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