Stone

Alasdair Maclean

A long peninsula of solid rock, upholstered every year in threadbare green. Stones everywhere, ambiguous and burgeoning. In Sanna ramparts of them march around our crofts but whether to keep cattle out or other stones no man can say. And at Kilchoan there were three houses cropped from one field. That was when I was a boy. The masons left the pebbles and there’s a castle now, waiting to be harvested. God was short of earth when He made Ardnamurchan.