One of the joys of sitting by or on a rock is the contemplation of our time here. A boulder’s time is different to ours, something that only seeps into our consciousness with an effort of imagination – giving us a connection to something incredibly old, and much wiser. Scotland’s vast and varied basic rock set –gneiss, granites, schists, sandstones, basalts, and so on – is the simple ground rock underneath us, under all that traffic, life, and business of the world, something subsuming all our human timeframes. It appears to us as outcrops and boulders, through accidents of climate, erosion, and time. When it is a lone boulder on the landscape, some sort of pathos accompanies this isolation. Such a boulder sits in Glen Gyle, high up under the Bealach nan Corp and facing the snout of Beinn Duchteach. It has taken me a good few hours to get here: car to Stronachlachar, bike to Glen Gyle, then a steep hike up the gravel and concrete pylon-road to the bealach. It is a boulder that enco
Climbing is deeply reassuring. Which seems odd to say, at first. There is so much anxiety around the climb, attached to anticipation, also to 'failure' and return, but when you are in the well, actually climbing, everything is as it should be – balanced. Climbing: it's not about imposing a sequence on the rock, more about accepting what choreography the rock will allow you, what it will release. It has to be studied in detail, with the body, not just the eye. Brushing and touching rock is the opening of the inner lens. The skin of the stone speaks with a deeper well of gravity and a resonance which can be felt only by touching the stone, gripping its friction, pulling into gravity's clasp and feeling that transmission of core and shaped mass. Shaped by pressure, wind, water, ice, the stone dictates its own movements from its own life. So when we boulder we are tracing something ancient rather than living any statement of the moment. Like following an invisible line or l