Thursday, January 27, 2005
Still Life [Talking] Pat Metheny on ECM label.
Minuano [Six Eight] 9:25
So May It Secretly Begin 6:24
Last Train Home 5:38
[It's Just] Talk 6:16
Third Wind 8:33
Distance 2:43
In Her Family 3:15
Not much climbing I can do with a near broken back so this morning I trundled down to the lochside Training Cave Area over the water from Portree & Kilta & started preparing the monster traverse with a wire brush. Imagine a sandstone roof, 12 metres long, 8 metres deep, strewn with mini huecos along the length of it's rounded lip, harbouring hideous sloping shelves in its gloomy depths. It takes no amount of nous to realize that this is going to be the next project to fall...
Remember, if you're chopping out cave ceilings with a hefty wire brush or a gorrilla bar, take some old STIgS or HVP eyewear if you have it. If not, nip into town & get some standard spit protectors. I've seen plenty of enthusiastic intention destroyed after 5 minutes of brushing becuase of falling debris; leaving climbers sitting rubbing their eyes, weeping in the sunlight or visiting A & E....it's up to you matey. It doesn't stop you swallowing what falls off, but at least you can see what you're eating.
The cave itself is near perma-dry except on occasion, for its tidal floor, except on occasion, for its outer reaches; which transform into a whitewater waterfall run-off for Sithean Bhealaich Chumhaing in the event of a prolonged downpour. If to damp for climbing, it nonetheless, becomes a close to comfortable shelter in a winter deluge of ice & rain, if you can navigate the steep gullies & cross South along the black windswept lava strewn beach without incident.The cave is also a great place to get water cooled in the heat haze of a high summer thunderstorm. Here, tremendous atmospheric cracks & flashes reverberate off of the surrounding bastions & spread out across the loch with an eerie sustain. Have you ever gone swimming in a lightning storm? If the rain is hard enough, despite being out in a salt flooded sea loch, you can catch a hundred drops of fresh water in your mouth, bouncing back from surface impact.
Occasionally I'll suit up in my winter steamer & follow the tide over to Raasay from here. It takes a peaceful self belief, a trust & internal stillness, to spend hours in a remote & eeire atmosphere, just drifting alone in low light or darkness, out at sea, with minimal flotation & supplies, no s.i.g.i.n.t eye, no white rabbit ecapology up your sleeve, no stuffy rebreather, or Krill lighting...The sound out there in the black is acute, the vibration of a passing prawner, sudden wind squalls skipping along the surface, shouting drunks under an orange street lights carry for miles out here...the cold rush that tells you the Northern channel to Rona is imminently upon you..Stay calm, you're just drifting, it's just you alone in the ocean, but knowing the truth of the fact is...it's sometimes almost too easy to forget to come back...
Just never start thinking...The monster is not coming up underneath me...the monster is not coming up underneath me.
Minuano [Six Eight] 9:25
So May It Secretly Begin 6:24
Last Train Home 5:38
[It's Just] Talk 6:16
Third Wind 8:33
Distance 2:43
In Her Family 3:15
Not much climbing I can do with a near broken back so this morning I trundled down to the lochside Training Cave Area over the water from Portree & Kilta & started preparing the monster traverse with a wire brush. Imagine a sandstone roof, 12 metres long, 8 metres deep, strewn with mini huecos along the length of it's rounded lip, harbouring hideous sloping shelves in its gloomy depths. It takes no amount of nous to realize that this is going to be the next project to fall...
Remember, if you're chopping out cave ceilings with a hefty wire brush or a gorrilla bar, take some old STIgS or HVP eyewear if you have it. If not, nip into town & get some standard spit protectors. I've seen plenty of enthusiastic intention destroyed after 5 minutes of brushing becuase of falling debris; leaving climbers sitting rubbing their eyes, weeping in the sunlight or visiting A & E....it's up to you matey. It doesn't stop you swallowing what falls off, but at least you can see what you're eating.
The cave itself is near perma-dry except on occasion, for its tidal floor, except on occasion, for its outer reaches; which transform into a whitewater waterfall run-off for Sithean Bhealaich Chumhaing in the event of a prolonged downpour. If to damp for climbing, it nonetheless, becomes a close to comfortable shelter in a winter deluge of ice & rain, if you can navigate the steep gullies & cross South along the black windswept lava strewn beach without incident.The cave is also a great place to get water cooled in the heat haze of a high summer thunderstorm. Here, tremendous atmospheric cracks & flashes reverberate off of the surrounding bastions & spread out across the loch with an eerie sustain. Have you ever gone swimming in a lightning storm? If the rain is hard enough, despite being out in a salt flooded sea loch, you can catch a hundred drops of fresh water in your mouth, bouncing back from surface impact.
Occasionally I'll suit up in my winter steamer & follow the tide over to Raasay from here. It takes a peaceful self belief, a trust & internal stillness, to spend hours in a remote & eeire atmosphere, just drifting alone in low light or darkness, out at sea, with minimal flotation & supplies, no s.i.g.i.n.t eye, no white rabbit ecapology up your sleeve, no stuffy rebreather, or Krill lighting...The sound out there in the black is acute, the vibration of a passing prawner, sudden wind squalls skipping along the surface, shouting drunks under an orange street lights carry for miles out here...the cold rush that tells you the Northern channel to Rona is imminently upon you..Stay calm, you're just drifting, it's just you alone in the ocean, but knowing the truth of the fact is...it's sometimes almost too easy to forget to come back...
Just never start thinking...The monster is not coming up underneath me...the monster is not coming up underneath me.
innerthought..
...it was the knowledge that my girl would've been turning 12 this year, a twenty-two story blonde I bet, I'd have taught her every skill of the mountain down to the sea, but, there's little suprise in the speed, violence & indifference with which life destroys life by turning on its own tail...
I've been out here for years, I havn't forgotten one moment, ordinarily conversing with them on the inside of an empty day to day clarity. We're skinning clams on the lochside, there's been a mud fight, everything's gone to shit, Zoe is laughing, they both are, they look beautiful, natural... nothing is torn down in the vision, everything is simplistically how it should be...
Drifting out here, there's no destruction, no loss of, or taking of life. No click of a ragged covert pin, no dulled confinement, coercion & senseless iron resolve to bring the soul home...Out here I can re-invent what it means to have beaten the clock, once again, & return home empty & still. I stayed with her through her illness, but I was never there enough. I tried, but I never tried hard enough. I think it's ok to swim in the fragments of what home meant, through whatever time there is left, to keep the fondness open, & this beautiful book of ghosts alive & beside me... Out here, lowness, like loftiness, turns on a silent moment & carries far. Mortality has no longer any pitch or lever upon which it can buy or sell it's goods. Deaths diamonds & pearls leave no impression becuase I don't, nor ever have, given a fuck about the glitterball. Out here the rage just slips away with me, unable to stay afloat in it's own game of ghosts...drifting out here, I can still discern her presence, & all the other things, that are to me, the trace elements, of life..
I've been out here for years, I havn't forgotten one moment, ordinarily conversing with them on the inside of an empty day to day clarity. We're skinning clams on the lochside, there's been a mud fight, everything's gone to shit, Zoe is laughing, they both are, they look beautiful, natural... nothing is torn down in the vision, everything is simplistically how it should be...
Drifting out here, there's no destruction, no loss of, or taking of life. No click of a ragged covert pin, no dulled confinement, coercion & senseless iron resolve to bring the soul home...Out here I can re-invent what it means to have beaten the clock, once again, & return home empty & still. I stayed with her through her illness, but I was never there enough. I tried, but I never tried hard enough. I think it's ok to swim in the fragments of what home meant, through whatever time there is left, to keep the fondness open, & this beautiful book of ghosts alive & beside me... Out here, lowness, like loftiness, turns on a silent moment & carries far. Mortality has no longer any pitch or lever upon which it can buy or sell it's goods. Deaths diamonds & pearls leave no impression becuase I don't, nor ever have, given a fuck about the glitterball. Out here the rage just slips away with me, unable to stay afloat in it's own game of ghosts...drifting out here, I can still discern her presence, & all the other things, that are to me, the trace elements, of life..
Anyways, had I not smashed maself up on Sunday, the left to right traverse would've gone by now I'm certain. The story so far has weighed in at an approximate V12 so the complete outing will aquire a higher number to be uttered in the ScottishClimbs NRDB. No doubt the forum fannies will be lining up for a grumble..
There was a flapping Heron fishing down there today, watching me go about my own antics on one leg -the Heron was on one leg, no me-. Arctic gulls were screaming co-ordinates to eachother high in the sea mist while the dog spent his time licking an anenome or levering mussels off rocks. This afternoon, the village, the Cullin, the loch out towards Raasay, are all lost in a shroud of damp, seemingly impenetrable fog. The island has a quiet muffled bass line, similar to 4am streets after deep snowfall...
I'll put a photo of the cave up one day...
posted by ※Sgian Dubh ※ at 5:28 PM | 
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