Ancestal winds and stones

To Lochinver today through the craggy Assynt hills. Stopped at two old crofter villages, then the fragile remains of Ardvreck Castle, then outside Lochinver to Achmelvich where my great great great grandfather John MacLeod (my father’s mother’s family) lived in the mid-18thC.

We follow a walking path between mossy stones, ancient-feeling, up and down across craggy gray and heathery hills. Not a metre of flat pathway. Looking west, the sea, the Summer Isles, then perhaps Newfoundland which so resembles this landscape. Braes rushing full off the hillsides from, they say, more than 40 days of rain. Stone walls running up and along stone hills, the rolling line being the only thing that distinguishes stone from stone. Remains of stone foundations of crofts growing out of stone dells.

The stones prout upwards from these early as the cottage and wheel stones sink back into that same earth, each becoming hardly distinguishable from the other.

Eventually we reach the remains of a roofless grist mill, seemingly located nowhere, but sited along a fast running brae where crofters would have once brought their grains - a 'clack mills' from the sounds of the clacking of the stones as they turned. Two great grinding stones, perhaps almost two metres across lean against the walls. Above us would have been Loch na Creige Leithe, the Loch of the Grey Stones, where a dam ands sluice would have controlled the water flow. Everywhere heather, stone and silence, apart from the rushing stream. he present “nowhere” is an illusion created what has happened here: the Clearances pushing people away from this land to the industrial centres like Glasgow and Manchester, and far-flung colonies – Australia or Canada like my ancestors. Clearancs and perhaps longing for some other, possibly more hospitable place.

As I walk I enjoy feeling the same gusty, chilling wind felt by my ancestors, glancing out between openings in the land towards the sea and nearby islands as they would have, looking inland up across the hills in expectation of what was in the next valley – home, a girlfriend, some stray sheep, safe dry shelter out of the rain or sleet. They feel close – unencumbered by the world of clan, honour , spite and vengeance – close, immediate, sunk, encircled in time like the solid rocks underneath and the driving raindrops across my face.

What would my great, great grandfather be thinking as he looked towards the sea, reflecting on the decision to be made about the journey to Canada in 1848? How could he imagine he would have met his wife to be, Mary (and another MacLeod) on the passage over? How different the low fertile rolling hills of West Zorra, south of Stratford,Ontario, where they settled and farmed, and built a new grist mill – and faced sultry summers and shocking snowdrifts and several month winters for the first time. Walking questions … across the rocky Assynt highlands where my father’s mother’s father’s father’s father and his partner to be once walked.