History

No, I'm not going crazy - no more than usual - but this hillside on Glen Massan has more than one layer of history for me. These tumbled rocks are clearly from some great fall of boulders in the distant past - perhaps as the glacier below melted and the permafrost thawed? This convinces me because it is one of many such falls in the same, steep-sided glen. But whatever its origin, that rock to the left of the group used, in my time in these parts, to stand clear among the heather, with not a tree in anywhere close. I'm sure that somewhere there's a photo of me sitting on it, or my boys sitting on it - and you certainly would have  a problem scrambling up among the silver birches now. And I often wonder why they suddenly grow up in this manner, and whether greater control of the red deer numbers has anything to do with it ...

A strange day, which began with a fairly early (for me) trip on the ferry and bus to my wonderful hairdresser in Greenock. By the time I emerged, hair once more short and suitably Pentecostal in colour, the sky was grey and threatening rain and I was glad to find a Dunoon bus approaching not long after I arrived at the stop. It was all very urban and a tad dreary (apart from my hair). I read all the way across on the ferry, and hurried home for a late lunch. Then I wrote Intercessions for Sunday, and a birthday card for my grandson, and discovered it was sunny again.

So the day ended, when everyone else was doing sensible things like cooking and eating dinner, in a glorious walk up Glen Massan, where this photo was taken and where in fairly quick succession we saw a raptor - perhaps a buzzard - swoop silently over the road and a perky little red squirrel, who hopped up the bank from the burn, stared at us, and then bounded over the road and into the safety of Benmore Gardens. And once more, I realised that urban life is no longer something I could tolerate.