THE film producer Samuel Goldwyn once said he didn’t think anyone should write their autobiography until after they were dead. It’s also been claimed that a definition of an autobiography is an obituary in serial form with the last instalment missing.

So, given that I’m still relatively hale and hearty, I might argue against my collection of memoirs being described as a pure autobiography and, as I have done in so many aspects of my life, will happily follow in the footsteps of my old friend, the late Tom Weir, who once suggested that his own story was more of an “autobiography of sorts”.

More importantly, if you’ll excuse the religious parallels, my “autobiography of sorts” is more of a book of thanksgiving, my way of saying thanks to the dozens, if not hundreds of individuals who have influenced aspects of my life, a life that has been shaped by so many into a journey that has allowed me to follow my dreams, and none more so than the late Chris Brasher.

From my own distant days in track and field athletics, I was well aware of Chris’s achievements – a vital pace-maker when Roger Bannister became the first person to run a mile in less than four minutes; 1956 Olympic champion in the 3000 metres steeplechase; founder of the hugely successful London Marathon; and along with John Disley, the man who was largely responsible for introducing orienteering to the shores of the UK – but Chris Brasher was also an enthusiastic and entrepreneurial mountaineer and hillwalker.

He had been a member of various international climbing expeditions and, during his time as head of outside broadcasts at the BBC, produced and presented the incredibly popular Old Man of Hoy climb in Orkney with a stellar cast of climbers including Dougal Haston, Joe Brown, Chris Bonington, Tom Patey and others.

Chris was an obvious choice when I had to choose guests for a BBC2 television series, Wilderness Walks, in 1996. The idea was that we’d take a multi-day walk in the Cairngorms and discuss how wild landscapes had affected his life and career. Shortly after he arrived in Aviemore to begin the walk Chris asked if we minded if he disappeared for a day during the week. Further to all his other interests he and his wife Shirley owned several race horses and that week one of his horses was due to run at Punchestown near Dublin. He was keen to see it perform.

As you can imagine, this posed considerable problems for our filming schedule, but director Richard Else came up with a plan. He would hire a helicopter to take all of us, the whole five-man crew, across to Dublin for the day. We would film Chris and me going to the races and use it as part of the production.

Initially all went well. Brasher was in his element, showing off to his horse-racing friends. It’s not every day you arrive at a race meeting in a helicopter with a television crew following your every move, not unless you’re the Queen or a very rich Middle-Eastern Sheik.

We got into position midway up the stand and it wasn’t long before the horses were paraded out, lithe, muscled and shining in the afternoon sun. Chris pointed out his own mount, appropriately named Mister Boots, and then they were off.

The least I expected was a decent race after all the effort it had taken to get there, but the gambling gods decided otherwise. Brasher’s horse fell at the very first hurdle.

It was a disaster. With his jockey dismounted, poor old Mister Boots took off and was last seen galloping in the direction of County Kildare. I half expected Chris to be distraught but he simply shrugged his shoulders, gave a wan smile and said: ‘Ah well, there’s always the hills.’

There’s always the hills. It’s a simple notion, pure escapism if you like, but I sense there’s something deeper than mere escapism in the idea of returning to the comforting bosom of Mother Nature. For as long as I can remember, that has been my panacea for times of disappointment or grief. The hills have always been my salvation.

I remember climbing a hill called Beinn Fhionnlaidh a few days after my mother’s funeral. In considerable mental turmoil, I took to the hills and chose a rather isolated Munro. Beinn Fhionnlaidh lies between the great sea lochs of Loch Creran and Loch Etive and is a long whaleback of a mountain that rises fairly gently from the wooded flatlands at the head of Loch Creran to a steep blunt nose overlooking the densely forested slopes of Glen Etive.

My arrival at the cairn coincided with a rain shower so it was no place to linger, but as the shower abated on my descent the long views began to appear, out the length of Loch Creran to Loch Linnhe and the Sound of Mull. I could see the Paps of Jura and Ben More on Mull and, closer at hand, the Corbett of Fraochaidh and the twin tops of Beinn a’ Bheithir dominating the forested pass that runs from Elleric to Ballachulish.

Moments like these are special. It’s when you tend to feel most insignificant, especially when compared to the lasting reality of wide open skies, mountains and forests. It’s when you realise that our human lifespans are a mere flicker in the geological sense of time. As I looked out across that dimming horizon I felt a growing sense of peace, an awareness of my own destiny and a realisation that my dear mother was now free from pain and turmoil. It was a cathartic moment.

There have been lots of these liberating moments in my life. When I was in my forties a hill-running accident (I tripped and fell down a crag) left me with a broken wrist, a broken ankle and forty stitches in my head. During my period of convalescence, I was aware that I was becoming depressed. I wasn’t sleeping well, I had become short tempered and comparatively slight setbacks cast me into a slough of despond.

While I was thankful to be alive, it wasn’t until I was well enough to limp out into the forest on crutches that I began to feel a mental improvement. I recognised almost immediately the healing nature of this kind of exposure to the natural world, and those short excursions into the forest quickly became a crucial element in my recuperation.

The Harvard sociobiologist E. O. Wilson once wrote: ‘Wilderness settles peace on the soul because it needs no help. It is beyond human contrivance.’ I like that, and I’ve discovered throughout the years that there is something fundamentally satisfying in those things that have not been manufactured or created by man: the song of a blackbird, the scoldings of a red squirrel in the pines above you, the magnificence of the Aurora Borealis. These are things that have always been, things of eternal value.

There’s Always the Hills is essentially a book about a journey, a long and winding route from the backstreets of Govan to the wild places and hills of Scotland and some of the mountains of the world where I’ve been fortunate enough to live out a dream. I’ve been living that dream for more than forty years.

There have been many signposts along that route, often pointing in different directions, but the one element that has kept me to the true path is simply this – no matter what life throws at me, there’s always the hills.

Go and enjoy them while you can, before age and infirmity rob you. Love them and respect them and they will be kind to you, offering far more than you can give. Inhale deeply and allow the purity of the mountain air to bless you; run the rivers and explore the forests. Hug a tree or two. Contemplate the longevity of these wild places and compare it with our own brief flicker. Sit still and hear the silence or strike a rhythm to the music in a mountain stream, and above all consider yourself a part of it all. You are not a stranger here and you are not an outsider. You belong here. And when you are living life in that other world to which you also belong, if things should appear dark, or gloomy, or sad or when plans go awry, just remember ... there’s always the hills.

There’s Always the Hills by Cameron McNeish is published by Sandstone Press on February 15, priced £19.99