Argus - I

The rocks had a lunar quality. They dotted hillsides that seemed to rise up on either side and disappear into the clouds. The rocks didn't seem quite as big as we actually found them to be.....

When I walked up to the crest of the hill, I saw a lunar sight. Ghostly green-covered hillsides, laden with craggy rocks that looked like huge, sharp edged crystals of a moon mineral. There was also a cairn to my right. It didn't seem real, except I was there. It didn't seem to me that anyone had been there before....so who had set up the cairn?

Mists continued to swirl.....

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It was cold, rainy and chill. His wounds needed tending. Armour always slows a warrior down; luckily, he had escaped the slaughter. There was nothing left to do except take to the hills. The upper corries of Torridon. No fit place for a wounded man; but he found a cave and some warmth.

Battles are supposed to change things, at least change some of the past. And sometimes you can get so weary of it all.

The next day Torridon was a blaze of sunshine. His wounds scarred, and he was on his way. He found a horse; rode south. Past Kintail, then into Knoydart. A trackless wilderness. No one would find him there and the hounds of vengeance would not find a track to lead them.

The sun stayed with him all day.......

In another age, marauding guitars would find the track and pick it up, just as the hoofs of his steed rutted the path now and raised its dust.

I've got to keep my memories aside,
I've got to try to live again.

And there's a time for waking up and feeling down,
It's when you have to pick your feet up from the ground.

Ride in the sunshine when you can............ there will be another day to change my history. The Cuillins always covered the horizon, black as night.

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The cairn told of someone, surely not in this age. As I ran my hands over the stone, I felt the comfort it might have given. When life was simpler. When this world was larger. Slower. When travel indeed meant to go somewhere and feel the distance. And then, when it meant stepping into another age - and stepping back would take an eternity.

There was a time when a rock guitar had grain and gravel, not to grind your teeth in the dust, but just enough to suggest depth. Steel on a cymbal felt like the clash of swords in battle. But when we sang, not of death and destruction, but of sadness, infinite and eternal longings. Of failure, but with hope waiting on the wings. We stopped to song our lives with care and music; and not to brutally pour out our anger any which way we knew. The song was always bigger than us. Sometime world.



I met a man who felt the same way,
That the world had passed him by.
Told me all his troubles,
That the world had made him cry.

Life had kept him waiting,
Regretting his pain inside.
Had to feel underrated,
And hated, besides.

Sometime world, pass me by again,
Carry you, carry me, away.

Sometime world. And the time when love, sunshine and the wind in my hair were of one picture. There is a meadow somewhere in Stonethwaite.......... I remember. The words were easier to write and the pictures clearer. Even murky teals and ashen greys were happier hues.



Her hair was golden brown
Blowin’ free like a cornfield
She was far away
I found it hard to reach her
She told me you can try
But it’s impossible to find her