i.
The depths of winter and it’s two degrees above.
Alone, writing this on my phone for want of pen and paper, I am wending my way by train to somewhere colder, watching the land change as we rattle on.
From the Highlands down to the Borders.
Everywhere the eye falls, there is water.
ii.
Water coursing out from the earth over rock and stone and taking us to the yawning mouth of a holy river.
Water roiling and rushing in the washed-out mud-bed of a twisting stream.
Water flashing down a rock face, turning over itself in a tumult of peat and slate.
Water tumbling from the sky feathers of snow to settle abundant drifts.
Water driven in wind-flung specks of ice to etch white lines against furrow and ridge.
Promethean lochs, muscled surfaces rippling.
Heather-cupped lochan showing nothing of their secrets.
Sleet stippling the train window, streaking away.
Seeking, yearning, keening.
Water moving, and disappearing. Deepening its mystery.
Everywhere the eye falls.
iii.
Winter in abeyance. Two degrees above and all is water. The sun is low and the light merciless.
For a Saturday the train is quiet. The A9 - our sister route - streams alongside. Solitary cars blip the landscape.
A fleeting sign for 24 Hour Fuel.
It hasn’t snowed for days.
There is still some snow in the hills, in the creases and crags above Drumochter and Dalwhinnie.
Some meaning not as much as you’d expect, meaning barely enough to convey a child’s sled.
Build a snowman. Raise an igloo.
There is snow but the sun is low and the light merciless.
January the new April. The cruellest month.
You don’t need a camera to get the picture.
iv.
Surprising enough to see a lone white giant looming suddenly through the mist.
Grace and danger in these hills yet.
But the dimpled lowland pastures are bare, the ruminative sheep too easy to spot.
And here and there, rust-licked traces of old agriculture, small instances of habitation: a broken bridge, a crumbling cottage.
Places where people lived and worked the land by hand, earned slim livings and dreamed mineral dreams.
From the doors of mud-cracked houses.
A soft twist of smoke, trailing a thought hard-won and unyielding.
Everywhere the eye falls, water. Winter in abeyance.
The sun is low and the light merciless.
Wild terror in such mildness.