Arran Song (for John G Hall)
The top hills of Arran were held in mist. The blue sky filled with cirrus clouds held back over the black waves. Salt water of the largest waves splashed across the front of the ferry. Holy Isle was black under a black cloud as the ferry slowed over swells into the terminal.
There was a queue outside the bus so he walked along the sea front at Brodick before heading inland towards Glen Rosa. He put up his tent by the rising river. Lying on top of his sleeping bag he listened to crows, seagulls, blackbirds, swifts, swallows, ringed plovers, grouse, curlews and later the ghost of a cuckoo call.
In the toilet there was a birds' nest. When he went into the toilet a swallow swooped in and checked on her chicks in the eaves. Directly under the nest - on the floor between the urinals - there was a small black and white mound.
Near the tent he stopped by flowers. While waiting for a red and brown and black patterned butterfly to open its wings he watched as it retracted its tongue from nectar; the tongue curling up like a tiny fire hose.
On the way out, by the rubbish bins, he saw a red squirrel skipping through litter.
* * *
He went up the clear path to Goat Fell, passing cloud berries, bog myrtle, bilberry, yellow pimpernel, speedwell, asphodel and star of bethlehem. In the sky ahead he saw a buzzard. The broad spanned wings of its rolling flight held some of the same sylvan colour as the butterfly's wings. Back on the path he noticed a shiny green beetle, lifted it, felt it, placed it gently back in the heather. On the summit his eyes were dreams of blue corolla.
He descended to Corrie from North Goat Fell. Ravens hovered above him and landed on the rock where he'd lunched. They were like friends you'd make anyway. In their black flight something of the heavens was contained. The ridge path ran untouched in the dustless air.
As a boy he'd dropped litter on the streets of Kilwinning, but on walks in the country he'd always taken rubbish home, rubbish that included banana skins, bread crust, apple cores. Under the reproachful flight of ravens he thought of leaving something behind.
He heard a deer and looked up for the spot of brown in rocks, waited for the deer to move but it didn't before he did. He saw a golden eagle fly in from the sea, over his head then over the ridge behind him. He looked for the shadow of a hump backed whale in the blue silver beyond the glen. There was an osprey. At Corrie he had a pint in the pub and watched for otters from the beer garden on the shoreline, thought he saw them in the movement of wave. He walked down the road a while and then back on to the teeming shore, smelled the salt air, skimmed smoothed stones across the water, squinted at gannets crashing down for fish. He heard the tire tracks of luminous cyclists above the brushing waves. He thought he saw somersaulting otters but it was the sea bumping and jumping over rocks. He walked to a bench, sat and waited. He looked at an anchored oil tanker and the low cloud above it. Car tyres curled over the gravel behind him. He got up and walked away.
* * *
A helicopter buzzed over the Sound of Bute, over wind farms, over Ardrossan harbour, over a lighthouse, over quickening glitter, under porcelain blurs of cloud, then again over the bluennesses of Bute. Three girls laughing on bicycles circled the coast road. In the water, a girl in a green bikini walked along dragging a boat behind her. When the girl in the boat was gone he stripped to his shorts and waded into the water. He did breast stroke, back stroke, crawl. He felt the seaweed and the warm currents from the Gulf Stream, tasted the salt. He reached through the water for sand and did handstands. He swam blinking through the sunlight on the sea. He wouldn't leave the paradise of the gentling water and swam in circles until the sun fell behind the houses that lined the road that ran around the island's shore. When eventually he came trembling out under the emerging starlight he saw that the incoming tide had taken his trainers. The salt water droplets on his body reflected pin points of the moon. A woman with kiss curls collected swan feathers by the shore.
* * *
At Kingscross he walked around clementine coloured jellyfish and looked over at Holy Isle. The squat white lighthouse sat backed by two white houses and the green rise up to the higher rocks and cliffs. An oystercatcher flew from right to left and back again, the perfect symmetry of its elegantly rushing wings seeming to brush the scanned over surface. Two oystercatchers played around together, running and jumping, red bills vivid and calling loudly to distract him from the nest only yards away.
Looking to his left across the bulk of Holy Isle and back around he could see the range of peaks and the ridge of high hills rising over Lamlash, the highest, Goatfell, to the right of the rocky vista, clouds around it like a bush fire or dust balls.
He jumped into the surf and swam halfway across, resting a few minutes on a red buoy. On Holy Isle he sat shivering on the sand and rose to run up and down in the heat of the sun. His whole body was pink, glowing. The sting of a jellyfish told him the same thing. He looked at Arran, swam back faster.
Walking over the pebbles and shoreline rocks, he climbed back up to a grassy ledge, felt the soft grass under his feet, lay back, stuck to it, dried under the sun and the flight of white butterflies. As his breathing slowed and the rising and falling of his chest became almost imperceptible, he looked at the purple skies and sparkling stars that filled the vision of his closed eyes.
* * *
He looked at the sunset shining on the hull of an anchored tanker in the sound, and knew that memories could be a concept of heaven too. Memories embedded in the graces of Arran; in skies sad as cello songs, in the coruscating granite of hills, in the manifest glories of sea light through the windows of a yellow church.
Neil Campbell
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