...at Beinn Breac, chasing waterfalls, wild wind grasses, snow flurries & collies. There were kayaks leaving for Canna, a million miles below, pin-dots in the silver slipstream of open seas. It was odd...upsetting. To be up in these reeks & no longer be able to climb as my soul dictates, I looked back down toward the seas & followed kayaks heading out West - E9, E8, V this & that....I started giggling - suddenly I was to far away from the twin important reasons for being, floundering in no mans land. With no kayak to hand below & no face to scale above, I had in an odd moment of clarity - & became that most loathsome beast, a reluctant hillwalker yomping with sangwies, yet without purpose. A twitcher without an anorak.

A Black Mesa of sorts, yet not a bad back garden to have, & go to hell in...overall...
Sometimes, it dawns on you creeping.

Weakness can be a great thing, & strength is nothing when you see through into your true self. The creature you always were. When a man is just born, he is weak & flexible, when he dies, he is hard & insensitive. When a tree is growing, it's tender & pliant, but when it's dry & hard, it dies. Ergo, hardness & strength are death's companions. Pliancy & weakness are expressions of the freshness of being & what has hardened never wins in the journey of discovering its true nature... Weakness embraces the new era - Hardness just causes you to throw lumps of iron at your own head & drag the old era around, like a stone in a net...
Inside the dust ridden sunlit halls of finality & conclusion, the mystic waits & says, you are what you love, not what loves you...

An ataireachd bhuan -A’ sluaisreadh gaineamh na tràgh’d.

Thus, these mountains & unscalable walls that claimed my youth, are no longer an encircling prison of black toothed bastion, more a shelter, a shawl around my shoulders, a mother to run to out of the school gates, a random ghillie kill, a sermon, or a well executed frost proof .338 Lapua acquisition. But that also brings depth of shelter, away from the inane flood of human interference, a tower of fierce insanity providing this silent creature with new perspectives of the road ahead...& peace, for the sea is all around & oil paintings come in many forms, just as they say there are two moons. Sorley, the baying hound screamed, Coin is madaidhean-allaidh from the abyss...& all my empty beer cans are staring at me like little puppies waiting for treats...

Climb well young Jedi. Kayak further. Who can truly number the wild stones & the free seas? What foolish beautiful architecture we pin to the world...