#hermitix

OMM training is taking me to some of the lesser known hills and dales round about. After last week’s outing to the perennially popular Pentland Hills it was time for a derivee to paths less travelled. Away from the crowds into the literal no man’s land of the Lammermuir Hills. 

Forming a solid Scottish border barrier, the Lammermuirs shelter the rolling landscape of East Lothian to the north. They’ve kept out everyone in history, impervious to proper settlement, inhospitable and barren. Or so it first appears. 

The OS map is littered with historic features written in cursive: cairn, standing stone, hill fort, stone circle, homestead, mutiny stone (?). But in our present - at an undulating distance in time from these features of the past - there appears to be only wind farms, grouse moorland, cows, sheep and pine plantations. 

There was also something I wasn’t expecting: nobody else. Not a soul, not a body, no vehicles, no aircraft, no nothing. But not nothing. A smattering of animals here and there, domestic and wild, alive and dead (or soon to be shot).

Admittedly the reason I came here was for nobody. I thought I’d approach the hills from a new and quiet entry point, so started in Lauder. I never really knew what a ‘dale’ was until I saw Lauder from the edge of the Lammermuirs. The dale is Lauderdale and Lauder is the town in Lauderdale. It shelters in a green and lush depression guarding one of the few north to south crossings in the area. 

As soon as I was out of the town and up onto the path of the Southern Upland Way everyone thankfully vanished. I was left with just wildflowers and overgrown hedgerows.

Off up into the hills, grassed pastures gave way to tussocky moorland broken up by deep dark brooding plantations. How long until these dense pine forests are ready for chopping and the landscape is transformed again. 

Amazingly people do live up here, a well kept house with barking dogs in kennels outside but no sign of any people. Presumably these are the hill farmers looking after the roaming cattle and sheep. Double height rusty corrugated barns dot the moorland, shelter for the animals and maybe the humans when they need it. 

Flagging a bit by now, it was time for a delicious caffeine gel to fire the engines. It worked and nearing the high point of my trip out I ran when I could along the grouse shooting tracks. 

Eventually I reached a spot called ‘Bermuda’. No triangles and no shorts just a beautifully appointed stone bothy. I noticed on the map a ‘place’ called ‘Sebastapol’ nearby, but it didn’t appear to have any sign of settlement. How does a place with no features get a name like that? Just another Lammermuirs mystery. One which it seems I’m the only person to have any interest in. 

Nearly back to the humid embrace of the dale I was frankly getting a bit bored. Luckily like the modern rambler that I am I’d come prepared with headphones to block out the lack of noise. I picked up listening to the Hermitix interview with Wouter Kusters about his ‘Philosophy of Madness’. 

They described that during psychosis a subject’s experience of time can often be completely altered, with the past and future appearing to also be occurring in the present. They mentioned a meeting between Bruno Latour and Michel Serres who having drawn on a paper napkin a representation of linear time scrunched it up. What was once linear is now folded in on itself like the folds of a brain, the past and future wrapped around the present. Perhaps you can unfurl the Napkin of Time (trademark) or perhaps not, perhaps you have to live within its folds, move along its planes and pass through its layers.