Interloper

I`m always looking for new routes to interesting places, chief among these being the high moorland pass along which the drovers` road travels. Since  last week`s gloomy encounter down at Elibank castle I was glad of the chance to explore an unknown-to-me path to the Minchmoor`s airy heights
Leaving our house, I took a left turn up into the forest, following the Bold burn logging road a mile or so until it turned sharply right and upwards. Soon after, climbing an abrupt left, I ran southwards again, up and up. Two mountainbikers (rare in this neck of the woods) whizzed down past me. We waved hello.  Minchmoor burn came to greet me as I pulled upwards to the crest.
I`m often looking out for deer. Usually I glimpse them crossing the forest road far in front. If I look into the deep green forest glades to left and right I never see them. My clackety running shoes, smell and general noisiness (down or upwind ) puts paid to that. In "The Wild Places" Robert MacFarlane describes  climbing high into "his" tree and, after sitting there quietly for a long time, the birds returned to it and he could observe them, be a part of them. Perhaps if I stop moving and instead sit on a cut tree bole, quietly absorbing the colours, smells, sounds surrounding me, these elusive deer will, in time, appear..but during January, resting too long on a cold stump is chilling...
I sometimes lie awake just before the break of dawn and imagine that to run in the forest now will be to merge with, rather than intrude upon, the shy wild creatures: the roe deer, badgers, foxes, as light slowly grows and birdsong fills the spaces. 
I don`t so much feel kinship with the deer of these hills and quiet, wooded tracks, but the silence and listening quality of their habitat draws me deeply; the great surging breath an acre of scots pine takes, trees as impassive as Easter Island statues.
Climbing out from the forest I reach the drovers` road , jostled by wind and light.