Category: Journal

Snow water trickles, pools, slips down in search of more level ground. Two climbers in red jackets belay, traverse, make a pitch for the summit. A pair of golden eagles circle still higher, watch the movements below.

A damp mist shutters the gap between the hills, stamping down hard against the sodden bog. Whole cliffs of rock disappear, a simple sleight of hand. Lost. Into the silence a pithy, pinched wind comes, trembling the heather, breathing sun across the western flank pulling the hill back from the brink.

Scour of rock, scree sharps, hollowed dark momentarily trades a line of warm sun searching for Spring across the mountain.

North by north west, oboed through grassy reeds, wind sings in the mountain pass.

Drawing at the Coire na Tulaich on the Buachaille Etive Mor yesterday. Wet, dreich, but beautiful.

Net curtains of rain brush against my face. The old beech tree brought down in the storm lies across the track, its bark the skin of a great whale grimly reflecting the cloud. I poke a puffball with my toe and watch a plume of spores cough in the gloom. The day feels hollowed out and hungry, yet I walk wearing the sky on my head and the earth on my feet. All will be well.