In the dark, trees transform. Gnarly oaks, outlined by the navy sky, become witches stooped over a cauldron. One throws up her arms and recites the incantations; another reaches with knotty fingers to the starry sky. Knowledge does not dispel mystery, and Nan Shepherd’s words have never felt truer.
I was born here, and can describe the view with my eyes closed: the fields - their slopes and edges, their patchwork horizon - and the path with its potholes and puddles, the path where I learnt to ride a bike – I find myself walking with my eyes in my feet. I am smaller, fragile, out of balance. A rock appears underfoot that wasn’t there in daylight. I pause, and breathe, and let my eyes adjust to the darkness. I walk on, feeling a ridge of mud, the roots of a tree. The world is also smaller, more enclosed, its shapes liquid, indistinct, the secrecy magical. I am a negative space, a nothingness, spying on the secret and busy world of nature at night.
My cousins and the globes of their torches bob along in front. Above them, a ghostly cloud is backlit by a slim moon. An owl hoots as they enter the carthorse path leading to the village. The wind picks up, whooshing through the hedgerow.
We reach St Mary’s Well, and I’ve forgotten about the always muddy puddle (which I used to call brown loch). My left foot squelches luxuriously. An owl hoots again, and I look up to see the village on the hilltop. The starry sky shimmers, its texture a midnight velvet, outlining the church steeple and weather-cock. We stand for a minute, looking at the sky. We decide which one's Orion’s belt, The Plough, and other things we can’t name, that lie years away.
The bell chimes eleven. A nightingale, as though woken by the tolling, skirts the bushes. I pause to hear its call, which sounds lyrical, and beautiful, and communicates irritation. Who are these night-roamers? This hedge is mine - be gone with ye!
Closer to the village, the lane falls silent. In soft glow of lampposts, the path blackens. Shapes merge and fade into darkness. Some houses are boarded up, their owners gone to relatives for Christmas. In others, the candles flicker, silhouettes move, decorated trees radiate behind drawn curtains. In a house opposite the pub, where the blind is not yet drawn, a couple are gesticulating, one leaves and the other’s hands go to their hips. In their garden, branches rustle against each other in the wind and a dog barks.
We enter The White Lion. A cousins’ pint before the vicar calls us to Midnight Mass. Finish those whiskies, she bellows, in full cassock, and ringing the last-orders cow-bell, there’s carols to be sung!
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