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| A land on the edge of darkness | A land on the edge of darkness |
| (about 9 hours later) | |
| Near winter’s solstice, the sun doesn’t rise far here. It grasps above the skyline, then slinks the southern mountains in a tired arc, like a sentry pacing a watch-wall. During its six-and-a-half-hour march its light barely flickers the vast sky’s threshold. Darkness always seems close. | Near winter’s solstice, the sun doesn’t rise far here. It grasps above the skyline, then slinks the southern mountains in a tired arc, like a sentry pacing a watch-wall. During its six-and-a-half-hour march its light barely flickers the vast sky’s threshold. Darkness always seems close. |
| In the rafters of Scotland, this gaping landscape is a peculiar purgatory between mountain and moor, here and somewhere else. Distant peaks, mirages of other places, prowl its perimeter as if pulled apart to make it. People call it the empty quarter. But empty it is not. | In the rafters of Scotland, this gaping landscape is a peculiar purgatory between mountain and moor, here and somewhere else. Distant peaks, mirages of other places, prowl its perimeter as if pulled apart to make it. People call it the empty quarter. But empty it is not. |
| A smothering tartan of russet, red and green flatland, puddled with peering dubh lochans that catch the sky in them, this is Scotland’s blanket bog. The wet desert, or flow country – from Old Norse floi, wet. You’re closer to Norway here than London, and you feel it. | A smothering tartan of russet, red and green flatland, puddled with peering dubh lochans that catch the sky in them, this is Scotland’s blanket bog. The wet desert, or flow country – from Old Norse floi, wet. You’re closer to Norway here than London, and you feel it. |
| The bog’s both alive and dead. Damp, acidic ground grows sphagnum moss, the living surface of peat bog that deepens by a millimetre of decay a year. It’s unique in scale, perhaps the biggest anywhere. | The bog’s both alive and dead. Damp, acidic ground grows sphagnum moss, the living surface of peat bog that deepens by a millimetre of decay a year. It’s unique in scale, perhaps the biggest anywhere. |
| Related: Silence of the Flow Country | Related: Silence of the Flow Country |
| But December’s mildness has put the bog in an odd, part-numbed half-place. On a shoulder of a hill there’s a pool. It’s frozen, but there is no translucence: it’s matte, like bone. Thin water covers it. Between pillows of sphagnum, your feet find holes in the bog, and thick edges of ice jag your knees as you sink into oil-water that shocks with cold. By day, it feels treacherous. | But December’s mildness has put the bog in an odd, part-numbed half-place. On a shoulder of a hill there’s a pool. It’s frozen, but there is no translucence: it’s matte, like bone. Thin water covers it. Between pillows of sphagnum, your feet find holes in the bog, and thick edges of ice jag your knees as you sink into oil-water that shocks with cold. By day, it feels treacherous. |
| Walk out long after sunset, it’s unsettling. Much is said of the silence here: but on a rough night, there’s no silence. The growl of unchallenged wind strafing knoll and lochan, and of low vegetation battered to a hiss. On a moonless night smothered by cloud, what really gets you is the darkness here. It leans on you, like a thing. Your eyes scramble for light, but deep into an 18-hour night find none. Just an endless, peat-black flat. | Walk out long after sunset, it’s unsettling. Much is said of the silence here: but on a rough night, there’s no silence. The growl of unchallenged wind strafing knoll and lochan, and of low vegetation battered to a hiss. On a moonless night smothered by cloud, what really gets you is the darkness here. It leans on you, like a thing. Your eyes scramble for light, but deep into an 18-hour night find none. Just an endless, peat-black flat. |
| But on kinder winter nights above the same 1,500 strikingly dark square miles the skies become a packed celestial lightshow. And those dubh lochans – black pools – become apertures of brilliance in the dark as they catch the stars in them. | But on kinder winter nights above the same 1,500 strikingly dark square miles the skies become a packed celestial lightshow. And those dubh lochans – black pools – become apertures of brilliance in the dark as they catch the stars in them. |
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