March, the wildest month, grumbles past. A month half winter, half spring. Where the final death throes — of old problems, old beliefs, old selves — thrash among the flowers.
Winter took a few swipes at me on the way out. Yet snowy white stars bloom on the blackthorn and terror’s dark claws can’t hook onto my soul as easily as they once did. Sometimes, I even smile at what used to cause pain.
(Laughter is another way of showing your fangs).
I am writing this on a warm day in early April. Flowers spill from the dead earth. The cuckoo’s fairy cry silvers the wood. Warmth returns.
My lungs swirl with mountain air from a trip to the Cairngorms. My heart is lighter, eyes brighter for a week of sleep, rest, and being with my love.
That’s why this month’s love list is a little late — I knew I’d return with treasures to share.
“Dream-like loveliness”
Loch an Uaine - the wee green loch. Only last week I sat by its shores, mesmerised by water that’s neither blue nor green but a shade somewhere close to peace. Nan Shepherd described the loch as possessing “the green gleam of old copper roofs”. On the day we visited the sun sparkled off its surface, warming my face and spooling a golden thread into melancholy’s chilly caverns. Could winter’s jaws be loosening?
We trekked a wee bit further up the hill, only for winter to swallow us again. Wind belted from the high plateau carrying an icy rain. We took shelter in a bothy. It reeked — a cloying, pungent scent I couldn’t put my finger on. A rucksack and sleeping bag lay in a dusty corner by the window. We brewed strong coffee to thaw our fingertips, eyeing the rain through the single grimy window. I cradled the crystaline loch in my heart. Dreamed of swimming in its sunkissed waters. In one corner sat a handmade wooden chair. Someone had carved a poem into it, an ode to the hills.
The owner of the rucksack and sleeping bag returned. He worked for the RSPB and combined work with pleasure; a sojourn in the hills and inspecting the birdlife. Like me, he dreamed of a spring sun that never really reaches Scotland. He mentioned how, the night before, two students arrived at the bothy with a massive joint of lamb which they cooked over the open fire between two shovels. Aha! The mystery scent explained.
A couple arrived with their terrier. The husband sat in the poetry chair and his wife (who told us she was from Brazil) took everything in with shiny bright eyes while eating an orange, curious about bothy life. The RSPB man explained how bothies are simple shelters and great refuges for folk who find themselves cold and in need on the Scottish mountainside. Then he left us and his belongings, lured again by the hills. When the couple left the wife put her orange peel on the stove, “so that it smells nice when they next light the fire.”
Keep reading with a 7-day free trial
Subscribe to Selkie Grove to keep reading this post and get 7 days of free access to the full post archives.