Listen while you read: Eluveitie – Autvmnos
Loch Earn is a blue blade slicing Scotland’s heart. The centuries fan out here where the loch becomes the river, and ancient names bleed from the æther: Dundurn, Dalriada, Pictland. This rocky knoll floats through the February mist and rain, its quintessence as plain to the eye as any alien script. The Pictish hillfort of Dundurn stood upon that crag, watching the western border of Pictland for encroaching Scots from Dalriada. All enmities and alliances fade, rifts forgotten beneath history’s inevitable, glacial advance. To walk upon Dundurn’s shoulders and into the Dark Ages is a mighty effort, but also, in the hills’ chill breath, a moment of apotheosis.
Within its verdant arms Scotland shelters places that reach beyond the compass rose like accordions into space unknown. At Brodgar, at Glen Creran, and here at Dundurn you can sense it, maddeningly just beyond observation, this other world. But how? We know everything, we know every thing — modern man’s mantra bombards us from every angle. And yet, in the driving rain as my breath becomes one with the mist, I know it is all an illusion. Such chains enslave and make small this wondrous existence. Cast down the crown of arrogance. Seek.