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| "The wound is the place where the light enters you" - Rumi |
Its just after midsummer. On my own in reflective mood. Wandering old haunts and old thoughts. Old hurts, injuries, and a consciousness of those who have gone. Some by misadventure, others by their own hand. Many more when their time has run out, life lived.
Thinking, as the sands of time run through we live more in the past than in the future. I talk of bygone days more. "Back in the day", "remember when?", "I remember the day ............."
On a hill in the dusk of Wednesday night while walking, aching hips and old pains nagging, up I go on a path to the Aonach Eagach. I thought of this thinking of the past, and why it doesn't have to be that way. We allow ourselves to diminish with age perhaps? As I wandered stiff and sore up the hill, my mood lifted. Into the dusk and impending darkness I felt light as I slowly got into my old hill walking rhythm, which no matter what weight I had on my back I could sustain for hours. That rhythmic breathing and steady heart rate, which as you warm up allows your pace to get faster as you go, not slower. As I went up into the gloom the years passed off and a great optimism and feeling of gratitude and love entered. I looked around and across at places where I had been fortunate to quest among great cliffs to find my sense of self and who I was as a young man. And just occasionally where I would find others less fortunate who were more physically lost than spiritually, needing a helping hand from me when a rescuer. I came off the hill after that evening wander a younger man again. Despite injuries and age the boy is still in the man and wants the sunset to last longer. That means climbing higher. And that's not always up a mountain.
The weather plays a huge part in our moods and life in the West Highlands. It can lift you to ecstacy in a sunset, and bury you in profound seasonal depression in endless rain and darkness. Bipolar weather that triggers cyclothymic feelings. Unless you embrace the unpredictable weather it will drown you in despair. The good days are the rapid chargers. Even just a little bright sun sends wattage into your soul and lifts your spirit. I like to take pictures of these days to remind me of them.
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| Sunrise from the East over the A82 January |
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| Looking West from Ben Lora March |
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| Morven from Cuil Bay July |
