The Year
In winter the islands of the north of Scotland are bleak and dreary. Leaden skies brood over large desolate mountains and rainswept moors.
At last Spring arrives. Clad in a green, purple, blue and yellow mantle, she gently touches the hills and plains, blows away storm clouds and crowns the mountains with soft fluffy-white clouds.
As Spring melts into Summer and Summer fades quickly into Autumn, the trees lose their leaves and the flowers leave the surface. The storm-clouds become frequent visitors to the peace of late summer evenings, "gate-crashing" on the serene and sleeping lochs. With startling suddenness the wind changes and sharpens, the clouds scurry into dark and foreboding armies and the gentle lapping of the water turns into white-topped, rolling breakers.
It blows over and again life resumes its natural pattern, as the animals provide for the long winter ahead. The long summer evenings close shorter and shorter. Winter has arrived.
The Wounds of Love
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I saw her and I loved her from the first, For though I lov'd her 'twas of no avail, And yet I bear the wound deep in my heart, |
| Anthony Kerr. |
The Phantom Wood
It was as if in a dream I cautiously approached the wood which confronted me. Night was descending upon the earth, covering it with her dark, foreboding mantle.
The blackness enveloped me. I looked to left and to right; there was no escape. On either side of me the same gloomy friendlessness met me. I proceeded nervously; the menacing silence was everywhere. The dense cluster of trees on either side reflected their solitude on to and into all things. Eerie shadows, phantom guardians of the wood, crept silently amongst the trees, penetrating the thickets by their continual persistence. The thickets, stung to retaliation, threw out their own shadows only for them to be obliterated and obscured by their invincible antagonists. I tripped, lost my footing, and fell. That was not the first time. Repeatedly I had been tricked by the combination of shadow and hidden roots covered by the fallen leaves. Repeatedly I had scarred my leg or arm by their deceptiveness.
I blundered on through the Phantom Wood, casting hasty glances to either side. I was aware of tiny faces, or eyes, surveying me from vantage points - minute holes and crevices of which I was usually oblivious. Rustlings, hardly audible at first but gradually increasing in volume, accompanied the Autumn wind as the chill night air embraced my cheeks and reddened my nose. Owls, outlined against the sky, hooted spasmodically in vain attempts to disturb the uncomfortable silence. They succeeded only in emphasising the eerieness and quietude, thus making me more uneasy and disconsolate than I had previously been.
I was now beginning to think that the dream (for that, I had concluded, was what it must be) would never end; I had long since abandoned all hopes of ever regaining civilisation, and was destined to remain in the abyss into which I had been thrust, for ever more. It was not, of course, a dream, and I eventually realised this. The deceptive patterns made by shadows repeatedly had me guessing which was the real thing. The trees had been transformed by the difference in light and had assumed grotesque forms, monsters descending upon me, the limbs and boughs waving in time with the wind.
At this point the path to which I had clung all this time ran parallel with a stream which gurgled in rhythm with the wind and trees. The sound consoled me as any sound would have done at that moment. Miniature waves cascaded with miniature force on the miniature rocks (pebbles in actual fact) which lined and dotted the stream, giving it a fairy-like finish. A weeping willow overhung the far bank, its delicate fronds gently caressing the surface of the water. This I took in at a glance, but studied more carefully the slender beauty of the tree.
The trees now were definitely more spaced apart. I had reached the edge of the wood. I felt resentful, but why I did not know. It had been a nightmare experience, yet I felt inwardly at peace with the world, and with all living creatures in it. I still followed the stream which danced and sparkled in the last rays of light. I passed the last tree of the Phantom Wood. The trees were broken, the strange phenomenon which had held me spellbound released its powerful grip, and I was free again.
At length the wood lay behind me; yet instictively I knew that the spell was not entirely broken, and that sometime I must return and once again try to recapture the mysterious enchantment of the Phantom Wood.