Leaving the words out in the wind

Okay, I admit it. I go walking in order to not hear any manmade sound. To get as far away from humanity’s chatter and clever contrivances, macerating machines, even music. I do this in order to hear myself. All the noise carried on waves of wind. I walk far to hear the forest snap and rustle against a blank sonic canvas, not blank,

for the birds

startled from their roosts

or singing for love

I walk long. It takes hours to get a hill between you and the sound of a power tool. Walking is a piece of walking attached to a piece of walking. This day the air is with me. In my face or at my back, I won’t get hot, so happy hours. Last year I went up Càrn Bàn Mòr in snow. The devil’s chill breath funnelled out of Sgòr Gaoith looking like hell’s smoke tower, straight up from that curling white arc above Loch Einich. Not today. But a year later hell lies invisible beneath, or is not, from one peak to the curve wave tor of wonder. Air pushes snow, hail, sleet, and momentarily rain, the wind rattles my sticks, the wind speed sometimes making the snow fall faster than the action in a silent movie. Silent it is not, howling my hearing, battering my jacket almost as if I can hear the ice crystals pierce my eyes as well as feel them. Atop Sgòr Gaoith I wait. For change. But first I meet Chris with a Union Jack perfectly centered on the front of his cap. He is a man of air, a flyer of planes in the Air Force. An air of fun, joy, in tempest we discuss wellbeing and nature, their link, why we are both here on this blasting day and he says by way of explaining his job

We do bad things to bad people

The words fall on the snow cornice surrounded by the love that he reeks. Pressure blows the occluded view over us from the surface of Loch Einich and suddenly all is clear, reveal, sublime and it’s nice to share such a view such a feeling and he says again

We do bad things to bad people

and never have I wished blessings in such profusion upon a fellow hill person as this beautiful man walking toward other peaks hopefully having left something behind in the ice mist craw of Satan’s mouth, as perhaps we all do.