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Castles Galore

7/27/2016

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​Castles Galore-

 
Once upon a time… When I was just 18 I was supposed to run off to Scotland, live in a castle with my best friend.  We had it all planned.  I had seen an advert in the back of a travel magazine – “Come live in the Highlands - $300. per month, room and board, in a room where queens have slept, our beautiful castle, a river full of fish, hill walking, massive gardens.”  It included two photos, one of the castle with forest and mountains in the background, one of the river.  It was to be a beautiful adventure, a rite of passage into adulthood.   It did note that the castle had a ghost.  We were undeterred.  We had more of that brash teenage confidence than any skinny ghost, we might even be able to send it packing, the two of us.  Then my friend’s father decided it was a very bad idea for her to run off to Scotland with me.  She might meet a charming Scot in a kilt and all his plans for her marrying a good Greek boy who would keep her in line would be ruined.  Of course he was right.  I am sure if we had gone then, we would have had the time of our lives and met some lovely kilted locals, probably settled in Scotland, never to return to California and our respective families.  It would have been grand, just what we both needed.  Never mind, the castles back then (this is pre-castle tourism, pre-castle refurbed hotels) were probably moldy, cold, in somewhat of an original state.  We would have both loved it.  So, one month before we were set to leave, he bribed her.  All expense paid luxury six-month tour around Greece, staying with her wealthy aunt:  If you are going to Europe, you should first go to your home country (guilt), you can always go to Scotland next year (never going to happen), your aunt has a mansion, will buy you anything you want, jewels, houses, cars…(ach).  The catch was, that I was definitely not invited.  A bad influence on all his plans.  She had uncovered an earlier plot to basically kidnap her, prior to her eighteenth birthday, where he could legally marry her off in Greece to the boy of his choosing.  I was a staunch supporter of her independent choice – she was an American.  She could get to an embassy and ask for help.  Her father scrapped that plan in favor of a lure.  Being of age, he could not force her to go, but he could coerce her into it.  My friend being so much more of a material girl than I, caved.  She traded her highland adventure for a pricey pair of shoes and the Greek Riviera.  I knew that would be the beginning of the end of our friendship.  She went to Greece, got indoctrinated, returned, married someone her father approved of and spent a major portion of her adult life trying to get past it.  Turns out he was a bigamist.  Already married in Egypt with kids (of course hid this from her) and was trying to lure her to Cairo, where she would be legally his property, second wife, and, if she ever made it to an Embassy could be anyone’s guess.
I couldn’t afford to go on my own, we had each saved just enough for our share and an emergency fund.  Deeply disappointed, crushed actually, I started my active spiritual searching for a larger path and life and vowed that I would get to Scotland, someday, even if on my own…I started hiking in the Sierra’s, took classes at Esalen, bought a pair of wellies, learned to fish, dated other poets and moved away from the city for good.  I was subconsciously in training for a future Highland life.
Turns out that most towns in Scotland can claim a castle in their midst – the once and future home of the overlords of the day, some crumbing, some rubble, others actually still occupied. So what do you do with a castle in your midst these days?  Put up signs directing tourists through town and over to the fortress, citadel cum palace, or whatever is left of it.  And if still occupied?  How, exactly does one maintain a castle?  Tourists. 
April -October is castle season. Dukes, Barons, Lords, Lairds, Counts, (and all their female counterparts and families on the whole) open the gates and gardens and, usually, even a part of their house as a museum of sorts.  They also give the option of renting the entire lot out for weddings and special occasions.  The drawing room, the library, the formal dining room, etc. are on display.  Culzean Castle, (granted, this is now a trust property – another option for being able to stay in your very big house) has even added eight rescued llamas and an exciting new playground, “Adventure Cove,” to lure more of the wee tourists to bring their families along.  The Culzean Trust head forester explains that tragically, the Kennedy family once kept a menagerie of exotic animals such as bison and emus, a sort of early zoo – all gone now.   
Aristocrats on a budget, have staked out a wing (usually on the west side of the castle – don’t exactly know why this is – but it is fairly consistent), and have modernized the interior – dropped the ceilings down to an energy efficient level, put in central heating for the apartments, built insulated walls within the walls (castles are dark and dank on the whole) – added lots of lighting, then decorated.  This is the inner sanctum, the private apartments of the family, where they can have a little peace and grandeur when the coach loads of visitors and tour guides have left, when the grounds crew put away all their heavy equipment and head home.  This also means they don’t have to heat the rest of it.  That could be quite expensive now that manpower is fair wage only – no legions of staff to keep those multitudinous fireplaces going.  Besides, back in the day there were frequent castle fires, due to unattended fireplaces or candlelit chandeliers, etc., difficult to insure that bit now.  What do they get for all their castle owning troubles?  Space, a continuum of family history, a sense of ownership, a private stroll through your very own pinetum, vast grounds and gardens – available from 5 p.m. to 8 a.m., where after, should you own a castle, you are guaranteed to be over-run again.  Castle dwelling definitely is not what it used to be.  I rather like the idea that these days, the rabble, who used to be relegated to the less then glorious lodgings in the villages at the edges of the estate (miles away in fact), now come to the big house, not just to work, but to have a wee poke around.  (To be fair, the villagers were protected and invited in if there was to be a war, castle attack imminent or soon to be under siege as the overlords needed manpower for soldiering, long term food handy and the village shepherds and the like to manage all that livestock.) 
That being said, age, destruction and abandonment have not diminished the mystique of the castle.  Case in point, the ruins of Dunnottar Castle, outside of Stonehaven in Aberdeenshire.  This medieval castle is still entirely masculine (most are; some are not).  It was no doubt utterly glorious in its day, and the ultimate fortress as well. Castles were made to impress as well as defend.  Set between two burns, it is well placed, perched on a towering hill of stone that juts out of the North Sea, mostly separate from the coastal land mass.  Defendable. 
Dunnottar also has a resounding presence all its own and is therefore very relevant.  Scores of the whitest of gulls nest on the walls now, and lyrically fly off edges to the wildflower field and water falls across the crag, then swing out over the endless blue of ocean that laps at the castle roots, diving in large numbers, as if from a sky scraper, straight down.  The water is so clear you can see the bottom rocks and fish for nearly a mile off shore.  This castle had been captured by my ancestor William Wallace.  Later, as the home of the Keith’s, long-time supporters of the Stewarts, it was visited by Mary Queen of Scotts and her son, James the VI of Scotland/the Ist of England. Then for the same reason, (Jacobites and royals out, Protestants in) summarily looted and burnt down during the Protestant Reformation.  Looking across the hill to Dunnottar’s remains, I feel as if I am dreaming – I can hear the castle heaving with gatherings, the horses coming down and across the mid-air bridge, the music.  If there are any ghosts here, they would have to be of the mythic kind, larger than the castle walls and cliff edge, some monolithic God cousin to Neptune, the mighty God Dunnottar.  There is something still very much alive within this medieval lens, these remaining walls, this rock cliff beneath my feet.  Rounding the corner to go, I feel like I am leaving a lover on a lark and vow to return again. 

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The Lady of St. Monance

7/25/2016

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​The Lady of St. Monans -

 
This is a story of one of Scotland’s most beautiful sights to behold, her people.  Ena is the 87-year-old mother of the neighbor at the Harvest Moon Inn, St. Monans, (back in the day, spelled St. Monance) where I am put up.  A series of combined old fisherman’s cottages, a one off, sheltered, just around the harbor corner at 12 Forth Street where, in my room I can still catch the faintest whiff of a century gone fisherman’s oily hair cream (or maybe it is wood oil).  I met Ena’s youngest daughter Margaret at the Inn over tea – Margaret said I should ring her mum up as she had many great stories to tell, if I could understand her broad accent.  Ena lives just at the top of the hill.  As we walk towards her house, the sky opens up a cloud burst and by the time I have walked up I am dripping at her door.  “Come in dearie.” “Don’t ya worry bout tat – ya ken?” (you know).  Ena is wearing a beautiful print of a dress, slightly flared and ending at the bottom of the knee.  She has a white cardigan on and a delicate chained necklace.  Her fine silver hair is perfectly coiffed and she has lipstick on.  Ena has just come from church.  She welcomes Fiona (the innkeeper and friend of Margaret) and I into her parlor and fetches us some tea.  It is just what you do here.  You are always offered (and expected to accept tea).  Tea is not just the drink.  It is almost always served with some kind of biscuit (cookie).  Ena has prepared a tray with five different kinds of biscuit, including chocolate dipped cookies, petit-fours, and fine china to hold our drink in.  Her tea pot has a cozy on it as she will need to keep the tea warm for our entire visit. Once we have been restored and dried out a bit, Ena brings out her box of treasures – pictures and her family history.  Her parents, grand-parents, siblings, children, grandchildren and great-grandchildren are represented.  Pictures of all the weddings on down the line are framed and tidily arranged throughout the neat as a pin cottage.  Next she pulls out an ancestral chart that dates back to the early 1700’s and reviews both sides of her family with us.  Lastly, she opens her hands revealing pictures of her posing with several of her beaus.   Yes, Ena had a throng of male attention back in the day, Ena was what you would call “a looker.”  Very wholesome, down to earth, girl next door sort of a looker.  As far as I am concerned, Ena still is.  She is the most lovely, bright and beguiling 87-year-old I have ever met.  She explains how she still puts on her “lippy” even when taking out the rubbish, as prior beaus have appeared out of the blue on her doorstep, you never know when one might turn up, the ones that are still alive that is ‘ya ken?’  I asked Ena about war time in St. Monans.  She remembered all the windows being painted black.  She told of how a boy down the road had gone to feed his rabbits at night.  He used a pen light and the German’s bombed and killed him and his mother.  No lights - lights let the enemy know where you were.  There were low-risk prisoners of war, mostly Italians, who helped harvest on the farms and were allowed to go around freely.  Most of them ended up staying and marrying local women.  Also polish soldiers who were over here with their leading general in command, helping the war effort as their country had been taken.  The Polish soldiers were so handsome and they all liked to dance, were good dancers, some of them stayed on after the war as well.  Lots of dancing in those days.  No one seemed to mind except the local boys - the war brought in a lot of competition.  Ena laughed, then proceeded to break out old love letters from the box, men, several who were at war, writing her and professing their love.  Bill wrote about her sparkling eyes and how he tried to make her angry as her eyes sparkled even more when she was mad.  Joey wanted a picture of her.  Arthur was bartering chocolate for kisses.  The bulk of each letter revealed in great detail their day to day life in the military as if telling her would keep a thread of normality constant.  Each voice was different: Billy was mischievous - a good dancer, Joey was clearly homesick and miserable, Arthur was romanticizing and nervous that she would find another.  You could get a clear sense of who these men were by the way they wrote.
 She had not ended up marrying any of them.  They had all become policemen.  She met her husband David when she was eight.  "He was always there, ya ken?"  David had also been a policeman.  “Must have been the uniform, ya ken” she said.  I asked Ena if she ever got out dancing these days.  She smiled a graceful smile and answered, “Oh aye, ya ken?”

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Hours at Comrie

7/22/2016

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​Hours at Comrie -

 
In the morning we gathered up stories,
Climbed them up the stepped cliff,
Each bend and curve of ridge,
Of torrent and waterfall,
Carried a line of light that traveled
Like surface fire along with us,
Then, together, all, back down,
Passing house after house,
Through a forest opening
To the village edge, just there
The wooded knoll,
The red flood,
Wrapped inside the warmth of
Summer night and clouds draped so low
They were close enough to touch,
Along the road of meadowsweet
Where a river meets one and then another,
Joining, turning over their silver threads
Along the bridge of Ross,
One river now, carried off the Earn
Into the world beyond.
.
 

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St. Andrew Was Here

7/18/2016

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​St.
Andrew was Here -  
 
His bones cross the edge
Of rock face, drifting
Apostle, once,
They carried him
From the holy east
To the ends of earth,
Up the North Sea,                       
Where babies now learn to swim
In soft low waters,
Another celestial wash ashore,
That one shell, swaddled,
After the fire,
Gone to Edinburgh - 
Earth bound again, rightly,
Give it a name, this place,
With breath of universe
In each wave released,
A cloud full pillow tide,
Later lie awake in shifting sands,
Where the rain still falls,
Every drop counting
Cathedrals, built here,
Crumbled like soft flesh,
Now hollow brick and stack,
Schools of fish and men
Have caught the golden
Number of his once
White star thread
Of blood, now bells and wind
Ring out in this chosen place,
all his, a saltire of sky
Landed.

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A Kingdom

7/17/2016

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A Kingdom -
 
Those moveable towers
That search to spout,
Tugging to one end
Of firth, then another
Needle into the hay,
Rocket launch dawn
And move aside,
Bring on the thunder,
There is supposed to be a season
Before the storms come,
But they are untethered now,
Endless,
I could weep
And break my heart
With remembering,
How wild we used to be,
How free,
Before Kings thought
They were not one of us,
Only part of the wrath of a god
Come down.

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Luthrie, Fife

7/16/2016

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 - Luthrie -
 
Words and thoughts spill out
Like sheets of notes on paper
Those lines along your face,
I am traveled here, small,
Following the curve of speech,
Pin head balance, glean
And flutter along
In a blue-tailed dance,
We are window birds,
Small and bright,
Among the crumbled
Stones and path,
Circle then returning back
To earth, the empty school,
With a sharp pulse and trill,
That echoes on to the sea,
High up and down
Like running music
Go these green hills
And fields of rapeseed,
Monuments and fallen,
Today I went beyond these walls
Then gates, further still, into call and answer,
Today I crossed the river Eden,
Out into another world.

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Schiehallion, Part2:  Peacocks on the Lawn

7/15/2016

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 - Schiehallion, Part 2:  Peacocks on the Lawn -
One white and cream peacock, four blue, spotted with flecks of sun on the wing -  I had watched them strutting around the lawns of Scone Palace earlier in the week.  I even found a few of their molting feathers that lay like dots of spectral paint on the ground (a sign of good luck according to the palace staff), definitely a sign of summer.  These male peacocks were full of flash color and steady grace.   Open plumed and approaching with high throated voices that stop you in your tracks, what could ever match the grandness of their roaming across the seemingly endless palace green?
Then there came down the mountain a young man called Angus… spelled Aonghus in Irish Gaelic.  He came out of nowhere, flying around a corner, landing in front of me.   With a clear bell voice, a certain “Hello,” he began to speak:  His mum is Irish, his step-dad Scots. I did not ask about his Dad and he did not volunteer any information there. What he did relay in a very candid and open manner were stories about all the places he had already travelled to or lived (his step-da is in petroleum) and how in his short years he had already seen how much these places (all of Asia, Houston, a myriad of other towns and now Fife,) had changed.  He liked the wildness of this part of Perthshire.  He also ran up and down this 3000 foot plus mountain with the ease of a stag, leaping from rock to rock before slowing down to cross my path.  He was going to go to Mars someday, but as a scientist, not a tourist.  He explained that it was why the space programs were so keen to test out an outpost on the moon – as a start off point for Mars, because getting free of Earth’s atmosphere, the weight of gravity, took a lot of energy.  Once out in free space, it was much easier to travel farther – he was certain we would be able to do it and survive, and soon enough.  Aonghus had seen a lot already, the world was getting crowded and smaller by the minute.  He had been paying attention.  He was not too distracted by television or games, or any of that childhood stuff – his clear blue eyes were wide open.  He had concerns - places were rapidly changing now, people were crowded in, more and more each day. "In Singapore they regularly tear down buildings to build new ones – no need to renovate there, just start over."  “It has always been that way there,” Aonghus said.   “Because it has been a trading port for so long.”  Spoken like someone who has spent many furloughs off ship and coming into port over the millennia.  Aonghus knew what he was talking about.  He missed some of the places that were already gone, wondered what would fill his days and where and how many changes would come.  He reminded me of myself at his age... full of the wonder of the world, more curious than scared, but aware of the turning, the constant shifting of life on earth.  Where was that earlier me, somewhere down deep inside the cascading waves of year after year gone by?  Aonghus could conquer the world.  I had instant and complete faith in him. He could do whatever he set himself towards.  He had lived so much already and was just getting started.  His life seemed to loom large ahead of him, like it went on forever.  I was suddenly aware of just how far I had traveled in time and space and how my physical journey was now much shorter than his.  He was still in the initial phases of unfoldment for his life span, Mars aside. No doubt I will read about what he is about someday – global and/or inter-stellar traveler that he is.  I watched Aonghus as he went on ahead to catch up with the rest of his group - he danced and leapt down the trail and reached them in no time.  Alone again, I looked around at the endless circle of wide open space around me - rows of mountains and glens, cloud formations going on as far as I could see.

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Schiehallion, Episode 1:  The Small Round World

7/14/2016

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​The Small Round World –

 
Where is the road to liberation and will the current global chaos point us in that direction or will this Year of the Fire Monkey lead down the path to further turmoil.  I watch sheep, I count sheep, I try to avoid running over sheep, I look in their strange eyes and talk to them.  They answer back… The mind a bundle of perceptions, I have been dissatisfied with the streams of collective U.S. consciousness building – the dissonance, the struggle to motivate, the lack of a vision to move forward that my birth country has been expressing.  Yes, many folks I know are highly motivated (large numbers have worked on Bernie Sanders campaign (and campaigns before that), but those are people I know, not necessarily the norm.  I have this ever present nagging feeling that our relatively young country, instead of using our pioneering spirit to leap forward into innovation and lead the creative way into a bright future, is getting stuck in a quagmire of lethargy, bigotry, posturing – boring, or worse, making up for our brevity as a country by creating a plethora of quick karma of the negative kind.  Where is the direction, where is the motivation?  In short we are a bit like reticent teenagers that need to grow up fast or reap the unfortunate consequences. 

So, stepping out of the national drama for a few months, I find I have stepped in the middle of crisis of another tributary sourced from the same river.  Is the entire world in chaos and trying to shake it off right now?  With the recent Brexit vote, many Europeans I meet here (who have lived in the U.K. for a long while) are worried that they will have to leave.  And the Scotts? Well, there is another defiant groundswell of hope in a direction of more freedoms or becoming a completely independent country again, but will they actually shake off the fear of unknown consequences and actually do it this time?  England has typically rooted conservative, Scotland (and the other countries that make up “Great Britain”) feel ignored, that their concerns are dismissed.  There is still not direct democracy here… yet.  And, back in the states, the ideal and grand experiment of a country by, for and of the people has stalled and is now swan diving.  Corporate puppet (more of the same) or dangerously demented change at any cost (game over, perhaps taking down all humanity in the go of random mad change plummeting into darkness?)  – Are these really the best options the voters could get behind?


So freeing myself up from my personal quagmire was my solution of the moment – Liberation is in the space between breath, I know that much, so, find a place to breathe deep, to breathe new, to have spaciousness as a pure reminder. Charity begins at home, right? Maybe if I could figure out what the heck I was doing from here on out, it would help me see hope for the collective future of this blue planet I am on, or to let go of the concept completely and float, just float.   I know I am still and always traveling down the collective slipstream, no way round it so far.   I am landed, at the moment in Perthshire – the center and beating heart of Scotland. Today I decide to focus on memories, those feelings of contentment and peace, and those only, letting all other experience run behind then fade.  I don’t know which memories will surface as supreme, what experience I will find satisfying now.  I haven’t a clue, but I figure it is a start.  How can I envision a personal or collective future without a thread of inclination of past and true contentment?   It is beautiful here - easy to be clear in the moment, I have had many moments, sometimes stringing those moments together for days on end.  I believe change is possible.   That is a place to start.

 I decide to take a walk out onto the holy mountain of the Sidhe – Schiehallion.  I have heard much about this place and have to see for myself.  Maybe an answer is out there, somewhere.  The road to Schiehallion is single track (of course), winding.  I have become accustom to the sheep resting so close to the road here that sometimes their legs or other parts of their bodies are actually out on the pavement.  I have developed nerves of steel to weather the drivers that go too fast around the bends, avoiding all head on collisions and punctured tires up to this point.  I know I will have to dodge the roadside dangers and that, most likely, at some point in my walk, the skies will open up, so I am prepared.  This road is both breathtakingly at times, and completely marred in the middle of it by traverse lines that carry power from the windfarms of Scotland down south to be consumed in England, leaving a massive scar that runs clear through Perthshire and all the counties south of here. 

Along the trail it is so quiet, so peaceful.  It meanders through forest and field and I  take my time to notice every tiny flower, every shift in the land.  There are fields and fields of wildflowers – all small.  I feel the urge to sing and make up a song about Schiehallion – “Oh, Schiehallion, how beautiful you are...”  I continue on the path, humming and singing around its curves – there is a beautiful stream and some dog roses, wild orchids, violets, thimble pink marguerite daisies, a sea of wee white blossoms, fox glove swaying above the ferns.  There are ruins, a cup stone, a village now gone – signs of human settlement from thousands of years ago.  The rocks here hold the history, some still stacked together, some left undisturbed, still where they have fallen.  Sheep are grazing on the far hill, next to a patch of what is left of a forest.  Rounding a bend, I can see snow fields on the top of an adjacent peak and wind mills beyond.  The mountains are thick here, with Schiehallion nested in the center. - Her obvious pyramid peak rising above all the rest.  Not in any particular hurry (a freedom in itself,) I arrive late in the day.  Occasionally, a walker comes up and passes me on their direct method climb.  They are also humming and singing.  The first people I see coming back down the trail are local teenagers.  They are dressed in their regular school clothes, no jackets – nothing to batten against the wind or rain that is starting to pick up.  They move like the sheep in the field, quickly, effortlessly.  Then a couple from France passes me on their way up "C'est tres beau ici!" the woman blurts out as they pass me on the left.  Next a pair of women, one who clearly has blisters has removed her shoes and is walking barefoot along the rocky path.  There is a man with them, only one.  He has an annoyed expression on his face and is traveling in front of them, silently.  They are keeping up.  The two women have Australian accents and are talking about pedicures, chatting away about their feet as they hurl themselves rapidly back to the parking lot.  The woman with blisters has perfectly groomed toenails painted a bright red. Her heels are bleeding.   As they noisily go by a bird flies out of the bracken, up and away, her nest disturbed by the racket.  I pause and wait for them to pass.  A few minutes later the bird returns and settles back into her green thicket of cover.  I can hear her chicks’ greeting but I can’t see them.
Next a couple says hello while passing.  They are American.  I ask them where they are from.   They stop and she answers, “The DC area, how about you?”  Interestingly, I answer, “I am from San Francisco, originally.”  I wasn’t expecting to introduce my past to them, it just fell out.  He asked, “Oh really, what part?”  I say – “Sea Cliff.”  He replies, “Noe Valley.”  “I love Noe Valley, best spot in the city, I answer, they get all the sunshine.”  “Yes, the fog gets hung up on Twin Peaks,” he continues, “Ever been to the Acme Café?”  “Yep, I used to hang out there, and at the Meat Market Café, How about the Sanctuary?” I add.  Rick’s wife Cindy is politely letting us have a trip down memory lane.  As it turns out, Rick and I used to hang out at the same cafés at the same times, knew some of the same people, had undoubtedly seen each other in Noe Valley, some thirty odd years ago.  We had the same haunts and retraced entire sections of street that one or the other of us had forgotten.  Bud’s iced cream.  That dark haired guy always carrying around his guitar.  The coffee drink with a twist of orange peel.  Whole spans of time suddenly re-enter my consciousness.  I had loved Noe Valley though I did not live there.  I had forgotten that.  I almost didn’t leave the city because I got an opportunity to rent a place a couple of blocks away from where Rick had been living, one week before I was supposed to move on.  But I did move on. My time to venture beyond and out into an unknown future had come.  I needed to be brave, and curious about all the possibilities, all that I might create, all who I might meet and where I might go a mystery as I left, as it is even more so now, years later, hung up in the mist on a holy mountain, circling back around.
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The Way to Dornoch

7/11/2016

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​Dornoch

 
Tonight I sleep in the tall grass
And Queen Anne’s Lace,
Of the berm,
Where I am surrounded
By the sea,
The sound of her waves a drum in my ear.
In this Cathedral town,
Down at the village
They are still gathered on the green,
Skirl of the pipes echoes across the dune
To join her in song,
Here I will wait for night to fall
And dreams to come again.
 
In the morning
The water is steel grey and
Flat as a butter knife,
Storm clouds coast quiet over the firth
And out to the North Sea,
Towns people come with their dogs
To play along the strand
And the gulls let out their morning cries,
Circle, then fly on.
It is now Sunday,
This is my church.

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July 07th, 2016

7/8/2016

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​Achiltibuie and The Summer Isles -
This morning I can see the summer isles off the coast of Achiltibuie.  I have just arrived to this Achd Ille Bhuidhe or “Field of the Yellow-Haired Boy”.  There are none about, it is early and the town is still asleep.  The piping school is now gone, Charlie Chaplin, gone, The Hydroponicum also gone, turned back into the soil.  When they finally wake, a couple of the locals tell me it is a blessing about the piping school – apparently it was a horrible racket, those beginner students with the pipes.  They miss Charlie Chaplin though.  The Hydroponicum is now superseded by lovely gardens that trail down to the water’s edge. Some traveler I ran into somewhere a ways back told me I must come here, for the pure peace of looking out over these remote crofting lands to the view of the summer isles and a particular way of life it all implies.  I have to agree - the word bucolic comes to mind.  This remote linear town on the Coigach Peninsula is a moving postcard of trellised roses and other marks of civilization, leading to wildflower edges and fields beyond to the sea.  This used to be MacKenzie country, with some MacLeods and a few Campbells sprinkled in as well.  Grazing, subsistence, fishing, anything else brought in by boat.  Now it has an art gallery and the Summer Isles Hotel – Charlie’s old haunt, plus gentille.  I have to go in of course.  I open the tall gate reading the keep closed sign as I enter, making sure to latch it behind me -  sheep – it is a theme, I know. The other way round is over a cattle guard too wide for me to walk across.  The pebble courtyard is overflowing with terracotta pots filled with pansies, violets, other dandies.  This place could not be more happily placed – there is a cozy, safe village charm about it, not the feel that I have just weathered the highlands to get here, that this is still the highlands, surrounded by wilderness. Somehow, as I look out over to those islands, I get very peaceful and calm.  This place could be a Carmel, it could get built up and over-ran. Oh no, I said it – I take it back.   Even the largest of the summer isles, Tanera Mor, is uninhabited now, with just a few holiday houses dotted along one edge, no roads, only way round is by boat.
Perhaps the yellow-haired boy is a reference to the tall grasses that turn golden as the season wanes and the isles close their doors on another summer. Or, maybe he gave this place a name, then walked back into the wilds.

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    SCOTLAND - WONDERLAND

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    That's me - I am mad about plaid, a writer, poet, artist, lover of Scotland.  For more, go to my home page.

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