Gorse Burn

A memory of growing up on the West coast of Scotland

So many things made me nostalgic for the old days but none more than the smell of sweet smoke in the air on a frosty, early December morning. The swaling, it was called. The gorse burn. Fires were set in the heather on the slopes of the moor & tended by the men of Glen Sheloch, fanned by the frigid onshore morning wind from the coast. The sheep, even on the upper hillocks, turned ashen grey from the plume & pressed their noses into each other's fleece to escape the acrid air. The Highland cows found shelter in leeward hollows where the billowing sheets of black smoke rolled westward, blocking what little low, winter sun filtered through. The pheasant hunters stood in thin patches & waited for quarry to flush. We watched it all from the village nearly a mile distant, a beautiful annual conflagration of high grass & bilberry & dried bracken fern. A ritual sacrifice. A soggy-kneed offering to the old gods. The gods of the elements, fire, earth, wind. The green man smiled from high church tower. But no sooner had it begun than ended & we, the children, would scamper up the blackened hillsides to collect & bundle the charred wood left behind to pile by the fireplace for precious kindling.