We generally focus on the exploits of those getting out to the crags or into the hills, but what if you can't? Fell runner Norman Hadley spares a thought for people facing a long enforced separation.

I write this for the exiles: those who hear the mountains calling but are prevented, for many reasons, from answering. Perhaps illness or injury are keeping you grounded; or maybe the demands of life are simply getting in the way? Whatever the cause, the sense of loss and separation can be acute, going well beyond simple FOMO.

Is the word "exile" perhaps a little melodramatic? I don't think so; in my defence, I've appropriated it (a fancy word for "stolen") from a notably phlegmatic source. Go to your bookshelf and creak open Book One of the Gospel According to Wainwright. Right there, in the first paragraph, he declares:

"All who truly love Lakeland are exiles when away from it"

I'm sure similar sentiments could be expressed about the Highlands, Eryri or the Peak. Think of the depth of feeling when WH Murray returns to Glen Coe after his long incarceration as a prisoner of war. These places we love don't merely get under the skin; they become absorbed deep into our bone-marrow. When we are hauled away from them, they "call insistently across a gulf of distance." That's Wainwright again.

Exile takes many forms

Unless we have the good fortune to live at the very foot of a mountain, or make our trade in them, there are likely to be many periods of exile in a typical lifetime.

I like to think that every trip I've made into the hills has been in preparation for this moment: to squeeze so much out of the active years that I can hang up my shoes without regret

There may be long years of child rearing, when exhausting domestic responsibilities outweigh all other considerations. Later, we may be overwhelmed by elder care. In the gaps between, we may have demanding careers or home renovation projects that keep us away from the high places. We may even suffer the misfortune of living Down South.

The oddest exiles of all were the Covid lockdowns: experiences hopefully never to be repeated. At least these proved brief, and there was a strong, shared sense of looking out for each other and the mountain rescue volunteers in our collective will to stay at home. The Lakeland fells can be glimpsed from within twenty minutes' walk of my house, so the lure of the horizon was strong in those housebound days, when an hour-long exercise sortie was all we were permitted. Already, those times feel so alien they could be from some sepia-tinted Pathé newsreel.

And above all these hover the twin vultures of injury and illness. Allow me to quietly pause, raising a glass to friends who have suffered grievous setbacks from long covid, from chronic pain, and that other "c" - the big one. Of the three, long covid has been perhaps the hardest to witness, because I've seen it strike friends down far younger than is reasonable to face life-changing health problems.

The author confesses an interest

At the time of writing, I am temporarily benched myself. At least, I hope it is only temporary. I am recovering from abdominal surgery and it seems prudent to allow everything to knit and purl together before subjecting myself to anything strenuous. But being cut open and having people rummage around inside your body opens the imagination to the possibility this could be something more final. There's a chance this could be a red card, and my hill-going could be at or near its end.

Which raises the question of whether to accept the referee's verdict with good grace, or summon some of Dylan Thomas' rage against the fading of the light. I reflect on a time when I thought my knees were completely shot. Years of winter climbing had mashed them to pulp, then I'd suddenly stopped when we started a family, so I'd lost muscle condition. When I started tentatively heading back into the hills, the pain was excruciating, so I was convinced it was Game Over. This was nearly a quarter of a century ago, so you could argue: I bounced back then, why not now? Or you could say: I bounced back then, but I'm now nearly twenty-five years less bounceable.

If this is indeed how my cookie is crumbling, I like to think that every trip I've made into the hills has been in preparation for this moment: to squeeze so much out of the active years that I can hang up my running shoes without regret. Maybe I could see out my days sprawling in a pile of old photographs with wide-eyed grandchildren listening to the same death-defying stories on repeat. In the wider sense, everything is leading up to the longest exile of all…the Exile That Can Only Be Euphemistically Alluded To In Capital Letters.

I have it planned. Not the date, obviously, but I know the grid reference. I find it comforting to know where I'll be a thousand years from now. Naturally, it will be a scattering of ashes in the hills: an exile no more.

Again, I can cite Wainwright as precedent. I once rose early for a glorious sunrise trot round the Buttermere horseshoe, rousing a wild-camper at Innominate Tarn.

"I hope you're respecting any pieces of grit you find," I said.

He understood the reference immediately and gestured to a votive candle perched on a rock in the still waters. "I lit that for him last night." The word "him" floated through the early-morning air, almost carrying a capital H.

Finitude is your friend

So here's a plot twist clunkier than anything executed by M. Night Shyamalan himself: it turns out this article isn't for the exiles so much as those among you with no excuse not to get out. Today. OK, at the weekend. Even if, perhaps especially if, the weather is sub-par.

I had an epiphany a few years ago, reading that a typical human lifespan amounts to a thousand months. When you notice that considerably more than half of those are gone, it rather concentrates the mind. How many more full moons does that equate to? How many of those will be obscured by scudding clouds? When the tempus starts fugiting, you have to really carpe the hell out of the diem. I don't know if that Confucius fella was a hillwalker, but he had the right idea when he said:

"We have two lives, and the second begins when we realise we only have one."

The Wainwright quotation at the top is from the very start of the Pictorial Guides so it is only fitting to conclude with a passage from the end of book seven. For me, this is one of the most moving passages in the English language.

 "The fleeting hour of life of those who love the hills is quickly spent, but the hills are eternal. Always there will be the lonely ridge, the dancing beck, the silent forest; always there will be the exhilaration of the summits. These are for the seeking, and those who seek and find while there is still time will be blessed both in mind and body."