A Crow Tree Day

Have driven the road under Cullen viaduct many times, admiring the crow trees, especially in late autumn.  Their leaves have been stripped; their craggy silhouettes rant against a watery sky.  Is it their black bark, their solid, stubborn branches the crows admire?  Kindred spirits.  Pirate ships.  Crow’s nest.  If a crow were a tree, it would be one of these.  Cameo trees.  An ancient claim in their silhouettes.  Crow that gathers.  Tree that waits.  Beshert, as a Shimmel* treescape.

Yesterday, on the Cullen viaduct, walked up in the tree tops amongst them.  Geese and crows overhead, the only sounds at first, until two fighter jets from Lossie circled, booming their sonic drills.  Black crows, black jets in a soft lemon-blue-white water sky. 

Tree shadows.  Curlew wanders.  Golden fields, hay freshly shorn, others mauve-brown, freshly ploughed.  Plough patterns, geometric as a Shimmel* ‘Big Field’.  Panicked hare runs, racing ridge and furrow, first one way, then another, refreshing chaos in the plough-lined order.  Robin charms. 

The coastal path, was once the railway line, now an easy path.  Safe.  Even for wild-weather days.  No cliff edges.  Last train chuffed there in 1968.  Beeching’s sorry mistake.  Tempting to circle arms, chanting ‘jiggety-can’.  Along the banks, apple trees.  Perhaps from cores, thrown from windows of those final trains, bringing holiday-makers up from Glasgow.  Returning down with post, and baskets of salmon for London toffs. 

Passed some silver cyclists on e-Bikes.  Found the e-Bike rental shop in Cullen.  Doing that, and soon!  Didn’t see the bow-fiddle rock.  Good to keep something for next time.

Home to a cozy Hallowe’en evening.  Chicken Kiev.   In case of vampires.  Pumpkin lit by the front door, so guisers know they can knock, treats are here.

In a masterful stroke of Hallowe’en trickster-dixstery, took out all the green triangles first.

Mwahahahahaha!

Images for this journal have been posted on Insta @purplehaze_journal

*https://richardshimell.co.uk/  

https://www.nts.org.uk/stories/6-scottish-halloween-traditions