Ghosts in the Wind

by Natalie Dunsmuir (Canada)

I didn't expect to find United Kingdom

When you're walking on the Scottish moors in early spring and the wind is against you, it feels like an army of ghosts is relentlessly charging into your face, their battle cries the roaring in your ears. I was beginning to regret leaving the warmth of my dorm room to find out where this tiny road above my exchange university went. I had a vague idea that it would eventually lead, through detours and back routes, to the neighbouring town of Dunblane, home to the best little tea spot I'd ever been to, and I could already taste the fluffy warmth of homemade scones on my tongue. But I was nowhere near that yet. The road was narrow and deserted, winding between hills that the Scottish call mountains and that I call "small bumps" and crossing over rushing brooks. I walked over a bridge that was guarded by a worn sign saying exactly how much weight could fit on it, and made my way up a small hill, my eyes stinging from the relentless wind. There was no one around. A few small houses and an army of sheep were the only signs of human life. Before I came to Scotland and started to learn its history, the sheep, like the stretching empty moors and the abandoned castles, were a part of its charm, a beautiful ode to pastoral life. They were cute and fluffy and quaint and did not look at all like the front line of an invading English army. My history professor soon set me to rights. The sheep, brought to Scotland by wealthy landowners who were often English, took over the highlands during the Clearances, displacing tenant farmers who had lived there for hundreds of years. "Why do you think the moors are empty?" My professor had asked, and his words echo in my head as I pass yet another field of sheep and grass and empty. There's a desolate kind of beauty to the Scottish moors. You feel closer to the sky here, closer to eternity. Without the buzz of civilization or the dense tapestry of bird calls that is a forest, the quiet here seems like it's living and breathing. If you turn your head in to the wind, it will roar in your ears, but face the right way and all will be hushed and at peace. The light plays games with the fields and hills, falling onto the grass in radiant flickerings that shift with the clouds. I understand why the Scottish moors seem like a place where time travel is easy. As I continue my walk, it feels as though I already have time travelled, even though I know that a few kilometres away is a busy university campus, a pub, and a thousand or so students panicking about midterms. But here, all is still. I round a corner of the narrow road and a stone monument comes into view on the edge of a grove of trees. It's twice as tall as me, but seems almost forgotten on the outskirts of this small wood and across the deserted road from yet another empty field. I stop when I reach it and bend close to read. "In memory of the Macraes killed in Sheriffmuir, 13th Nov 1715, when defending the Royal House of Stuart. The Kintail and Lochalsh companies formed part of the left wing of the Highland Army and fell almost to a man." The ghosts in the wind seem to cry a little louder in my ears. I stand there and stare at the monument, marking the spot of a great and terrible battle. The empty field behind me seems alive with figures rising and falling and fighting. Nearly 1400 people died here, in this lonely and abandoned spot on the very edge of the Highlands. Eight hundred Jacobite rebels and six hundred government soldiers. On this spot, history was decided. I turn away from the stone and back to the empty road. As I walk away, the wind accompanies me, roaring its sorrow in my ears. The rest of the world may have abandoned this spot, but it never will.