Picture This: A Long, Bright View

I came to Argyll gray but enlightened, unsung but full-souled, for once — no, for twice, for as the circle bends to its origin so, too, had I returned to the luminous terminal of self-truth. Just weeks before this journey to Argyll, Bute, Cowal, and Kintyre, another journey had ended: One decades-long thrash through fog and blindness and the eroding belief that everything was fine. There was a moment of clarity, somehow, on my office floor, on that mountainside, alone, with Hela. There came knowledge like a bright lance thrust through scars, and I wept from my clear eye.

Such symmetry in Glen Caladh, Cowal, on the Celtic New Year’s Day overlooking Loch Ruel and the Kyles of Bute, in that long, bright view. I wished for the light to impress the memory upon me, like the water below, beaten as with a hundred thousand hammer strokes. And I have not forgotten. Ken thyself. Ken thyself and you will see that no matter the world’s gloom the sun always rises within you, and all the things you feared lurking in the dark have taken shape as the geography of self, unmapped and ripe for the wondering, an adventure only just begun.