08 10 07

All morning Ben Resipole, Creag Dhubh, Bein Bhreac & the others can’t rise from the clouds. There’s no Sgurr visible to the west, no pointed Viking hills of Rum – Hallival, Askival, no Ainshval to be seen. The hound lies heraldic on the heather. Over by the parish church they slash & burn rhododendron understorey, but the smoke cannot clear the canopy, tangles in branches. Sheep amble past on their journey into the subconscious. While the mist hides, it also reveals: vast moorlands of webs, each with points of water at each intersection. There are two types of spiderweb here – one is floss & largely horizontal, but with diagonal digressions & sometimes seemingly random. This is all across the bog myrtle & up high into pale birches. The other kind is the geometric spiral from one branch to another of the oak & the rowan. The spiders must have (over millennia) adjusted web building techniques to what they hoped to catch, if hope is not too far-fetched a notion in the case of a spider. Like any fisherman, the mesh is larger or smaller according to the anticipated haul. Mist also amplifies the often unheard, the unlistened to: the booming surge of the incoming tide & crescendo of curlews. From all directions, the stags’ great groans of existence, their moaning lust for life driving them. Electricity volts through the hound’s lead to my hand; she’s seen them first - a stag & three hinds making unhurriedly for higher ground. Her ancestors sing in her blood, she trembles lightly. In another life I would have slipped her after them & followed her uphill.