The Turning of the Seasons

For so many years now, and nor­mal­ly at this junc­ture dur­ing the sum­mer sea­son, my mind drifts off to oth­er places. Morn­ings were you can see your breath as you close the front door behind you, the car heat­ing is turned up and the sun has bare­ly reached the hori­zon. A lit­tle while lat­er the sun is high­er and shin­ing right into my eyes as I low­er the sun visor and head north.

For as long as I can remem­ber, the true occur­rence of me bid­ding farewell to the sum­mer with its bar­be­cues and gar­den gath­er­ings, is to vis­it an old friend as the sum­mer greens give way to gold and the morn­ing skies are gilt. Scot­land beck­ons me every year. Along with the prodi­gious change in the colours of the land­scape, it is the noise­less­ness of the glens and wood­lands that tempt me, and each year it feels incom­pa­ra­ble to me.

On one par­tic­u­lar wan­der­ing I was head­ing down the glen past Loch Glas­carnoch and Loch Dor­ma were the evening was bathed in an ear­ly set­ting sun and all around me was glow­ing. I stopped before arriv­ing in Ullapool at the head of the Cor­rieshal­loch Gorge and opened my car door to the silence and nip in the air of the High­lands. Abhainn Dro­ma is the riv­er the drains the waters of Loch Dro­ma which even­tu­al­ly becomes the Falls of Measach that cas­cade into the glacial melt water depths of the Cor­rishal­loch Gorge.

Stay­ing away from the dan­gers of the gorge itself, I opt­ed for the gen­tle and grace­ful upper cas­cades that pass over a flat, plate-like rocks that form a series of lit­tle water­falls. The rock sur­faces are ver­dant green as the shal­low waters always allow ample light to sup­port a healthy algae which flour­ish­es which makes them spec­tac­u­lar­ly slip­pery! For this rea­son I wise­ly chose to work close to the ground, the waters run­ning towards me and over my boots .

From here the algae remind­ed of the greens of the sum­mer that had passed whilst all my sur­round­ings were giv­ing way to the arrival of short­er, cold­er days, warmed only by the autum­nal colours of the larch trees root­ed on the rivers edge. Soon after­wards I packed my bag in com­plete shad­ow of the sur­round­ing moun­tains and head­ed into town. It was good to be back.