want something to wear for mountain running when it is a bit mizzly/drizzly/windy that will still breath well under my shell because I want to avoid putting my shell on early and then getting cold because I don't want to take it off/it takes ages to faff about/I can't find shelter to put extra layers on. I want to start with a (somewhat) water repellent layer and put my shell on much later in the day. Makes perfect sense to me. But no, I obviously didn't know what I was asking. What I wanted was a unicorn. I really should buy this brand. I still really didn't know what I was asking and the piece de resistance - an essay on what one man wears, what he carries, when he puts x garment on, when he takes y garment off. 

Well chaps, I hope you realise you made me feel like utter crap during that whole thread. You did not listen to what I was saying, I had to explain and explain and explain again what I was asking, even though it was perfectly eloquently outlined in the beginning. You did not credit me with the intelligence to know what I was asking  for and why I was asking (if you must know it was because I had become very cold on a mountain run and I had gone away and analysed what might have improved the situation, you know, using that big analytical brain that I have...). You did not ASK me what I am wearing to run in at the moment, why I felt I needed this other layer, instead, you talked down to me and told me things that, strangely enough, I already know. I don't need to be told your synthetic down is only for emergencies, or that you have a bivvy bag. What the hell do you think I carry? Washing up liquid and some marigolds, just in case there is a washing up opportunity en route? And if I say I am NOT interested in a particular brand, do not continue by bullying me and telling me over and over that I am wrong. Accept my decision. Do not presume that I don't know what I am talking about, instead, listen to me say 'I am not interested' and leave it at that.

There have been other exchanges this week that cumulatively have just left me feeling drained. It is as if it does not matter what I say, or what experiences I have had, my voice just does not get heard. I feel like I am shouting but no one is listening. My opinion on something related to the outdoors, more often than not, is simply not considered valid. Time and time again, a man has to have the last word, has to assume that he knows better.

I also feel obliged to make it clear (before the chorus starts) that not every man into the outdoors is patronising and condescending, but there are far too many who are, and far too many who may believe that they are not, but who need to think more deeply about their attitudes to women who share similar interests. Would you 'take the missus wild camping' or would you 'go wild camping with my partner'? Better still, would you let your girlfriend take the lead on a trip because you are happy to acknowledge that she knows more about whatever you are doing than you do?

Sexism has been present throughout entire my life and I am tired of battling with it, tired of trying to be heard. I am an immensely capable person, with tons of life experience, good and bad. Stop assuming you know more than me. Stop treating me like my opinions are invalid. Forget about my sex and treat me like the equal that, at the very least, I quite obviously am.

New Year

It's 2019 and I am supposed to be full of hopes and dreams, to leave behind the past and start afresh. But I don't feel like that at all. Yesterday was Monday and today is Tuesday. That's it.

The end of 2017 and 2018 were without question the worst times in my life. To lose my mother so suddenly and to have no time with her before she died was already very hard, particularly as she died the day I was supposed to move hundreds of miles south, but to witness what I saw when Pete died and to deal with the aftermath, just decimated my life. I don't think those who haven't gone through a similar experience can ever understand what it is like to be escorted off a hillside and taken, in the very midst of your hurt and anguish, to speak to the police. Hours of procedure and questions, your belongings separated out from their's when in life, it didn't matter whose carabiner was who's. Everything they owned being taken away and you finding yourself without transport, with a dog, in a climbing hut sometime around 1am. I drank the beer he had left behind and then I cried myself to sleep.

This December, I finally started to grieve for my mother again. I remembered her making a trifle and me whipping the cream and doing the decoration on the top. I would try to get her to put less custard on and then when we ate it, I would eat round it and give it to her to finish. She found Christmas stressful and as someone plagued by low self-esteem and anxiety, she lacked motivation to cook and bake. She thought everything she made was rubbish but her baking was fine. Every year she would make a Christmas cake, although often it became a New Year Cake. It was like some kind of science experiment as hats went on and paper came off throughout the six hours it took to cook.

Recently, there are things I think of and I know my mother would know the answer. I thought of her looking at a map the other day and looking up where I had been. I have been many, many places in the British Isles, but my mother had this amazing ability to have already have been there before. Even when Pete and I went to Kilarney, she had a somewhat comedic story ready about the time she went up a mountain there sometime in the 1960s.

So as a new year begins, I feel no further forward than I was before. I still miss Pete everyday and I can't describe how I feel as anything less than crushed and broken hearted. I wish I didn't feel this way, but I will never forget seeing him fall backwards from that ledge. But as that grief persists, it also lessons and slowly I have the chance to deal with losing my mother, something that was also very sudden, although I remember knowing inside that she wasn't going to survive. Slowly, I have found myself thinking of her again, the strangest things reminding me of her.

I start this new year grieving for two people but also grieving in advance for the loss of my father. I have not said a great deal about it publicly but he is dying and soon there will only be me left. I don't know how long he has left, but his cancer is not being treated and it is when things seem to be ticking along that he suddenly ends up in hospital needing blood transfusions again. Given his underlying serious chest condition, I doubt the prognosis is good, although it is hard to know anything when I am stuck in Bicester and he is in Inverness.

Through all of this, my means of escape has been to go to the Lakes, North Wales or the Peak, to ride my bike, to run or climb. It is all escapism. I made the wrong decision when I moved here and although the people are all lovely, it is not where I want to be. I want to buy a house up north, but I feel stuck in limbo as I wait to see what happens with my dad.

None of this is very cheery or positive, but it is the reality of my life. I keep going and I keep doing all the things that I want to do, or that I wished I had had the chance to do with Pete, but away from the sunny pictures and the upbeat facebook posts, reality is very different. Sometimes, I don't know how I'm still standing. If you had told me in the moment, that Pete was dead, I think I probably would have jumped after him. I'm glad I didn't and I feel more resilient that I have in years, but life is still hard.

For 2019, I want to do more of what I want to do, to run my ultra without injury or incident, to climb without the awful things I have seen impacting me on every route, to ride my bike from Cornwall to home. I want to achieve things with my work and carve out a niche for myself, I want to find a way of living, at least part-time, in Kendal or Lancaster and I want to meet someone who will love me for me, battle scars and all. I think more than anything, by the end of 2019, I hope my life is no longer defined purely by my grief.