Wild Moment: Colin Hughes

"Our shadows encircled by rainbows like haloes / Blessed by our chance in a million reward..." Read Colin's poem celebrating a memorable family hillwalk with accompanying inversion and Brocken spectres.

Inversion

Dank, dreary, drizzly, dull and drab,
A short January day of northern gloom,
When it hardly gets properly light.
Aye, its dreich enough on the hills today.
It’s a day for presbyterians,
Up we go, a family hillwalk,
An Caisteal, over Sròn Garbh and Twistin Hill,
Rough west highland bounds with rocky outcrops,
A grand adventure for a Glasgow teenager.

Engulfed, soon enough, in clammy cloud,
Aye, a thick Scotch mist sits low on the hills today,
Coarse upland grass, beaded and drookit,
Visibility less than fifteen yards,
Like navigating underwater, but then,
A lightening above, a thinning of the cloud,
Is that a hint of blue? Of sun above,
Or just a passing glimpse of brightness?
The air brightens and lightens some more,
Our pulses quicken, our pace accelerates
Sunlight floods in and we are above the clouds,
Emerging into a heavenly paradise,
Dazzling, clear, warmer and radiant,
Aye, it’s bonnie and braw on the hills today

Gazing out over a sea of clouds,
An archipelago of mountain summits
Like islands in the sky,
Cloud waves lapping and billowing on their shores,
A dizzying panorama of familiar tops,
Cruachan, Buachaille, Nevis, Schiehallion and Lawers,
Dubhcraig, Oss, Lui, Stob Binnian and More,
Disorienting us with their truncated forms,
Aye, the world is upside down today,
A tropospheric inversion,
Warmer above and colder below,
Prompting a stratospheric lifting of the spirits

We feel on top of the world up here
We wander high on sunny ridges, 
Admiring our Brocken spectres on the clouds below
Our shadows encircled by rainbows like haloes,
Blessed by our chance in a million reward,
Having cheated our way into heaven,
We linger, sprawled like Victorians on the summit,
Marvelling at the novelty, absorbing the low winter sun,
We linger longer, tarrying a while
Reluctant to drop back down to the netherworld below, 
To plunge and swim in that cold cloud sea,
Submerge ourselves again in the overcast underworld,
And head back down to Earth with a bump.

The Inversion, it sticks in my mind,
Memories indelibly etched, fifty years later,
Landmarks that shaped who I am
Shifting and sharpening my perception,
Whetting my passion, and a yearning for more.
Aye, that was a fine day in heaven.

© Colin Hughes 2023

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