Taking the path less travelled

On the summit of Mount Ararat in Turkey

IN my acceptance speech for my lifetime achievement award from the National Adventure Awards recently I think I may have upset some people by suggesting that Corporate Britain appears to be producing a certain type of person, those who are motived by greed, avarice and a total disregard for the natural world.

I was comparing this kind of besuited, corporate individual with the type of people in the room, those who had chosen a different course to their lives, those who had been blessed by the natural world; those who had decided to follow their dream; those who had taken the path less travelled.

"Two roads diverged in a wood, and I,

I took the one less travelled by,

And that has made all the difference."

Robert Frost

While there are those who have been successful in Corporate Britain without succumbing to the traits I've mentioned above my own experience of the corporate world is not a good one, and I think if we critically look around us we can see the effects of the greed and avarice in many strands of society that were once respected.

Politicians have probably never had a particularly good press but this current General Election campaign has clearly shown that many politicians will say anything to win temporary approval. And during the Scottish independence campaign the level of deceit and downright dishonesty from company leaders and businessmen, as well as politicians, was quite revealing.

On the morning after the referendum I soothed my disappointment in the result by escaping to the hills - to the calming balm of the natural world. It wasn't for the first time.

Some might want to accuse me of simple escapism, and that would be fair enough, but I don't see it as that. Escapism is a temporary balm, like hunkering down until the storm passes, but I escaped from what most see as a normal life many years ago - over forty years ago, just like Robert Frost, I took the path less travelled, and that made all the difference!

With Chris Townsend at the end of our traverse of the GR20 in Corsica

Forty years ago I had experienced success. I was a Scottish international long jumper; I had been a successful athlete during my schooldays and I worked and trained with some of the finest athletes in the land under the coaching of the great John Anderson and laterally Frank Dick, who went on to become one of the most respected track and field coaches in Europe.

But I was in a quandary. I knew I had to commit time and a lot of effort to my athetics training but I was being drawn in another direction. I also wanted to climb mountains.

I won't go into all the factors that introduced me to the Scottish hills - I'll leave that for the autobiography - but I knew I wanted to spend my life climbing mountains, that is the rest of my life beyond my track and field career.

In time injuries put paid to my long jumping and the transition to mountain climbing was easier that it might have been, but something else was gnawing at me.

I didn't want to sink into a nine-to-five career and only climb hills at the weekends. I wanted to carve out a career which allowed me to live close to mountains, and which would allow me to fully immerse myself in hills and wild places. I was looking for adventure and an adventurous lifestyle.

At the time I'd had several stuttering starts at a career. I had been a police officer, I had sold life insurance, I even sold weighing machines for a short period and I then went to work for the Scottish Youth Hostels Association which involed a huge drop in salary but a massive improvement in my own personal work satisfaction.

En route to Everest Base Camp in Nepal

It was during the period I began taking people to the hills; I began taking photographs and I did a little bit of writing. But the real benefit of those youth hostelling years was the opportunity to plan my own escape from "the normal" and seek my own dreams.

I was married with two young sons when I broke free. I reached a point where I thought I could make a living by combining outdoor instruction with writing and photography.

I often think I had more than my fair share of luck in those early days but there is one factor that I've discovered in life - the harder you work the luckier you become.

For a number of years my work life consisted of an early rise - about 6am, for two hours of writing before going out to teach outdoor activities at Craigower Lodge in Newtonmore. I would get home about 6pm, have some dinner with the family, then get in another two or three hours of writing. I took to the hills at every opportunity, and mostly my family came with me.

And it all worked out well. In those early days I wrote books, presented a couple of radio programmes, wrote for newspapers and then published my own outdoor magazine. I found myself instructing less and less as the writing demands took over and I couldn't write unless I had something to write about, and that was predominantly about climbing hills and wandering in wild places all over the world.

The reason I've put all this down in blog form is because over the past few months I've had a considerable number of people ask me the best way to start a career in outdoor writing, and all of these people have had a strong desire to break away from the established and accepted career progression of Corporate Britain.

Several of them have been made redundant by Corporate Britain and have decided the time is right to take the path less travelled.

In the Wadi Rum, Jordan

So what do you need? How can you succeed?

I'm not suggesting the way I did it was perfect, but I think there are several qualities that are essential, and it's been interesting during my time as chair of the judging panel for the National Adventure Awards to see many of these qualities in the young men and women who have been embarking on and enjoying some truly remarkable adventures.

• Passion. You won't succeed unless you are passionate about what you are doing. Bags of enthusiasm is a definite requirement, an enthusiasm that rubs off on others. I think this is the most important requirement of all.

• Ignore criticism. You will be hounded by doubters and critics as you head off down the path less travelled. Much of it will be well intended, but you need to ignore it. This is your dream, not theirs. This is your future, not theirs. This is your journey, and yours alone.

• Learn how to manage and take risks. I'm not suggesting you taken foolish risks but weigh up the pros and cons and make risk a lifetime companion. Occasionally the risk won't come off but you can learn from mistakes, and taking risks makes life infinitely more exciting.

• Listen to your heart. That's a romantic way of saying be aware of gut reactions. If something doesn't feel right don't ignore it. We get gut reactions for a reason and in my own career these reactions have saved me from what may have been some very bad business decisions.

• Give the outdoors priority. I've known too many folk who have become outdoor writers or photographgers and become so bogged down with work they forget all about the hills. The outdoor work is your stimulant, your motivation, your inspiration, your nurse and your friend. Without that relationship you may as well write about politics or women's fashion.

Over the past decade or so I've become very aware that society has a tendency to shoehorn everyone in the same direction - school, university, a career, retirement, death. It's all very respectable and well meaning and probably suits most but for many people it's anything but fulfilling.

To those folk I would say don't be afraid to be different! Head off down that less travelled path and see where it brings you. Let life be an ongoing exploration and an adventure, choosing your own route and your own ultimate destination. To lie on your deathbed wondering what life has all been about must be such a depressing prospect.

And today there are dark forces at work, forces that have removed any form of security from jobs, forces that have removed respect and loyalty from employer/employee relationships, forces that encourage profit before anything else. I don't see things improving in the short term and that's why I'm pleased to be my own boss, doing a job I adore.

I sometimes think the old Nike slogan was written for me - Just Do It! Perhaps it was written for you too?

At home on the Scottish hills. On A'Mhaighdean in Wester Ross