I’VE never quite found my sense of direction. Seriously, I’ve been lost more times than faith at a funeral. I reckon the day they were handing out the way-finding skills, I was wandering the corridors with a mis-calibrated compass and a glazed expression.

This isn’t a gender issue though. No, this particular stereotype applies only because of my complete inability to retain practical knowhow, not through any chromosomal predisposition. So step away from the sexism and focus on the reading because we all know you can’t multitask.

Societal norms aside, it’s unsurprising that successful navigation and I rarely cross paths. I lack the basic cogs for that complex mechanism. Whether metric or imperial, I can’t tell a foot from a furlong, and as far as spatial awareness goes, I’m pretty sure space is out there, but I couldn’t quite point you to its front door. Hand me a map and I’ll hand you back an origami swan with its head where its general topography should be. Basically, I’m two degrees short of a sextant and there’s no gender reassignment to remedy that discrepancy.

I’ve always considered my great powers of disorientation as a failing. I mean, finding there from here is pretty basic as life skills go. Yet some days, I’m not even sure I know exactly where here is. Lately though, I’ve been wondering whether this limitation is simply a product of my own evolution; a kind of use it or lose it policy on intellectual hardwiring. What I’m saying is, I guess I’ve just never really needed to know where I’m going because modern cartography has little interest in following my own path – and I have little interest in following anyone else’s.

Call it obstinacy, call it freedom of spirit; I don’t think it cares for name badges. But last week, I spent my Saturday remembering its value, with someone who has always taken the road less travelled, whether Frost meant the compliment or not.

Let me introduce you to Robert McCourt. Robert isn’t just my go-to guy for go-to guys, knowing as he does the entire directory of Scotland’s handy folk to know, he’s also in there himself under M for Master of Some. A modern day Huck Finn, without the racist undertones, Robert was responsible for most of the tree-houses, skipped stones and bonfires in the North Lanarkshire area, during a childhood misspent only by legal standards. Hitchhiking the length of the island as a wayward teenager, thieving a doctor’s scrubs at the birth of his child, quitting after only an hour of cutting out tongues in a fish factory, this guy has forged a path of which the Forestry Commission would be proud.

Now fully grown, Robert spends his days working as a British Sign Language interpreter and his spare days working out what he can be fixing, building, or generally turning into a verb. Even his car boot is equipped for a doing word, carrying as it did a fine hank of rope, which, he assured me as we drove deeper into the Scottish wilderness, was for making swings with his ever-patient family. Although he loves his current career, Robert’s route even to its gate was meandering at best. From market trader to scaffolder with some labours of love in between, he hung up his helmet on a whim one afternoon and turned his hand towards the communication industry instead. Did I say meandering? I think I meant marauding. If you’re thinking, now there’s a man with some stories, you’d be picking up a medal for intuition. But be careful how far you trust it because after each narrative, there’s a brief pause, while you wait for Robert either to laugh or nod sagely, as an indication of how gullible you’ve been to believe the tale. As evidence of a life lived though, he is positively anecdotal.

Driving towards the foot of Stob Binnein, our Munro of choice for my first bagging, Robert explained the importance of river-bends for energy production, how to fool traffic lights, and why I shouldn’t be wearing jeans to climb over 3,000 feet of mountain. There was wisdom in there, but I had to pick through the wit to find it.

As Munros go, Stob Binnein from Inverlochlarig isn’t an entry level scale. There’s the immediate 700-metre sheer start, the patches of surreptitious bog, and all before you reach the Narnian landscape at its snow-covered peak. But, of course, I had Mr Tumnus to lead me ever onwards. Honestly, the man is as sure-footed as any literary faun. From the outset, as we climbed the stile that announced the hill’s presence at 10 o’clock in bright sunshine, Robert forged ahead, soles finding footholds in the ascending scrub that this novice couldn’t spy with night vision goggles and a licence to kill. But, for once, I gladly just followed.

Before long we were picking our way upwards, stripping off then piling back on layers of clothing, as both our own temperatures and the environment’s fluctuated wildly. Once in a while – fine, thrice in a while – as legs tired or gradients further steepened, we two would pause for a moment’s respite, allowing ourselves the time to marvel at how far we’d come and at the landscape’s shifting perspective with every extra step travelled. And marvel we truly did. Whether looking across towards Lochs Doine and Voil, down the hill’s spectacular snow-covered ridge, or up and over to its sister, Ben More, there’s no shielding your eyes from a spectacle on any side. No matter the pixel count, mega or nay, no camera’s lens could capture the sensory experience that greeted us on every turn. Silence like no-one has ever heard, beauty untouched and sights unseen; how can one portray that with words? Inadequately, that’s how.

I won’t lie, because I don’t get paid any extra for it, climbing all 1,165 metres of Stob Binnein was tough. Not only was the terrain difficult, it was changeable, meaning I’d only become used to scrabbling across rocks in time for the land to level out and turn instead to calf-deep mud – or, towards the end of the hike, snow. Even the descent, albeit a damn sight quicker than its uphill counterpart, posed a challenge: namely, how not to break an ankle as you rolling stone your way back down through the moss.

But all of it, every breath-taking, tibia-risking second of that four-and-a-half hour clamber, was worth the gamble for that moment of triumph when I placed my pebble atop the waiting cairn, peered through the drifting snowflakes at the vista beyond, and bagged the hell out of Stob Binnein. Sure, I nearly lost a finger trying to tie a shoelace while the frost bit, but I also watched deer grazing in the glen, looked down on bright white hilltops without my feet leaving the ground, and waved to tiny people – far away, not Lilliputian – in their own victories on nearby peaks.

At times we lost the path, at times there was no path to lose, but it didn’t quite matter anyway. As long as we kept heading skywards, the course we plotted was just as legitimate as that of those gone before us, and might act as guide for those still to come. And as direction goes, surely that’s as much sense as is ever really required.