Autumn ~ or Fall?

Being a staunch Englishman, I will never openly admit to my friends in the USA that any part of the language they speak there comes close to being real English! (there, now I've probably lost those friends too.) However, I will privately admit to you that I do like the American word 'Fall' for Autumn - such a poetic word, which instantly conjures up the image of red and gold leaves slowly spinning to the ground.
This is by way of sharing a few images of Scotland, created while we spent a week up in the Trossachs, a magical area in the Highlands, in September. We stayed in a typical Scottish tower-house - Tigh Mor - on the shore of Loch Achray, one of the many properties owned by a Holiday company we invest in.

This is Tigh Mor - Gaelic for 'Big House' - nestling in the multi-coloured pine forest, showing in glorious autumn colour:

We had a journey of some 240 miles north from our home in North Yorkshire, so we were pretty weary by the time we arrived there - just time to unpack, settle in, grab a meal and shower, then tumble into bed for some much-needed rest.

My wife woke around seven next morning and went to open the curtains to see what kind of day we had for our first morning; she gasped, called to me 'Come and look!', and pulled the long curtains fully back. I took a look and grabbed my camera.

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First Morning

At this time of morning, the sun had scarcely reached the loch and the foreground was quite dark. The sky held this lovely pearlescent effect, and a band of radiation mist hovered over the water, obscuring most of the distant hill. Forgetting our obligatory early-morning tea for a while, we gazed at the scene until the sun rose sufficiently to disperse the mist and light up the soft sky. This was the first morning of our holiday, but it also felt like the first morning of creation, everything was so still and solemn. It wasn't until we returned home and I processed my photos that I created this haiga.

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When we stay in Scotland we usually divide our time between walking in the hills around Tigh Mor - as far as our creaking bodies will take us - and driving to favourite spots, where Jill paints and I take photographs. This September, however, there was a threatened truck-drivers' blockade of petroleum refineries and depots (in protest at rising prices and high taxes), so we daren't drive around much for fear of emptying our tank and being unable to fill up to get back home.

This gave us a first-class excuse to spend more time down by the loch, lazing around, drawing, brewing tea, thinking deeply (me) - though Jill claimed I was dozing, my mind was actually a whirl of activity, planning all those photos I was going to take, and the clever things I was going to write. We men get through an awful lot of thinking.

One of the results of all this mental activity was this image of reeds at the edge of the loch, with a broken branch lying by them; and subsequently, the idea of this haiga comparing the strength of branches with the flexibility of the reeds. The idea of flexibility versus strength is a very old one in Eastern philosophy, dating back at least to Taoist tracts in the third century BC.

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On the second morning of our holiday, we enjoyed another beautiful dawn of quite a different kind; this time the there was no mist, and the sun lit up the loch-side with superb clarity. Every leaf and blade of grass seemed to sparkle with light. Having spent some photo-shoots up on the hills in January, trudging through snow with frozen feet and fingers, I must say that I could get used to this mode of working - tumbling out of bed, sleepily preparing the camera, gazing out of the window to compose the shot, then 'click' and a swift dive back into bed for tea and hot porridge; bliss!

NOTE! Due to problems with Blogger not uploading / displaying my images, I am posting this incomplete blog; this is as far as it goes for the time being. Sorry! Geoff.