Eventually I got to thinking about my own favourite sound, the one that really sticks out and sends the shivers down my spine. It was all a bit surreal to be honest, as I found myself describing a sound I’d only ever heard a handful of times. I don’t think I’d ever even had a outright conscious thought about it, let along taken the time to put it at the top of my favourite sounds list. It’s a really wonderful sound, but I think what sets it apart is the environment in which it must be heard.

I’ve only ever heard the sound while on my own. My clearest recollection comes from a hillwalk a couple of years back. I was walking up a long glen, along the bottom of which flowed a burn of such crystal clarity that I simply had to scramble down and plunge my hand into one of its bitter-cold pools. I remember fanning out my fingers and pausing for a few moments as the flesh under my fingernails started to turn blue. Perhaps it was the long walk, the heavy pack or just the sheer relief of having time alone in a beautiful glen, but I found staring at my hand through the water utterly compelling. As numbness finally began to turn to pain, I freed my frigid hand from the water and continued up the glen.

As I neared the head of the glen, my objective loomed large ahead and above me. A myriad of small gullies criss-crossed each other on my right hand side, falling steeply down to the valley floor. My route lay to the left, up the grassy ridge studded with boulders and wee knolls. My breathing steadied and my heart slowed, and as their combined hum faded into the background, the sound came seeping into my head.

It was like a chorus of far-away flutes playing in unison and slightly out of tune with each other. At the first instant of perceiving it, I felt a little confused, and I remember turning 360 degrees around, looking for a sign of life. None was to be seen, save the circling raven, at least one of which seems to inhabit every single glen in Scotland. I faced back toward my route, before my attention was pulled back to the right and those snaking gullies.

I was pretty sure that the sound was coming from up the cliff face, caused by a perfect matching of the wind direction to the gully faces. As the wind sheared across the sharp edges of the gullies, it caused them to sound out a chorus of notes that resonated around the amphitheatre. I don’t know why this particular set of gullies produced such a pronounced audible sound, but I do know that it was an absorbing experience and one that I won’t forget.

The chorus came and went as the wind sped up and slowed down. Eventually I could predict when the sound would come by the feeling of increasing cold on my right cheek. I squinted my eyes and searched up and down the mountain side, perhaps expecting to see evidence of some lone inhabitant of the glen who was having me on. There were no other human souls in the glen that day, just my confused and amazed self, the wind, the cliffs and the raven.

I think the reason the sound was so completely enthralling was that, standing alone in a glen like that, one’s imagination can quickly find itself free and running. I thought of the folks that used to live in the glen, and all of the other countless glens like it, who have now died or moved on, leaving the beautiful landscape to pretenders like myself. I wondered if they had ever noticed the sound.

But the strongest feeling I had was that the sound was the closest thing to the sound of eternity that I had ever heard or felt. I wasn’t listening to something crafted by man or creature, but to a musical sound caused by wind and rock. I had no control, no role to play, no applause to give. I was there to appreciate it perhaps, but I’m not sure for what else. Whenever I get to thinking about life and its ups and down, perhaps even its purpose on a particularly dour day, I find it difficult to comprehend the scale and meaning of time. Standing there, trying to predict the onset of the flutes, I had a kind of moment of clarity where I thought, for the briefest moment, that I understood what a really long time was like.

I have often looked at rocks and mountains and thought about the brevity of my life, even the brevity of human existence. But even then I find it hard to really connect with or understand those thoughts. Sure, some things are old, I’m pretty young, what can I say? I think the perception of a tangible sensation helped make the connection in a way that, perhaps, nothing else can. I was an intruder in the landscape, there for a brief few hours, and I was lucky enough to hear a sound that has probably sounded in that glen since the last ice age.

In the end of course, I’m tempted to laugh all of this quasi-philosohpical nonsense off, and to say that a sound is just a sound, and the sound in that glen just happened to be a particularly nice one. Some days I do just that, but not this morning. For today as least, it’s the sound that helps me understand.

A recent comment pointed out the imminent arrival of the hollywood production of the book The River Why. I may make a post about this at some point, but suffice to say I’m a little worried about this fact… The original book gave rise to the name of the blog, and is full of subtlety and deep character examination. I’m not sure how possible it is to transfer that to the screen, particularly a hollywood production-type job. My only reassurance comes from the fact that David James Duncan, the author, has contributed to the screenplay.. here’s hoping.

No fishing done yet, though I am planning some grayling trips in the next couple of months. All has been very quiet around these parts for the last few months, so if you’re still bothering to check the blog, thanks for visiting. I do hope to get back to more writing as soon as I can.

Sad events relating to a close friend have put some things into hard perspective in the last two weeks or so, which has made updating or doing anything for that matter somewhat trivial. However, I have been out with the cameras, so perhaps Tamanawis will have to undergo a temporary transformation over the next few weeks into a photoblog. To be honest, it was always just an excuse for showing off photos anyway..

Read about it here.

Taken from the Oban to Craignure ferry back in July. Rain showers, windy, cold and beautiful: this is why the west coast is so fantastic.

Wolves prefer fishing to hunting

Reading through, it seems a little bit like research which states the blindingly obvious, but hey it’s still interesting.

I wondered how it had got to be there. I’d like to think it was roasted and eaten as part of an enjoyable fishing trip. But given the state of the rest of the place, I couldn’t help but suspect a more brutal, pointless history. From what I can understand, killing large pike like that, even when they live in a trout loch, is not a particularly good idea. Along with eating the weaker, often sick and injured fish of smaller species, they stem the tide of young jack pike that can really do damage. I won’t go into the subject of the state of Loch Awe any further at the moment, for if I start it will be a tirade of venting… holy $%^£(*^ are some people stupid.

As we were walking up back to the car, a bright red mushroom was spotted. I’ve never seen anything like it before. I’m still trying to find out what it was, because none of my books show anything so deep a red. There were a few of them together, buried under the long wet grass. If anyone is an expert (or otherwise), I’d be delighted to know it’s name.