PRINCES STREET AT DUSK

DUSK | THE DAWN OF THE LIGHTS

MAGIC OF DUSK

They say that dusk is a time of magic, as it falls 'twixt the day and the night, thus being a kind of in-between. Those things that fall in-between are often inhabited by magic; it is here that the veil of our world and the spirit world becomes thinner - so that one might just reach out, and grasping correctly, grab the coat tails of a passing ghostly gentlemen. 

WALKING AT DUSK 

My mother and I would always go walking at dusk through my hometown. We would wait till all the day-trippers had gone home, and the lamps shone puddles of light on the paths, and we would peer into the windows of the shops to see the treasures that glinted within. 

I love walking through a city at this time. The heat of the day, having soaked into the pavements, is now leaving again - rising upwards to meet the cold air that chills my cheeks to a ruddy pink. Lights are turned on, here and there, and soon all the city will be aglow with golden fireflies. Squint just right, and you can see them hovering in the air. 

Dusk is that time when all things are quieted, till I can hear a buzz in the air... It is the promise of the evening, when all the restaurants will be brimming with wine-drinkers, and all the pubs are overflowing with the lively connoisseurs of beer. But, for now, there is only the plodding of my feet and the seething wind in bare branches. 

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Solitude at dusk is a wonderful thing.

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OCTOBER 25 2014

It seems strange that night should come so early: that at around 7pm the world should get dark after such long summer evenings. But, in another way, this is a welcome change, as body clocks are set back and inner mumblings speak of cold hands wrapped around hot chocolates. I find the lights in the windows comforting, and there is nothing like the feeling of coming in from the cold, cheeks rosy red and glowing with warmth. These are the days of firesides and silent wanderings...

I found myself wandering upon an evening, in the gardens of Princes Street, beneath the gaze of the ever present castle. Down there, it seemed looming and close, wrapped in twiggy branches like a vision from the Adam's family. 

Then the blues of the sky paled...

And dusk came on.

The lights of the city were twinkling through trees, as if each tree was adorned with fairy lanterns.

The hues of land and sky were beginning to deepen to sombre purples. Yet, towards the city the light spilled out from monuments.

I knew it was time to go home, dinner was calling. And as I walked I watched night fall across Edinburgh.

CLOSES & WYNDS

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EMBRACING ADVENTURE

The hustle and bustle of the Royal Mile recedes, and you are lost in a realm of peace. A few cooing pigeons accompany you along the way, and you may get a nod from a passing Scottish stranger. Sometimes, as you explore these lanes and passages, you will see a tourist pop their head in, looking apprehensive. They take a few steps forward, then blanch and turn back.

However, if you were to take those next few steps, what you would find might surprise you... The closes, courtyards, and narrow wynds lead the unsuspecting traveler into new arenas - those hidden aspects of Edinburgh that exist only behind tenement walls - houses so close you could not swing a cat between them.

The trick, you see, is to go unheeding into the dark passages. That way, you will step beyond the norms of the street, and into a warren of adventures. 

WHAT'S IN A NAME?

Each close and wynd has a story to tell. 

The closes, well, they are often characterised by dark passageways, opening onto a courtyard, fountain, or even, in the case of Dunbar's Close, a secluded garden filled with small stone benches; just perfect for whiling away the time.

The wynds are more of a thoroughfare, a kind of hidden passage, if you will. They provide the locals with a shortcut to their destination, and the foreign explorer with a chance to get a little lost. The Old Town is simply riddled with them

As for the stories that lurk behind those dim doorways, the clue is often in the name... Such wonderful names too: Lady Stair's Close, Old Distillery Close, Castle Wynd, and World's End Close.

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““Would you tell me, please, which way I ought to go from here?”

”That depends a good deal on where you want to get to.”

”I don’t much care where –”

”Then it doesn’t matter which way you go.”
”

— LEWIS CARROL - ALICE IN WONDERLAND

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HOLYROOD

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WILDERNESS

noun /ˈwildərnəs/

1. an uncultivated and uninhabited area

2. from the old English wildēornes -
land inhabited by wild animals | wild dēor - wild deer.

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I have never learnt to be tame. Even when the city of Lyon tried to break me, and domesticate me with all of its concrete enclosures, I looked to the horizon - searching for space. I grew up in space, you see... Large expanses of meadows, creeks, gardens and those wild bits in between. My first school was more field than school, and we were allowed a rarity: permission to climb all the trees on the property, as high as we might like. Many of my classmates spent their time in a small fort, built right into the evergreen hedge that bordered on the caretaker's property, and I remember there were a few times where somebody's eye got poked by a stick. However, my friends and I favoured one poplar tree whose leaves waved silver in the wind. I could climb till the branches became too whip-thin to hold my weight. 

Wherever I go, I will find the most wild and unruly habitat, and call that my own. In Edinburgh it was Holyrood Park. That park is just my kinda place: a cluster of cliffs, formed into hexagonal columns, and smoothed at the top by the wind till the whole landscape looks more like to a moonscape. The park is dotted with black crows, pockets of blasting wind, and strung about with small paths of red earth.

I would run to Holyrood, legs at full stretch, then blast to the top, lungs bursting with oxygen, so that I could see my surroundings more clearly. And when I reached even halfway, I felt I could breath more clearly, freely...

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Uninhibited and uninhabited sound very alike. 

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THE SMALL WONDERS OF HOLYROOD:

Tussock grasses intermingled with flowering purple clumps of heather.

Sour apples from wild trees.

Complete silence. All my words and songs are pushed back down my throat by the winds, and I am forced to eat my words. Up there, I can bellow with happiness, and no person will hear me.

Brambles of blackberry.

The maze of pathways - one could explore Holyrood a little each day, and still find some new path by the end of a week.

Playing that thrilling game of trust with the wind, where I stand, arms spread eagled, leaning into the gale; and the gale in turn supports me, if only for a moment.

The red dust that collects on my shoes.

This one ledge, off to the side, where In can sit for an hour undisturbed.

That other ledge, where the cliffs jut out over the city like an obstinate chin.

The view of the ocean.

“We need the tonic of wildness... At the same time that we are earnest to explore and learn all things, we require that all things be mysterious and unexplorable, that land and sea be indefinitely wild, unsurveyed and unfathomed by us because they are unfathomable. We can never have enough of nature.”

— HENRY DAVID THOREAU