A Stirring Somewhere Deep

There is no way to express with words alone the beauty of the Scottish Highlands. It is rare that I come across something which I feel cannot be brought to life through language, but in this case I'll have to ask you to bear with my impressions, knowing that they will not gain true meaning until you find yourself in the same position I've been in.

The landscape is not just a vista, it's a feeling. A startling tapestry of emotion and vision and scent and sound. A pounding, soaring desolation and majesty. Crags brutally carved into distinction by unstoppable glaciers, brooding in huddled solidarity, bases sweeping seamlessly into sloped valleys. They flow into one another: Alive with a carpet of purple heather and bristling, low bracken. Burbling streams, an occasional bird, nothing more.

The sky seems insubstantial, fleeting. A mess of constantly evolving wisps of fog clinging to the tops of the peaks, floating into hidden valleys and gorges. The wind whines through the landscape. It feels a thousand miles from nowhere. Nothing but the endless flow of peak and plateau. Shelves of sheer rock jutting at sharp angles to the sky, stacked upon one another like haphazard books fallen from a great height. Buttressing the final summit.

The highway seems to go on forever. A smooth expanse of dips and curves. A strangely precise creation in the midst of such wilderness. A sweeping field of gorse and heather, then a drop into dense pine forest, sequoias, mouldering rock walls exploding with moss and fern, then a curve flings us into a wide plain, the mirrored, pristine surface of a loch, calmly reflecting the green hills surrounding it, a waterfall high in the cliffs, tumbling down like an avalanche, cutting deep into the rock. Here and there an ancient barn imploding under the weight of centuries, small clusters of whitewashed homes, churchyards with tombstones tumbling like dominoes. Occasionally a flock of sheep, almost mistaken for clouds, high up, complacent, browsing in the green, stepping nimbly across the rocks.

A part of me cannot believe that I am here. Now. Experiencing this. The unbelieveable beauty of it all. Glencoe sweeping out of the fog, rising to dizzying heights, wrapping me in all its bloody history, its remote magic. It does something to your soul. Tugs at it. Dares you to scale its peaks and ramble through its valleys. To brave its scaled spine with nothing but your flesh and your bones and your blood for company. To tumble, at the end of the day, down the impossibly smooth plane of its foothills into a brook. To return home soaked and giddy.

Or to simply stand and weep at the desolation of the place, the aloneness that presses your nose into the glass dividing you from yourself. Making you ache for the chance to smash your way in, or out, depending on how you look at it. This is the sort of place that could drag you through madness and back, still leave you wishing to return. To understand. If there is a place where magic can still exist in the world, it is here.

Reaching the coast. Stormwalls holding back the steely, unstamed North Sea. The Minch. The passage of legend which I sing about with ease while sailing the Pacific. Mingulay settled in the waves to the south. The air is full of misty rain and the smell of fish. Smoke spirals lazily from a few chimneys. In neat rows the cars trundle into the underbelly of the ferry. The stench of fish strengthens, flourescent lights flick into life along the ceiling of the beast. Up two flights of stairs to the passenger deck. It's outfitted like a hotel. A sleazy casino. Still another flight of stairs and I'm on the open deck. Rain falls in horizontal sheets, the wind buffetts me across to the railings. Everyone else is inside.

I gaze out at the water, the looming coast. In front of me the giant wake of the vessel smooths itself into the fabric of the sea. A cluster of islands to starboard, nothing but fog blending the ocean with the sky to port. The islands look like a fleet of ships bursting out from the deep, prows jagged against the white sky. Wild. Treacherous. Waves whipped to foam along the shore, wind flattening the patched grass into the rock. I long to camp along on their shores. To weather storms in their craggy embrace.

The roll and toss of the waves is welcome and familiar beneath my feet. It feels like home. The ferry judders through the choppy waters, beating against the wind and the current. Lumbering, enormous. I can feel my ears going numb as I sift through the past few days.

Watching the end of Festival fireworks from a dark window on the second floor, the nestled lights of Edinburgh twinkling, Barber's Adagio for Strings crackling from the radio, enough to break my heart. Catching the bus away from Edinburgh, the thrill of being on the move again. Meeting Peter MacDonald at the the station in Glasgow. Staying the night with his Aunt, Joy. A bathroom with a felt floor. The tang of whiskey rising from a glass at my bedside ("A wee dram," Joy had insisted, "To help ye sleep."). Fumbling with the toggle on my necklace. My little string of family camp memories. M. C. Escher ceiling tiles sloping this way and that in geometirc impossibility. Taking off my watch before tumbling into sleep.

It has struck me as appropriate that we do this as humans. Disconnecting ourselves from time just before we misplace several hours of it. Each night we unquestioningly relinquish our precious minutes to sleep, not stopping to wonder where they've gone when we wake in the morning. Death is simply the rediscovery of all these moments lost in slumber.

Fog has descended on the ferry, drawing out the mournful cry of the horn every five minutes. We are blanketed. Blind. The motion of the boat works its spell on me and soon I'm curled into myself on the bench, thinking of the people around the globe following my progress -- in Australia, South Africa, England, California, Washington, Illinois, New York, London, Edinburgh. Old friends, family, shipmates, relatives, strangers, teachers. I'm being tracked by more eyes than I expected. It's comforting. A safety net. A web of validation.

I stay there until nightfall, dreaming of mermaids on barren islands and the whistle of the wind through Glencoe.