HOLYROOD

Holyrood park - a wild hilly place on the outskirts of Edinburgh

WILDERNESS

noun /ˈwildərnəs/

1. an uncultivated and uninhabited area

2. from the old English wildēornes -
land inhabited by wild animals | wild dēor - wild deer.

I have never learnt to be tame. Even when the city of Lyon tried to break me, and domesticate me with all of its concrete enclosures, I looked to the horizon - searching for space. I grew up in space, you see... Large expanses of meadows, creeks, gardens and those wild bits in between. My first school was more field than school, and we were allowed a rarity: permission to climb all the trees on the property, as high as we might like. Many of my classmates spent their time in a small fort, built right into the evergreen hedge that bordered on the caretaker's property, and I remember there were a few times where somebody's eye got poked by a stick. However, my friends and I favoured one poplar tree whose leaves waved silver in the wind. I could climb till the branches became too whip-thin to hold my weight. 

Wherever I go, I will find the most wild and unruly habitat, and call that my own. In Edinburgh it was Holyrood Park. That park is just my kinda place: a cluster of cliffs, formed into hexagonal columns, and smoothed at the top by the wind till the whole landscape looks more like to a moonscape. The park is dotted with black crows, pockets of blasting wind, and strung about with small paths of red earth.

I would run to Holyrood, legs at full stretch, then blast to the top, lungs bursting with oxygen, so that I could see my surroundings more clearly. And when I reached even halfway, I felt I could breath more clearly, freely...

Uninhibited and uninhabited sound very alike. 

Path leading up to Arthur's Seat through Holyrood Park.
Blackberries and flowers growing in Holyrood Park.

THE SMALL WONDERS OF HOLYROOD:

Tussock grasses intermingled with flowering purple clumps of heather.
Sour apples from wild trees.
Complete silence. All my words and songs are pushed back down my throat by the winds, and I am forced to eat my words. Up there, I can bellow with happiness, and no person will hear me.
Brambles of blackberry.
The maze of pathways - one could explore Holyrood a little each day, and still find some new path by the end of a week.
Playing that thrilling game of trust with the wind, where I stand, arms spread eagled, leaning into the gale; and the gale in turn supports me, if only for a moment.
The red dust that collects on my shoes.
This one ledge, off to the side, where In can sit for an hour undisturbed.
That other ledge, where the cliffs jut out over the city like an obstinate chin.
The view of the ocean.
Holyrood's paths looking over Edinburgh.
Arthur's Seat and the flat hilltop on Holyrood Park.
Heather flowers on the hills of Holyrood.
Crows dancing in the wind - Holyrood Park.
Looking out over Edinburgh from Arthur's Seat.
Holyrood Park and Arthur's Seat.
Geological formations - basalt columns in Holyrood Park.
“We need the tonic of wildness... At the same time that we are earnest to explore and learn all things, we require that all things be mysterious and unexplorable, that land and sea be indefinitely wild, unsurveyed and unfathomed by us because they are unfathomable. We can never have enough of nature.”
— HENRY DAVID THOREAU

STOCKBRIDGE

At the Botanic Gardens glasshouse in Edinburgh.

SUNDAY STROLLS

Sunday is a special day for me. It is the day when, despite having a long to-do list, I ignore all those nagging chores and instead spend the whole day doing small nothings - those things that would make me happiest. A bath, for instance. Sunday afternoon, when the rain pours, that is the perfect time for a bath. One of those baths where you end up reading three chapters of your book as the water becomes tepid, and the pages get all crinkled where you turn them. 

Or perhaps a walk, Sunday is a great day for walking. One of the most enjoyable combinations I have experienced in life is this: Sunday, walking, in Stockbridge. Stockbridge is that small area of Edinburgh that was once a village, outside of the city walls, and is now a village, inside the city walls. It has a distinctly bohemian feeling, having long been the abode of painters and poets, boutique and brothel owners. I love to walk through Stockbridge, beside the waters of the Leith, to the market to buy myself a warm pie. I eat it while still walking, this time towards the botanic gardens where I can watch the squirrels and smell the variously coloured roses... 

The Leith walkway near Stockbridge, and thistles growing by the river.
The market in Stockbridge, Edinburgh. Stalls selling local, handmade goods like pies and soap.
A small terrier dog among hipster shoes at the Stockbridge market.
Stacks of second hand CDs and tapes at the Stockbridge market, Edinburgh.
Grey squirrel amongst the autumn leaves
Small succulent plants in terracota planters and stone garden.

When I walk, I like to sing to all the birds and the small critters, and to the river or the trees. 

Yellow flowers by the palm house in Edinburgh Botanic Gardens.
Handmade fox brooch in autumn leaves.
Desert flowers growing in a tiny glasshouse.
Succulents in a small open top glasshouse.

GREYFRIARS KIRKYARD

Greyfriars Kirkyard, Mackenzie's Tomb and poltergeist. 

 

I spend a lot of my time in cemeteries. They are such beautiful places - peaceful to some degree, what with the silence, and the grasses and the pathways. The cemeteries back home looked a lot like the kirkyards in Scotland: all jumbled. As if they were a rumpled bed-sheet, scattered with the crumbs of tombstones. Here and there, some flowers peek out of a glass jar, but most of the graves are too old to be visited - and they lay bare like bones worn smooth. There is always a knarled tree that grows from the broken mausoleum, and that one area, below a small dip, where no-one can see you, and you begin to feel that you are too isolated. I like to be a little scared sometimes; it is invigorating to walk farther and farther back into an old cemetery, till you lose sight of the gates, and the path becomes a muddy slip in-between tall trees. 

This being so, I was instantly drawn to the Greyfriar's kirkyard, in Edinburgh, and I spent a lot of my free time wandering between the headstones.

THE LEGEND OF GREYFRIARS

Most of the people that come to visit Greyfriars will have heard of Greyfriars Bobby - a small dog, whose tombstone they come to visit.

But then there are those of us who have heard of another legend, the one concerning the poltergeist.

Greyfriars has long been plagued with stories of a poltergeist, an unusually active one. The ghost, often thought to be George Mackenzie - an administrator for King Charles II, is so active that he has been called the best evidence for supernatural activity. He (if it is a he) has a long track record:

Strangling young boys who taunted his grave. 
Haunting his own house.
Coming back to the cemetery when his grave was desecrated, and scaring the crap out of people.
Clawing and scratching under clothes, often with no pain involved. 
Creating bite marks.
Creating cold spots, measured at under minus 20 degrees celsius. 
Knocking people out cold. 

Naturally, being a weirdo and all, I wanted to investigate.

MY OWN LEGEND

My own story does not involve any horrible occurrences of scratching or biting. Actually, it is a pretty tame tale, and I still feel a little doubtful about the whole thing.

I had joined a tour of the cemetery, partly for the fun if it, but also because I wished to see the Covenanter's Prison, which is closed to the public due to the many occurrences of people fainting in that area. 

The tour guide was prancing about, and rambling a little, and we were stood about fifty meters from the locked gates of the Covenanter's Prison. I began to feel like someone was watching me, out of the corner of my eye I could spy them: a tall man, about six foot, was standing very close and staring right at me. 
 

I thought to myself: this is odd. Who would do such a creepy thing. I turned to look at him, and saw just for a moment, a figure. No, not a figure, more like a head and shoulders standing six feet tall or more, and towering over me now. Then it evaporated into the night. I was freaked, but chalked it down to my eyeballs not working. 

Then I returned, same tour, different guide. Nothing happened this time, thank goodness. But I told the guide my little story anyway, and he asked me to come write it down in the log-book, a book of people's experiences. After flicking through that book for a while, I noticed something strange: about the time that I saw my figure, he began cropping up in other people's stories too... Before this, the only accounts were of physical feelings. But now people were actually seeing something, a thing they described as: 'a black shadow of a person, about six foot tall.'

Mackenzie's tomb, a former site of poltergeist activity.
The real life grave of Tom Riddell at Greyfriars.
Gates to the Covenanter's Prison at Greyfriars Kirkyard.
Greyfiars Kirkyard, plaques on the wall of the church.
Spider webs and tombs at Greyfriars - black and white photography.
Greyfriars Bobby - grave of the dog, at night.