Rambling on…

Some of you know me from bookcrossing.com where I go by the name of swan-scot. Some may remember me from ScottishHills.com, or the MBA forum – again posting as swan-scot (see a theme here) and I’m also on Flickr with the same moniker.

I have a great passion for our countryside, especially here in the Highlands of Scotland.  I am most at home in the hills, but also wander the glens by mountain bike and occasionally explore our lochs by kayak.

My wonderful husband, Neil is my chief walking, biking and camping partner. Many of the photos on this blog are his (he has such a nice model! )  He tends to shoot the wide landscapes, while I’m often to be found lying on my belly photographing wee plants, mosses, lichens or insects. I spend many hours trying to identify all the flora and fauna I see, but there’s so much to learn!

Contact me on swan-scot at freeuk dot com

~Sheila

ps My current header photo and Profile Page photo are both taken on Cul Mor in NW Sutherland. The full pictures can be see here and here and show the neighbouring hills of  Suilven and Stac Pollaidh respectively.

A man in Assynt (extract)

Glaciers, grinding West, gouged out
these valleys, rasping the brown sandstone,
and left, on the hard rock below — the
ruffled foreland —
this frieze of mountains, filed
on the blue air — Stac Polly,
Cul Beag, Cul Mor, Suilven,
Canisp — a frieze and
a litany.

Who owns this landscape?
has owning anything to do with love?
For it and I have a love-affair, so nearly human
we even have quarrels. —
When I intrude too confidently
it rebuffs me with a wind like a hand
or puts in my way
a quaking bog or a loch
where no loch should be. Or I turn stonily
away, refusing to notice
the rouged rocks, the mascara
under a dripping ledge, even
the tossed, the stony limbs waiting.

(from A Man in Assynt – Norman McCaig)</em