CHRISTIAN VIEWPOINT: Tale of children lost in the Cairngorms has spiritual connection
I Don’t Do Mountains is a new children’s book by Inverness author Barbara Henderson. It’s a pacey adventure about four P7 children (and Drookit the dog) told in the words of one of them, young Kenzie. They’re lost in the Cairngorms after their mountain guide disappears, and then they stumble on the scene of a crime and its ruthless perpetrators.
The ‘Author’s Note’ at the end of the book begins with a quote from the Bible: “I lift up my eyes to the mountains - where does my help come from?” This was exactly what Barbara’s desperate, but resourceful characters were thinking.
She was commissioned to write I Don’t Do Mountains by the Scottish Mountaineering Press, probably in the hope that children who are convinced that mountain climbing is not for them might be challenged to give the heights a go.
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There are gentler moments in this beautifully produced and illustrated book when the kids learn a little about mountain ecology and folklore, and witness for themselves the wild loveliness of the high places. ‘It is as if the whole world has been touched by golden magic,’ gasps Kenzie at one point.
• PICTURES: Author’s World Book Day visit to primary school
It strikes me that what Barbara is doing in this book - telling a story which invites readers to open their eyes to new ways of seeing the world - is very similar to what I often do in this column. I share stories of people - myself and others - who have a sense of God in their lives and who are exploring the challenging mountain-climb of faith.
I write not just to encourage fellow spiritual mountaineers, but also to help those who ‘don’t do God’ to understand more of what following Jesus involves, the loveliness and mystery of Christian faith, and those days when the mist rises and it seems as if the whole cosmos has been ‘touched by golden magic’.
As a result of their encounter with evil in the Eden of the wilderness, Kenzie and her friends learn and grow - in self-knowledge, empathy, resilience, mutual dependence, appreciation of nature. And it seems to me that these are spiritual qualities. In climbing literal hills aren’t the kids also spiritual mountaineers? For isn’t all growth, every good thing, a gift from God even before our heart catches sight of its source?
‘Where does my help come from?’ The very next Bible verse reads: “My help comes from the Lord, the Maker of heaven and earth.” When we’re struggling, when the mountains we face threaten to overwhelm us, and the things we rely on fail, and Eden seems forever lost, our faith summons us to rely on the unquenchable Source.
Barbara signed my copy of I Don’t Do Mountains. “To John,” she wrote. “Always look up!”
