The Only Bloody Hill In Scotland Poem by Sheena Blackhall

Ten summers young. The day, all heat on heather.
The purple pathway brittle underfoot,
The peat as springy's cork,
I clambered Lochnagar for the first time
By Allt-na-Guibhsaich, startling a grouse
My birthday, and my father's gift, the climb.

‘Scotland's a pocket hanky from the top. Dee's source and Don's
You'll see, ' said he, all merriment all cheer.
My sandals slithered, slipping on the shale.
The sun raised crops of freckles on his brow, and queer
And lovely clouds sailed silent by
My widening eye, mysterious as swans.

Suddenly, gaunt and gashed into the sky it soared
High as a bird, a grey bird rising far,
Wings bent against the wind in that massif
The darkling, stark motif of Lochnagar

My father had not lied: like tents below,
Dwarfed tiny hills were pinned and fixed to heath
With Lochnagar, the general. They, his guards, beneath.
Three climbers died that day.
Fate flicked them off the crags like fragile wrens
Dropped from their lofty perch.
Happily tramping home, we passed the search
For that doomed trio. So, I learned the Gods
Are cruel to those mortals they don't love.
It ill behoves to anger those above.

At sixteen summers, gauche, with beau in tow
(Sunday Hell's Angel. Weekdays, city clerk)
I scaled the Fox's Ladder. Halfway up
We stopped to drink cheap whisky from a cup.
I sang Lord Byron's song. Sank to the heather
And nuzzled naked moss like any lover.
My dull companion fretted, pining for
Bike, sandwiches, the football match he'd missed;
He liked to do his courting in the park
Clothesbuttoned to the neck, where all was dark.
And like a sheep that's never left its pen,
Found freedom frightening. He didn't come again.
A cargo train, at thirty I was back,
Laden rucksacks, offspring trailing slow
It was a vital matter they should know
This family member, icon, lover, shrine
Boers' trek, their Laocoon struggle, past each pine
Tumbling and stumbling like loosened scree:
‘We want a rest! A piece! A drink! We want a pee!
Half-dragged, cajoled, unsteady candles guttering,
Their sire, a travelled mountaineer, kept muttering,
‘I've climbed Mont Blanc. This mountain's just a pimple.
It's not the only bloody hill in Scotland
You climb it every year, like some weird ritual.'

Forty, marriage over. Kids half grown
I climbed the serpent, silver way alone,
And then it rained! Sweet waters bathed my face
The benison of that beloved place!
The winds that rained sharks' teeth across the tarn,
That shook the doors on cursing crofter's barn
Blew tatters of misogamy away,
Blew arcs of rainbows, gleams across the grey.
Mountain of my delight, of all my knowings,
Your memory's a field of many sowings!

At fifty, with a Munro-bagging son
I took Dod Byron's route by Invercauld.
‘It's far. The heather's deep, You're none too fit, ' he said
And like a faithful collie, raced ahead,
Before. Then, sat and waited. Lit a fag,
A pencil line that smudged with every drag.
While up the tortoise slope, jaw set, face white.
Legs like cement, each steepening step a fight,
I toiled. He said, ‘Quite soon the day will come
When this will be beyond you.'Dearest son,
When the time comes I cannot touch the skies
I'd like a bullet, straight between the skies!