Modern texts often refer to it by the estate names of Fisherfield and Letterewe. I prefer the traditional and far more evocative appelation of 'the Great Wilderness'. On his pioneering 16th-century map, Timothy Pont simply scrawled 'Extreme Wilderness' over the area, and for long afterwards its contours and outlines remained mysteries to human civilisation. I once met a man at a bus stop on the Wilderness's perimeter. He had just traversed the region. Sunburnt and in mud-caked boots, he was a bag of nerves, as if he had encountered ghosts and aliens on the hills, a culture shock more severe than a week in southern India. It's that kind of place ......
I get off a bus on the rising arc of a lonely country road. Three cars are parked in a lay-by, and I cast a wistful eye in their direction as I take my short, sharp leave of the comforts and knowns of the human world. I have visited the Great Wilderness before, but never through this, its eastern portal. Dark evening clouds hang stubbornly over the hilltops; the loch is still and sombre as I tread the silent path along its shores. Soon the eeriness of this long, dark Scottish summer's eve begins to press in on me. A sound in the heather makes me jump; it's only a crow. Black outlines of crags and precipices in the heart of the Wilderness ahead catch my eye, and I momentarily wonder why I am here at all. I could, instead, be eating dinner at home, with convivial company and a glass of wine, before retiring to the sofa and the latest alternative culture podcast.
As well as tranquility and peace, the joyful release of tensions, the bliss of the separate self dissolving into infinity, the path of self-knowledge seems to involve confrontation, fear, being up against it. To go beyond the confines of normal egohood and consensus reality is scary stuff. What lies on the other side of the door? And what ego willingly relinquishes its control and power to a wider reality? Tantric Buddhists seek out this confrontation with the limits in cremation grounds at midnight, and by invoking wrathful deities. It's there is shamanism: 'A person who wishes to understand something about shamanism must first of all experience their own death. This is an arduous task! ...... The person who has not already died once as a human being cannot understand anything about shamanism.' (Christian Ratsch et al, Shamanism and Tantra in the Himalayas). In the arts: 'You scared yourself with music, I scared myself with paint, I drew 550 different shoes today, it almost made me faint' (Lou Reed and John Cale on Andy Warhol). And in serious entheogenics: 'DMT sometimes inspires fear - this marks the experience as existentially authentic ..... A touch of terror gives the stamp of validity to the experience because it means "This is real." (Terence McKenna, The Archaic Revival).
At 9 p.m., with the sombre twilight full upon me, I take a sharp turn right around the prow of a hill and enter a broad but deep strath (a Scottish river valley). People have been here before - there is a reasonable hillpath - but I feel that I have stumbled into a secret, hidden fairytale land. Small groups of deer peer down at me from the hillside. Some run away, while others just gaze, still, silent, and curious. Suddenly, a blue spectre appears out of the gloom of the valley below me. I eventually make out a man. He is considerably older than me, extremely suntanned, wearing a striking blue rain jacket, and is walking rather slowly. It will be midnight before he reaches the roadside, but he is unconcerned: the skies of northern Scotland won't get completely dark at all on this June night.
More deer retreat from the water's edge as I head towards a level spot near a stream flowing into the loch. Beginning to erect my simple tent for the night, I notice a larger herd, thirty or more, grazing on the hillside a mere two hundred yards away. By the time I have pitched my shelter and look up, they have melted into the hillside and the night.
Here, for this short time, the rules of the game are changed; I am no longer king of the castle. Me and the rest of creation are on level terms, and it is a strange, unsettling feeling. I have my mobile phone, but here there is no signal. I have a tent against the rain, and a sleeping bag to ward off the cold. The deer have a coat to keep out both damp and cold, however, and it doesn't rustle noisily in the wind like my tent, keeping me awake. My ego wants to recoil, to retreat into the rigid shell of its own superiority, but a basic sense of justice and honesty inside me fights the tendency. I breathe out, relax, and allow the natural democracy of the valley to take me over.
I try to sleep, but the unfamiliar rhythms of this secret place make it difficult. The never-ending twilight penetrates the thin film that is my tent. And in truth the valley is full of noises at one hour before midnight. High-pitched sounds of a waterfall in one direction, constant gurgles from the stream in another; a cuckoo singing insistently into the deep twilight; all manner of other creaks, sighs, and rustlings. I go outside to see. Nothing, in this dimension at least.
A battalion of midges greets me when I emerge the following morning, and the dark clouds of yesterday continue to hang ominously over the tops and ridges of the mountains. I ascend a strange stairway of smooth, angled rocks towards the weird world of the summits. At one point I see a solitary deer below, standing quietly on the rocky pavement. What moves her to be there, alone and watching?
I continue upwards, and the silence of the mountain fog envelops me. Strange presences announce themselves in the gloom, elusive shapeshifters. I climb over two mountain summits with these ghostly gods for company. Then, en route to the third and final peak, the clouds dissolve into nothingness, and the world around me is transformed, radiant and bejewelled. Light plays on the surface of lochans sunk deep into the earth's crust, and every contour of distant crags and hillsides stands in sharp outline. Confrontation passes, consciousness expands to far horizons, a thin skin separates this wide place from infinity.......
I get off a bus on the rising arc of a lonely country road. Three cars are parked in a lay-by, and I cast a wistful eye in their direction as I take my short, sharp leave of the comforts and knowns of the human world. I have visited the Great Wilderness before, but never through this, its eastern portal. Dark evening clouds hang stubbornly over the hilltops; the loch is still and sombre as I tread the silent path along its shores. Soon the eeriness of this long, dark Scottish summer's eve begins to press in on me. A sound in the heather makes me jump; it's only a crow. Black outlines of crags and precipices in the heart of the Wilderness ahead catch my eye, and I momentarily wonder why I am here at all. I could, instead, be eating dinner at home, with convivial company and a glass of wine, before retiring to the sofa and the latest alternative culture podcast.
As well as tranquility and peace, the joyful release of tensions, the bliss of the separate self dissolving into infinity, the path of self-knowledge seems to involve confrontation, fear, being up against it. To go beyond the confines of normal egohood and consensus reality is scary stuff. What lies on the other side of the door? And what ego willingly relinquishes its control and power to a wider reality? Tantric Buddhists seek out this confrontation with the limits in cremation grounds at midnight, and by invoking wrathful deities. It's there is shamanism: 'A person who wishes to understand something about shamanism must first of all experience their own death. This is an arduous task! ...... The person who has not already died once as a human being cannot understand anything about shamanism.' (Christian Ratsch et al, Shamanism and Tantra in the Himalayas). In the arts: 'You scared yourself with music, I scared myself with paint, I drew 550 different shoes today, it almost made me faint' (Lou Reed and John Cale on Andy Warhol). And in serious entheogenics: 'DMT sometimes inspires fear - this marks the experience as existentially authentic ..... A touch of terror gives the stamp of validity to the experience because it means "This is real." (Terence McKenna, The Archaic Revival).
At 9 p.m., with the sombre twilight full upon me, I take a sharp turn right around the prow of a hill and enter a broad but deep strath (a Scottish river valley). People have been here before - there is a reasonable hillpath - but I feel that I have stumbled into a secret, hidden fairytale land. Small groups of deer peer down at me from the hillside. Some run away, while others just gaze, still, silent, and curious. Suddenly, a blue spectre appears out of the gloom of the valley below me. I eventually make out a man. He is considerably older than me, extremely suntanned, wearing a striking blue rain jacket, and is walking rather slowly. It will be midnight before he reaches the roadside, but he is unconcerned: the skies of northern Scotland won't get completely dark at all on this June night.
More deer retreat from the water's edge as I head towards a level spot near a stream flowing into the loch. Beginning to erect my simple tent for the night, I notice a larger herd, thirty or more, grazing on the hillside a mere two hundred yards away. By the time I have pitched my shelter and look up, they have melted into the hillside and the night.
Here, for this short time, the rules of the game are changed; I am no longer king of the castle. Me and the rest of creation are on level terms, and it is a strange, unsettling feeling. I have my mobile phone, but here there is no signal. I have a tent against the rain, and a sleeping bag to ward off the cold. The deer have a coat to keep out both damp and cold, however, and it doesn't rustle noisily in the wind like my tent, keeping me awake. My ego wants to recoil, to retreat into the rigid shell of its own superiority, but a basic sense of justice and honesty inside me fights the tendency. I breathe out, relax, and allow the natural democracy of the valley to take me over.
I try to sleep, but the unfamiliar rhythms of this secret place make it difficult. The never-ending twilight penetrates the thin film that is my tent. And in truth the valley is full of noises at one hour before midnight. High-pitched sounds of a waterfall in one direction, constant gurgles from the stream in another; a cuckoo singing insistently into the deep twilight; all manner of other creaks, sighs, and rustlings. I go outside to see. Nothing, in this dimension at least.
A battalion of midges greets me when I emerge the following morning, and the dark clouds of yesterday continue to hang ominously over the tops and ridges of the mountains. I ascend a strange stairway of smooth, angled rocks towards the weird world of the summits. At one point I see a solitary deer below, standing quietly on the rocky pavement. What moves her to be there, alone and watching?
I continue upwards, and the silence of the mountain fog envelops me. Strange presences announce themselves in the gloom, elusive shapeshifters. I climb over two mountain summits with these ghostly gods for company. Then, en route to the third and final peak, the clouds dissolve into nothingness, and the world around me is transformed, radiant and bejewelled. Light plays on the surface of lochans sunk deep into the earth's crust, and every contour of distant crags and hillsides stands in sharp outline. Confrontation passes, consciousness expands to far horizons, a thin skin separates this wide place from infinity.......
