Wailing wind chastens the prehistoric stones. Monoliths older than the advent of time.
Stoic and secure they pay no heed to the powerful, shrieking force.
After millennia of standing against much harsher arguments, they show no sign of submission. Not even a sway.
Throughout Scotland stone structures and stone configurations have for millennia, been impervious to the bellowing, bluster and fury that so readily berates them.
Monoliths ignorant of time are surely unaware of the weathers provocation.
For thousands of years they have stared out onto wonders of which we will never know.
The Orkney Islands have stood the test of time, rivaling even the rest of Scotland’s abundant prehistoric, ancient and similarly historic sites.
Will the recent, invasive and violent invasion of tourists coming by the bus load, be their first truly triumphant adversary?
Surrounded by an often raging sea, the weather changes with the scurrying of an Orkney vole. One moment glorious in its vivid serenity, then deadly in a torrent of blustering wind and rain in the next.
Standing stones, Viking relics, faery hills and even some crofts, seem untouched by the taint of time.
Scrubby and mostly flat, with exiguous tortured hills and dales, this chain of small, mostly sea level, snippets of rocky land, holds fast against the elements that appear to wish to push it into the sea.
Sunken ships, burial mounds the caustic tides of Autumn and Winter, churn into the Spring and Summers “Celtic” clear blue skies.
There is nowhere to hide when the glorious yet petulant sun makes its play, and a serene sea is almost ever a cautionary tale to the oncoming furious wake.
Resilient is Scotland. Battered, torn and bleak, yet seemingly always hopeful.
The land represents the people, as the wind represents the rain. More than 5000 years of cohabitation on one land creates a unique commonality between land and man. One not known by many.
