will ye go, bonnie lassie, to the birks of aberfeldy?

As much as I am coming to know the sea here, enjoy the waves, I am a landlocked uplander at heart -- & I was very happy to go off to the Highlands this past weekend. I was up at Glassie Farm for a workshop with students from St. Andrews, & it was basically an anthropologist slumber party. Really a good gathering -- intriguing, open people, excellent conversations about all & sundry... Though I felt guilty for not doing work all weekend, this was so refreshing. I am not quite sure how to express how much I needed this right now, both the sessions that acknowledged & assuaged a bit of the turmoil I've been feeling about fieldwork, as well as just the need to escape the city.

We stayed in a lovely lodge halfway up a hill on a sheep farm, hills such a bright mossy green, covered in melting snow-patches, right beside a burn that rushed & rushed into little steppy waterfalls. After a particularly nasty migraine the night before, I spent part of an afternoon wandering about the fields, smelling the chilly wetness, wooly mist, the freshest earth & feeling like I could finally think well, think fully, for the first time in weeks.

& that night we had a campfire right here, crackling mixing with the stream-sounds, & the little sparks flying into the pitch darkness, indistinguishable by tiny distant town-lights below. I needed this so badly -- space & clarity, not hemmed in by granite buildings & bad flat-mate atmosphere.

(The guard-horse, in his tartan blanket.)

(Sleeves of green).

(Bramble & soft cloudy stretch of yellowed grass & green valley)

(Looking down to the farmhouse from the upper road)

Such beautiful country. Quiet & pastoral, a wild comfort. From the hills above the house you could see the whole town of Aberfeldy below, nestled up on the hill above the Tay. If you went upriver from the picturesque bridge you'd pass a wee hamlet called Weem, then the Dull Woods, & up to Fortingall, home of a yew tree that's probably the oldest in Europe, & the site of early Pictish gatherings.

Downriver from Aberfeldy are the Birks -- a birch grove -- which were a favourite spot of Mister Burns, & then much further down you'd come to Dunkeld & Birnam wood, where the oaks wandered off to Dunsinane. I am plotting a summery return someday...

(& this is a chaffinch. There were also flocks of woodpigeons in the spruces, all mournful cooing & pillow-shaking wings.)