Loch Morlich holds the sky at Cairn Gorm’s feet. The lake surface is a sheet of frozen glass thawing at the edges where the mountain winds fail to scuff the reflection. A perfume of snow rides the air shivering from the mountain tops. I bend down to stare at the black rocks flecking the shore; they are mountains to whatever looks up to them. I had passed from the fecund darkness of Rothiemurchus Forest where slats of daylight periodically pierced the entwined arms of ancient oaks to this wide vision. The contrast is almost too much: the air frosts my lungs; my pupils constrict to black pinpoints; my reflection wavers in Morlich’s visage.
I have a curious habit of comparing real places like Loch Morlich to those that exist only in stories. Read more...
The west highlands of Scotland are a snapshot of the earth’s slow riot. Brutal crags rip into the sky alongside wide verdigris valleys slashed with ice-white streams. The turf is a thin layer of skin over a stark and statuesque skeleton. I stare at the barren slopes of the Three Sisters of Glen Coe, close to perceiving the memory of trees that hangs like mist around the peaks. Folklore names this place the Glen of Weeping not for the waters springing from the hilltops but for the 17th-century massacre that saw 38 MacDonalds hunted to death in the snows. Some trick of the valley’s acoustics makes the shivering wind into a Fomorian death rattle.
Sorrow’s bloated memory chokes the glen. Read more...
Black air stands behind me as I look west. A band of hard orange light slides behind the dark hills of Perthshire. The chill of night descends from the stars though the sun’s heat still radiates from the stones of Telford’s bridge like the embrace of a lover just before sleep. This moment, when Dunkeld fades into darkness and the sinuous Tay whispers, is a tether to bygone ages before cathedrals and bridges, before motorways and railroads. The cone-shaped tops of pines and the skeletal branches of March oaks stand alien and wondrous in the gloaming.
My breath becomes a ghost as the sun dies. These vespers will climb the thick smells of young rivers and patient, snow-crusted shoots into the empyrean. This is no lament, merely an impulse from the thin times… Read more...
The year molts its summer skin and readies its autumn burial. White light flickers over peaks piercing the heavens above Glen Rosa. A great square of indigo and ember flowers mark the entrance to Brodick, the gateway to the Isle of Arran. The interplay of light and shadow and color dazzles my jet-lagged eyes. Every footfall hammers the earth with a debt of sleep as I shuffle along Brodick Bay like some forlorn spirit. Cool air dissolves the heat of the small, white sun. There was a man sitting alone at the picnic table. Everywhere the fizzing smell of green life thrums behind the visible world. I have arrived to the holy hill of the apple trees. Eamain Abhlach.
Avalon. Read more...
I heard the slop of indolent waves on the stony shore and the hollow, booming emptiness of the sky as it passed over the hills like a breath through macrolithic vocal chords. Loch Ness was taught, bound up in an unfathomably deep cleft in the earth, and forced to run for 20 miles to escape the sentinel ridges guarding its length. My spine tingled as the rough red rocks beneath my feet grumbled against each other. The inky waves jostled and created the spectres of kelpies and slithering things that should not be: The visions of others. An odor like a cloying broth of cold-stewed vegetation suffused the air. Read more...
A hunter, oft-stubbled and bleary-eyed, driven by an insatiable hunger for exploration and experience - and perhaps a chance to thin the herd of caffeinated and alcoholic beverages. From the highlands and islands to Edinburgh, Glasgow, and the Borders, I explore Scotland with a pen in hand and a fire in the belly (which could be partly from the whisky). 
