Craig Bothy
The sun was setting as Alex and I started out. Stags backlit on the hillside. Orange and pink on the waves below. Shadows crept up sandstone cliffs before swallowing them whole. The air - still and dry.
The light faded fast; rucksacks and firewood weighed us down. The miles were slow. Dusk faded to dark before the full moon rose. Birch trees in silver light. Knees made themselves known: behaving unpredictably, probing for inattention and the opportunity for a wayward lurch. Tired minds. Fading into distance and darkness, the path kept on. The miles were slow.
The bothy was dark and unreflecting in the moonlight. Inside: cold, empty, soot, damp. Cold and clumsy hands brought the fire to life: smoke beamed in the light of the headtorches. Boots steamed in the firelight. Gaining strength, the fire drew the skin and dried the eyes.
I rolled my sleeping bag out on the floor by the fire. Writing by the light of my headtorch – eyes heavy with fatigue and dry with heat. Sitting above the hearth was a deer skull, finely polished, the fire throwing ripples of light across the bone.
In the morning I dressed quickly – heat from the fire long gone. I took my bad and wandered toward the water. Moss and long grass half-buried the ruins of a fishing village. I walked through walls, ghost buildings, history. Sunrise. An eagle punctuates the pink and orange above the turquoise.
Camera set up; I looked toward the water. Seals bottling in the shelter of the bay. Manx Shearwater pootle and dive, pootle and dive. I kept an eye skywards in hope the eagle would return. The Old Man of Storr beyond Rona and Raasay. Hilltops dusted with snow. The mountains of Lewis and Harris shimmer on the verge of seeing. Iridescent hills levitating on the horizon: bases lost to haze and ripple.
The sun climbed into the clouds and left me cold. Light drizzle washed the distance away to grey. Sitting on the shore my mind quietened. It had been some time since the mental noise dropped below the pain threshold.
The Loch inhaled. Pools gulp and gurgle as the swell catches and releases them. Bits of old boat dot the high-water mark. Stories lost or untold. Eyes drifted across the water and washed up on the shoreline. All was quiet. The eagle didn’t come back.
The Bay with an abandoned fishing village.
Climbing up and back to the bothy provided space for the muscle-memory of depression: mind determined to default to the saturnine. The feeling, if unchecked, will latch on and corrupt proximate experience. I walked on, through dark thoughts and long grass, heading East across overgrown fields with remnants of pen and byre.
I removed my shoes and socks – enjoying the feel of the soil underfoot. I soaked my feet in the burn and the cold bit without numbing. Common sense and cowardice prevent full immersion. Boots laced up, we began the search for firewood.
A trunk of silver birch, long dead, served as fuel and defence against an insidious cold. Sawing it an exercise in patience. Birch is seen as a sign of renewal and purity – the effect it had on my language being quite the opposite. It was slow work with rusty saws. Prodding the fire with an old rivet, we tried to meet its needs. A mouse scurried across the floor and nuzzled into a nook by the fire.
Fireplace Accessories
The temperature ebbed and flowed bringing creaks and moans of contraction and expansion. Through the window we watched as darkness rose. Erratics toothed the hillside against starred sky. Alone, I had set off into the night. I wandered in the breeze, crossing burn and bog with surprising surefootedness. Leaping from rock to rock in the starlight.
Morning arrives in grey. I packed my things, swept the floor, cleaned out the fire. With melancholy, the walk back began. Lagging behind, I took my time and watched the sky. Wind and rain arrived wrapped in sunshine. Everything glared. Two buzzards circled overhead as we stowed our packs in the car. The drive back down; traffic, concrete, and electric light.
