Words From The West

As I walk, I shift to looking for blue. It helps me pay attention to the walk, wake up my senses for my writing, and generates some good photos too. Blue is a bit of a challenge in a woodland walk but as I emerge through the glen and out onto the Esplanade at Dunoon it’s all I can do not to laugh.

The sky is a huge brilliant blue, the sea a magnificent reflection. The view I’m drinking in as blue as blue can be.

“Blue enough?” The universe whispers. “Won’t this do?”

And twirls off into the sky, leaving me to admire the clouds of her trail, and an utterly wonderful blue.

The sun comes out as I get to Gourock and waiting for the boat is pure pleasure. The Jupiter’s such a cheery ferry: a simple tea-bar, an open car-deck, passengers crowded into the sunny side of the boat.

Grandparents taking the weans for a day out, resplendent in freckles and red hair.

Pipers crossing to practice or play.

Old gentlemen with medals on their jackets, off to pay their respects.

And me: drinking in a sky of blue. Sails on the Holy Loch. Red Western Ferry boats doing the short crossing, signalling as they go:

Nearly there now.

When I get towards the end of the loch I feel my feet starting to slow. It’s not just that I’m tired, feet blistered at the end of the day. No, it’s the knowledge that when I get to the end of the loch I’m at the end of the walk and the end of the day.

Must turn back eastward: home.

Till I stop and think: no.

This is home. This is where I belong. This is where my heart needs to be, and where my spirit flies.

I’ll leave part of myself here. (I always have done – maybe that’s why I feel lost when I’m gone.) I’ll go back to work and pack and plan and get ready. It’s a three month period of work.

But before you know it I’ll be back. Where I should be. Home.

It’s a beautiful day, as I knew it would be, and my spirit soars when I set off early with a picnic in my bag. No trouble, ever, to get up early at the weekend and drive west: to get through Glasgow and know you’re at the start of the real world.

The sun’s shining on the boat and when I arrive at Hunters Quay the noise is deafening: birds singing, chirping, tweeting, chirruping, laughing. They are celebrating my being there. I cannot believe I will wake up each morning and hear their joyful celebration.

The air is balmy: soft, sweet, deliciously May time. It can only be a sunny May day in the west Highlands.

I’m nervous about the arrangements for the walk, it suddenly seems far-fetched to find the car park, and hail the bus, and the bus to arrive at the right time and take me to the right place, but I let go and trust. And the bus comes.

The walk starts at Benmore Gardens: teeming with visitors and rhododendrons ready to burst into bloom. It’s an 8 mile walk to the top of Loch Eck, along its west side, all the way from one end of the Loch to the other. The sun shines all the way.

And it’s a photo walk too, taking pictures as I go and this stopping, and noticing, and taking of pictures, oh it takes me so long to keep stopping and taking and walking and stopping. It adds a good hour to a four hour walk.

But it’s worth it. I find hidden treasures. Tiny red thistles, just waiting to be admired. Outrageous gorse bushes, firing up yellow to the heavens. Purple rhododendrons, blooming and in bud. Tiny hedgerow flowers: weeds really, that you’d normally walk past without a glance. But look what happens when you stop, bend down, pay attention, whisper “thank you”.

Look how much beauty you find.

Towards the end of the walk I lie down in the grasses. Oh yes, it’s partly because I’m tired and it’s hot, but it’s mainly because it’s the best way I know to get up close and personal with the Highlands. To lie down on the warm, rough ground, and look out through the moorland grasses. Breathe in her scents. Watch through that grassy frame. Let the landscape move, softly, as the grasses bend in the wind.

It’s a feeling of perfect contentment. Of being at peace, at ease, of being in precisely the right place at precisely the right moment in time.

And giving thanks.