When I lived down south I used to walk out in the hills and rarely met anyone if I went early and stayed away from the more popular routes. I liked to be able to walk for long stretches without having to be polite or dodge a hyperactive dog or smell the awful perfume some of the walkers inflicted on their poor bodies.
It was far enough away from a big town to put off the usual hippy party-goers - the ones who think an eight kilowatt soundsystem and some mass-produced laboratory chemicals can get them "back to nature". And the less organised alcoholics hadn't left too many beerbottles and dirty underpants around. So when I saw a bender up ahead and a man squatting at its entrance I was surprised, and a little apprehensive. Was this the start of some hippy commune? Would the place be overrun with little kids who all wanted a playhouse made out of ten trees, and DIY Daddies keen to prove their manhood with an axe and a saw? I feared the worst.
Beside the stranger was a sign, "If you've come for counselling piss off, if you've come for a chat, welcome!"
He'd been scribbling in a notebook, absorbed in what he was writing, but as soon as he saw me he put the pad down, smiled and asked if I'd like a cup of tea. Of course I did! I picked up some twigs and added them to the fire and he put the pan of water on to boil. We had a nice chat about this and that and I smelt pleasantly of woodsmoke when I got home and back to bed. Thank god he was on his own and was happy with a small bender, a small fire and a small imprint on the place I'd come to love on my regular walks.
I visited him every time I went walking up there, glad of the company, the tea and the fire. Sometimes we talked and sometimes we gazed silently into the crackling flames, losing ourselves a while. A man can lose himself entirely in a good fire and like a phoenix, arise a fresh being.
"It's nice and quiet here," I said. "Have you always lived in these kind of places?"
"No. I've lived in all kinds of places."
"What made you come here then?"
"My brother lives in the valley. I can get a bath there and use his address to sign on."
"Yes, but why do you live here and not in your brothers house? What made you come here?"
"Oh, it's a long story."
I looked at him eagerly.
"Do you like stories?" he laughed at my expression.
I nodded.
"Well, once upon a time...
"I'd always tried to keep between the lines. Tried hard to please my parents. Had done all the right things, studied hard at school and college, got married at a sensible age, got a mortgage, kids, a business...But no matter how hard I worked, or how much I tried to do the right thing, I ended up hugely in debt and desparately trying to keep the business going. The wife got fed-up of me working from eight to eight, having to bring up the kids on her own. She wanted a car of her own, said she sick of having to worry about money all the time. Eventually she left and took the kids. Told me she'd leave me the car.
I kept working though, thought if I could just keep going it'd work out. The creditors were circling, about to close in on me. Life was a slog, a hard, no-pleasure existence and it crossed my mind that I'd be better off dead. So I came home one day to my empty house and wrote a note:
"You can't summon me without an address. As of now I have no address."
I left the house keys on the table and walked away.
For some reason, somewhere in the back of my mind, I'd always wanted to go to Australia, so I went there. One day in the city a few Aborigines came up to me and said the local off-license refused to serve them and asked if I'd get them some drink if they gave me the money. After I got the drink they asked if I wanted come help them drink it. We're just going out somewhere nice to drink, why don't you come? Sure, he thought, why not?
I stayed with them for six months in the outback, learning things I never thought could be learnt."
He paused for a moment.
"When I came back to England it seemed the most natural thing to find a mountain to live on, where I could write some poetry and live in peace. Let the mad world outside the mountain get on with it." He reached over for his notebook. "Would you like to hear one?"
Oh no! Not poetry, I thought. This is going to be excruciating.
"Em, ok."
But his poems were unlike anything I'd ever heard before. They were amazing.
He had them scribbled in lots of different notebooks, but seemed to know where everything was. "That reminds me," he would say, and he'd pull out he exact poem he was looking for from the chaotic mess in the bender.
I visited him a bit over the months and enjoyed the chat and tea. Once a week he signed on in the local town and went to his brothers house for a bath and a shave. Sometimes we'd meet down there and go for a munch in the local cafe.
"So you're not surviving on your own merits up there." I teased him about claiming the dole.
He put his cup down and stared hard at me. "All the food is locked away from me. And there's not enough to hunt or find on the mountains, so what am I supposed to do? The way I see it, by taking the dole I'm taking back some of the food that's been locked away from me."
He sighed. "In the outback we survived fine. Imagine! In the middle of a desert, we could find lots of food and live quite well. Here, there's practically nothing. There's hardly any animals, birds, plants to eat - certainly not enough to live on. If I could, I'd be living the way we did in the bush, but til then I'll just take back some of what's been stolen from me."
"Ok," I said, "I see what you mean."
"I hope you do," he smiled, "I hope you do."
We finished our tea and walked back to his mountain lair. The sun was setting and we sat for a long time listening to the crickets sing the sun-down song.