Far, Far Away

After the birthday party I changed into running gear and left the village hall behind, back in the hamlet with the `swedish` houses and cluster of stone dwellings. I rose beyond the bare, broadleaf woodland  picking my way along the rutted drove road. I chugged past the log bothy and arrived, finally, up at the cheese well. Though the day had been sunny and warm I was now being assailed by nippy hail stones. Beyond a half-mile of bracing moorland I dived into yellows and blue-greens of countless spruce and pine and larch. After the long ascent it felt good to glide down, wrap the forest around me.

I thought about how to turn these sense-experiences of mine into sculpture.
In my home reside a number of odd wooden figures; some of these have birds perched atop their heads; as though both man and beast share souls.   They stand as testimony to an earlier, less busy phase of my life. 
As I ran down towards a stack of logs at the roadside, the air heavy with resin and engine oil, I thought on the seasoned hardwood I`d need to keep an eye out for. In our small, wooden house, shared with three growing kids, I wondered: where can I work ? How do I carve out the pockets of time ?
Suddenly to my right a valley swooped down and away south east. I stopped and watched green and brown trees rolling down its sides, following a burn`s course through Lewinshope, shaded by heavy, wet clouds.  Echoing birdsong seemed, to me, feather-light and hopeful; secluded in the glen. As I stood looking my eyes were drawn up and far beyond the immediate scene to quiet hills, picked out in bleached, pastel blue and yellow. Faded as if by time and bathed in warm sunlight. Silent ethereal hills and their sweet soundtrack.
Turning left and north I hit the trail again and was soon down amongst the shades, threading my way through stones and larch-needle carpets. I thought back to the luminous, nostalgia-feeling encounter above and was reminded of Caspar David Friedrich`s heavily symbolic paintings of trees and bleak lonely hillsides. His apparent need to contort landscape into the mind-shapes of religious dogma. I ran on.
Down where Glenmead burn joins the logging road home, I stopped and walked slowly, like a cat stalking prey. There ahead was a large bird with brilliant white markings in the top branches of a scot`s pine. I crept forward, staring at the perched figure, and, as I approached, its tail feathers dissolved into foil and the osprey became a silver bag fluttering in the wind.