The Scottish Highlands Lament

I crossed the sea from the northern shores of Germany aboard a small vessel that creaked and groaned beneath the weight of wind and wave. The salt spray stung my face and the cry of gulls followed us across the gray water. For days I watched the horizon where sky and sea met in shifting lines of silver and slate until at last the dark shape of land rose before us the coast of Scotland wild and ancient beneath a sky heavy with cloud

The boat left me at a small port where the air smelled of peat smoke and salt and the stone houses crouched low against the wind. From there I set out alone on foot walking north and west into the Highlands where the land rose in great folds of rock and heather where the rivers ran swift and cold and the sky seemed endless and near

The Highlands opened before me like a forgotten world. The hills were draped in purple heather and yellow gorse the air sharp with the scent of peat and rain. The wind moved through the grasses and low shrubs with a voice that rose and fell like a song half remembered. Beneath my boots the earth was soft and wet and my path led me over stony ridges through valleys carved by ice and time along the shores of lochs that lay dark and still as mirrors of the sky

The weather turned as it does in those wild places shifting from sun to cloud to rain in the space of a breath. One moment I stood beneath a sky clear and blue and the next the mist rolled down from the hills veiling the world in gray. The rain came soft and steady soaking my cloak and chilling my bones but I welcomed it for it was the voice of the land itself

I came upon a ruined croft its walls of stone crumbling its roof long fallen to the ground. Heather and fern grew where once a hearth had burned and a family had gathered. I stood within those broken walls and imagined the lives that had been lived there the laughter the sorrow the quiet work of hands shaping earth and stone. The wind moved through the empty window and I heard in it the echo of voices long gone

At night I made camp beneath the shelter of a great rock or among the twisted trunks of ancient trees. My fire was small and its light danced upon the wet stones upon the silver trunks of birch upon the dark water of a nearby stream. The night air was filled with the sounds of the Highlands the call of a lone curlew the sighing of the wind the soft hiss of rain upon the heather. I lay wrapped in my cloak and listened to the heart of the land beating slow and strong beneath me

On the third day I climbed a high ridge from which I could see far across the hills and lochs. The sky was clear and the sun broke through the clouds casting the land in a light that made every stone and shrub and blade of grass seem etched in silver. I stood there for a long time the wind cold upon my face the vastness of the Highlands filling my eyes and heart. I felt small beneath that endless sky and yet I felt part of it as if the land had claimed me as one of its own

I followed the path of a river that ran swift and bright over stones worn smooth by centuries. Along its banks grew rowan and willow their leaves trembling in the wind their roots gripping the earth against the pull of water and time. I watched salmon leap in the falls their bodies flashing in the light their strength a wonder of the wild. I drank from the river its water cold and pure tasting of stone and sky

One evening I reached the shore of a great loch its surface dark and still beneath the rising moon. I built my fire there and watched the light flicker upon the water upon the stones upon the hills that rose dark against the sky. The loch held a silence deeper than the night and I felt the weight of its stillness the depth of its memory. The wind carried the scent of the water the peat the heather and I breathed it deep and felt the land fill me with its song

I stayed in the Highlands for many days walking the hills crossing the streams listening to the voice of the wind the song of the rain the silence of the stones. I spoke little for there was no need for words the land spoke to me in ways older than speech. When at last I turned south once more I carried with me the gift of the Highlands the memory of its wide skies and endless hills its wild beauty its quiet strength

Now as I write these words by the light of my fire at Lake Siljan the wind stirs the birches and I hear in it the echo of the Highland wind and I am filled with lon

ging and with peace