Man, like the animals, is meant to live together with
others like himself.
But the meaning of belonging to such a group is found in
the comfort of silence and the companionship of
solitude.
He shivers. The morning air is cold and damp as he crawls
from the tent, rainwater dribbling down the nape of his
neck as it drips from the canvas flap.
A heavy mist shrouds the surrounding mountains, hiding them
from view, rolling off their sides and drifting across the
moor grass and bog. It had been an incredibly uncomfortable
night and, as he fumbles with matches and the stove, he
speculates which aspect had been worst. Was it the hard,
lumpy surface on which he lay? Certainly, his back and hip
aches from the pressure of sharp stones that'd been digging
into him. No matter what position he adopted there seemed
to be a perfectly placed rock for the occasion. Or was it
the cold? Seeping up through the ground. Bone chilling cold
that could well have it's source in bodies under the bog.
If so, the Rowan had did it's job and kept them at bay -
apart from the cold.
The darkness had been bad. Total, unremitting, pitch black.
A blackness that emphasised every little sound; his own
breathing, the movement of fabric as he moved position, the
rustling of some small furry mammal in the grass outside.
He found himself turning on his torch for a few seconds
every so often - just to light up the interior with
reassurance.
Flapping of the tent canvas, as a gust of wind passed
through the Cauldron, prompted his imagination - conjuring
up an image of a sinister figure outside the tent in the
darkness, shaking it with a bony hand before...
Moonwatcher manages to get the stove going and discards
such thoughts as it's hissing flame turns to blue and he
feels the heat on his hands.
Leaving a mug of water on the boil he begins to stretch and
walk around the sheep ree, looking out over it's stone
walls into the mist.
It's still very early, not long after dawn in fact. He
pulls on the cape, a woolly hat for warmth and clambers
over to the stream. Mid Burn is still flowing quite fast
after the previous day's rain, tumbling down over the rocks
on it's frantic way to Loch Valley.
Kneeling down on a flat rock, he slunges his face with the
icy water, the rasping of bristles reminding him that he
brought no toiletries. Standing up he turns around in a
slow circle. There isn't much to see in the thick mist. He
could well be on a motorway roundabout on the M1.
But he isn't. He knows exactly where he is and feels
elation at successfully spending a night alone up here in
this wild, remote place. The weather has changed. The air
is fresh and cool. Today is the day he tracks down The Grey
Man.
The backpack feels strangely light as he walks away from
camp. Virtually everything he'd lugged up into the
mountains is in the tent, and that remains behind, a
solitary outpost. He'd thought about taking everything with
him, but discarded the idea immediately.
An underlying anxiety persists however. What if someone
happens along and steals it, or it's contents? A quick
check in the direction of the Jarkness Rig, shows it to be
as devoid of human presence as the last time he looked, and
the time before that, and the ...
In fact since he stumbled through the thunder and lightning
from that direction yesterday.
The mist has cleared now revealing the surrounding
mountains in all their brooding glory. Ahead, the Merrick
dominates the grey, overcast skyline with the other fingers
of the Awful Hand in close support. The rain stopped during
the night but the clouds hold the threat of more as he
crosses the marshy turf towards the distant Rig of
Enoch.
The air is warm and breezy, a pleasant change from the
sultry heat of the past week. As he picks his way
tentatively through squelching patches of bog, over loose
stones, around deep, ankle-breaking cracks and water-logged
holes, he's reminded of last night's disappointment at not
finding the colour film for the camera. He was sure he
packed a twenty-four exposure film cassette into the
backpac,k but, despite repeated searches, which only served
to keep him occupied before dark, it was nowhere to be
found. He reluctantly accepts that the handful of black and
white exposures left in the little Kodak Instamatic would
need to suffice. The Grey Man would remain grey.
The ground begins to rise steadily as he climbs the slopes
of the Rig, stopping frequently to look back and down.
Below, the line of the Mid Burn can be seen, the irregular
outline of the sheep ree barely visible and the slightest
dot of blue indicating the position of the tent. The
temptation to take a photo is strong but he decides to wait
until the return trip: save film.
The Enoch Rig takes him up close to the side of The Merrick
and as he walks along it's ridge the mountain fills his
world to the west. He stops and eats some Kendal Mint Cake
while getting his bearings. He's close now, very
close.
He studies the other side of the ridge, looking down into
the narrow gully it forms with the Merrick. The gully,
carries a tributary of the Buchan Burn making it's way down
to his left in the direction of Culsharg and Glentrool some
miles below.
Up to his right the gully emerges from a narrow 'V', a
pass, which he sees from the map, must open out on to Loch
Enoch. Directly ahead of him he faces and looks up at the
sheer bulk of the Merrick towering above him. He knows that
Davie Bell and his mates made their way down from that pass
up at Loch Enoch, down through the gully before him. He
knows they found the outcrop not too far down the gully on
the lower rock face of the Merrick. As he sits on the
coarse grass atop the Rig of Enoch with the breeze gusting
through his hair, Moonwatcher's excitement mounts with the
realisation that he must be almost on it! But where is it?
He clambers down the slope of the Rig into the Gully. For the first time since he arrived yesterday, he has a feeling of being enclosed. The walls of the gully shelter him from the breeze and block his vision of the surrounding landscape. He can make his wa,y either up towards the 'door' to Loch Enoch or cross the stream and, keeping close to the Merrick, follow it around. Choosing the latter course he crosses the stream and picks his way up and along the steep embankment.
He expects an anti-climax, an outcrop of rock that he'll probably pass a number of times, before realising that it is indeed what he seeks. Then a period of moving around to find just the right position to actually see a face in the rock. A position so precise that the slightest movement of head, eye or camera lens will dispel the illusion and the face will dissolve into craggy stone in an instant. After all this way, he's prepared for disappointment.
It's as he lifts his head, after scrambling on hands and
knees over one particularly slippy and treacherous bit of
ground, that he sees it.
It requires no second look. No careful positioning. No
squinting of eyes trying to make out the image. It's there
before him. The old man's face. The Grey Man.
It's so lifelike that, for a moment, he suspects a ruse. A
man made sculpture, carved by human hands and proclaimed,
with a sly wink by those in the know, as being natural - a
geological Piltdown Man.
Casting cynicism aside and almost in a panic, as if the
face may disappear at any moment, Moonwatcher fumbles for
the camera, frames the face in the viewfinder, and presses
the button. Having hopefully recorded the image, he makes
his way towards it.
It's tricky. The slope up to it is fairly steep and he
finds himself grabbing at tufts of long grass to haul
himself up to the level of the old man's beard. Finally, he
stands directly below him looking up at the huge, wizened
features.
He's larger than Moonwatcher'd imagined, around fifteen to
twenty feet perhaps from the tip of his beard to the top of
his head. Moonwatcher reaches up and touches the cold, hard
rock forming the beard. Now that he's up close, any
suspicions of human manufacture are gone.
He ponders on how old the formation might be, how it was
formed and how many ancient eyes may have gazed at him in
awe over the eons, perhaps taking him as a god or mountain
demon. Would they have feared him? Worshiped him? Or was he
simply ignored. How did he escape being recorded for so
long?
Finding no answers, he moves away again for a better view
of the profile, studying him for a long time, noting the
perfect symmetry and proportion of the features, the eyes,
nose, mouth, beard, even the wrinkle lines and the wart on
the nose. It's so lifelike, he expects the head to turn at
any moment and face him: a deep booming voice asking him
some philosophical question.
But the Grey Man remains motionless and silent, gazing out
down towards the Solway.
He decides to leave the old guy meantime while he explores
the shore of Loch Enoch. Heading up the gully he makes for
the opening onto the narrow shoreline of the loch and on to
it's white silver sand. Hard to believe that gypsies
tramped all the way up here to collect bags of this
sand.
Moonwatcher wonders if they knew of the rock man down in
the gully. They must surely have seen him on their way up
and, if so, what did their superstitious nature make of
him. But again, nothing recorded.
As he ambles along the sand he looks out to the small
island in the centre, site of another loch, tiny Loch in
Loch, and recalls how Bell and his intrepid bunch actually
paddled out to the island in an inflatable boat!
Following it's eastern shore, he makes for a point on the
grass where something metallic has caught his eye. Arthur,
at the Caldons, had told him of plane wrecks in these
mountains. Seemingly it's a black spot for aircraft, a sort
of Galloway version of the Bermuda Triangle. Weather
conditions can be extremely bad, radio and radar
communications temperamental.
Many wartime planes came down in this region and more
recently, civil light aircraft. The wreckage of the
aircraft is strewn over quite a wide area, nothing too
large remains, just small pieces: a wheel, front cowling of
an engine and twisted propeller. Sections of wing lie
around, the skeletal struts exposed by the ripped outer
skin.
He picks up a fragment here, an instrument there, turns
them in his hands. People died here. He thinks of the
people he's seen die, particularly in cars. Looking around
at the wreckage, he hears the screams, feels the terror.
People died here. He replaces the piece of metal carefully
on the ground and walks back to the gully.
The Grey Man is still there when he returns, and he chides himself for harbouring the ridiculous thought that he might be otherwise. He's like a friend now. His sole companion in this remote and lonely place. He says his farewells and begins to back off towards the burn. As he takes one last look back at the old man, dutifully maintaining his vigil, Moonwatcher wonders how long it will be before he returns to see that ancient old face again.
The camera clicks as the images imprint themselves on the
film. The camp far below and in the distance, Loch Valley,
Rig of the Jarkness, Craignaw, Dungeon Hill - all recorded
on crude black and white film. As he rotates the last
exposure through with his thumb, and the little window
indicates the roll is finished, Moonwatcher sighs and stows
the camera before making his way down the hillside.
A detour takes up him down towards Loch Neldricken, along
it's boggy shore to Crockett's misplaced scene from The
Raiders. He peers out over the dark water. A carpet of
orange/yellow reeds waft in the breeze close to shore but,
try as he might, he can see no sign of any mysterious
circular hole or pattern amid the rushes. If this had been
his main objective he'd have been sorely disappointed.
Whatever it was that Crockett and others saw here years ago
seems to have vanished with time.
But the Murder Hole was not his main objective, that has
already been achieved, and he finds it easy to shrug off
any hint of disappointment following his discovery of The
Grey Man.
He wanders freely now, with new found confidence. The
Cauldron seems less threatening, it's mountains and crags
increasingly familiar as he tramps and scrambles over
grass, peat bog and rocks. He climbs the steep Wolf's Slock
onto the ridge running between Dungeon Hill and Craignaw,
looks out through The Nick of the Dungeon, down over The
Silver Flowe, far across to the tiny dot that is Backhill
o' the Bush, a remote bothy destined for some future
visit.
From high atop Craignaw he scans the land he's traversed,
up to the Merrick and along the line of Benyellary,
Shalloch on Minnoch, Tarfessock and Kirrieroeoch. North to
the granite bulk of Mulwharchar and south to the Buchan;
the way home.
On a flat, shiny 'whaleback' surface of stone he muses over
dozens of smooth boulders strewn over it's surface. Could
this be the 'Devil's Bowling Green'? The story that the
Devil and some other mythical figure - was it Pan - played
bowls here has him smiling and actually trying to roll one
or two of the huge rocks - unsuccessfully.
It's been a long, rewarding day by the time he trudges
wearily between the stones of the sheep ree and drops
exhausted on top of the sleeping bag.
It's not the cold that keeps him awake that night, nor the
lumpy ground, fear of the dark, or the hunger making itself
felt since fuel for the stove ran out, rendering the last
packet soup useless.
None of these things can take the blame for him lying
there, eyes open, staring into the inky blackness between
him and the canvas above. Images of the landscape around
him, the face in the rock, the feeling of freedom,
satisfaction, achievement: that's what's keeping him
awake.
He gives up on sleep, crawls to the foot of the tent,
unzips the flap. As good a time as any for a call of
nature.
The torch beam picks out part of the stone wall in the
darkness. He crawls out the tent and stands up, raking the
beam around him, instinctively checking his surroundings.
It's some moments before he chances to look up.
The sky has cleared and, with no artificial light for
miles, stars in their millions are on show. It's as though
the Cauldron has granted him one last, very special
performance, a finale on a grand scale.
Moowatcher staggers forward, head tipped back till it
aches, his body turning round and round as his eyes scan
the vista above. In the absence of any other distraction he
feels as though he's floating in space, taking a journey
through the stars...
The Milky Way, bright, shimmering, glowing, slashes across
the sky, thousands, millions of stars giving the impression
of being tightly packed yet all with unimaginable distances
between them. High above, Ursa Major, the Great Bear,
directs his eyes to the Pole Star, Polaris and he follows
that constellation down through Ursa Minor.
There are so many stars of magnitudes not normally visible
to the naked eye that he has difficulty making out the
prominent constellations against the dazzling stellar
background. But as he focuses, they begin to emerge from
the twinkling mass. Gemini, the twins. Leo with the bright
Regulus at it's feet. Pegasus, it's great square almost
lost in the competition, globular cluster showing clearly
as a misty ball.
Such distances, such incomprehensible scale, violence and
power. Perseus. Cassiopeia, it's big 'W' illuminated
overhead. A shooting star sweeps across the panorama, then
another! Streaks of light. Starry visitors, brilliant, gone
in a second.
Moonwatcher has never seen a night sky like this, nor will
he again.
Awestruck, he wanders a good distance from the sheep ree,
mesmerised, oblivious to all but that above. Standing in
this big place, gazing up at an even bigger place, he
thinks big thoughts and, raising his arm with outstretched
fingers ...
... and 'touches the
face of God.'
Original story and material © 2005 Bob Wilson
Layout, editing and additional material © Dave Sloan
2005, 2012, 2016
'tachras' and 'Winding Yarn' © Dave Sloan 2005, 2012,
2016