The Cassie, One Step Beyond - J McTeggart

The Cassie, One Step Beyond.

The Cassie, One Step Beyond.

Lockdown is nibbling, not quite biting as of yet. The exercise debate rages hard in high halls and in the not so high working kitchen a plan is set, a decision made, it’s to be “The Cassie”

Suitably clad, shod and victualled I stride through the village past inn and weigh house past war memorial and graveyard .A tip of my cap adjacent to the latter takes me onwards and I’m bowling down grade to Twabrig with the Windey Gap Loanen ribboning up towards Forthill to my left.

With the old mill at my back I stand at the foot of a rain washed laneway made less than welcoming by the steep gradient and challenging underfoot surface. Attributes that I find unappealing yet there is an inexplicable rush through my body that I must respond to. With die cast and Rubicon crossed I’m away, boots scrambling on the loose gravel and rocks for the first time in over thirty years.

The wildness strikes me even if I’m only a few hundred yards into my expedition, the wildness and the magic .The hedgerows are unblemished, uncut, teeming with bird and animal life.

Small naturally wooded areas left and right of the narrowing path play host to deciduous trees as opposed to the ubiquitous cash crop pine which has parasitically supplanted native woodland varieties.

It is the magic though that slows my progress as heart thumps and breath shortens, the fault of the incline I tell myself but in reality it’s something else as each step onwards leads me on into timelessness itself. The sensation grows and I feel myself as if in a bubble, I know that there is past behind me and future ahead of me but I am in the here and now with nothing else encroaching on my immediate thoughts. My odyssey continues with the sight smell and sounds of hedgerow and woods as I remain firmly in my immediate moment.

I stand at a gap in the hedge looking out towards the coast and beyond and can only wonder at the prospect .My amazement grows as at first I identify on my right The Copelands and then further beyond the haze, the outline of the Isle of Man.

My gaze wanders slowly from left to right and the coast of Scotland comes into view as I ponder on the vista which is as old as time itself and again I sense the magic in the air.

Captured as I am in this moment I become gradually aware of a sense of movement behind me and the increasing volume of animals on the move. I cannot turn my head to look around my body and feet locked and frozen, literally rooted to the spot.

Shock helps regain my power of movement ,turning slowly I see and hear but cannot comprehend.

Voices and sounds cut through my senses, incoherent cries of “Hey Up” “Get On Ho” “ Back Back ““Step In “ and “Hup Kye Hup Kye” interspersed with whistles to several dogs barking and snapping closely in and out of the herd ,for cows are what the animals are .

A fetid stench of ammonia and cattle dung hang in the air, the hollow rattle of horns as heads dunt together and a bellowing of beasts thronged tightly in a small loanen driven on by a handful of drovers.

Thirty or so head of cattle, three dogs, and four drovers. Not an unremarkable sight in itself on this well used cattle trail in the late eighteenth century but that was the kicker this was here and now just into the third decade of the twenty first century.

The cattle mostly sleek red or brown white dappled and all horned, the dogs mongrel collies of one family but it was the drovers that caught and held my gaze. Four of the most uncouth looking men I had ever laid eye upon. Wild shaggy hair and rough beards on hard lived in faces, these were men used to a rough living and working. All wore similar light coloured loose tops over belted coarse trousers with hessian bag leggings bound with crude tyings at the knee. Boots partially covered by the leggings showed signs of rough wear and abuse by the unforgiving underfoot conditions and miles covered.

All carried a rolled plaid and small pack across their shoulders tied under the right arm. Similarly a long knife hung from their belts and to a man a hefty ash plant or blackthorn hefted loosely but controlled in the right hand.

The “thwack” of an ash plant on a beast’s rump sped a straggler forward with more whistles and calls from the rear drover as the main body of the herd had now passed me by. This drover was now directly opposite where I stood transfixed mouth open and heart pounding, he was however to all intent and purpose as oblivious to my presence as I was aware of his.

He called to his fellows “Haste ye on noo , provender an shelter the nicht a’ bawn below afore we make to Portmuck on the marra “

Off they went this spectral caravan of dogs, cattle and drovers down the loanen out of my view and senses as mystically as they had arrived.

A gentle shaking of my shoulder with a not so gentle “are you going to lie dozing there all afternoon or are we going to go on this walk before the days out”

My wife was dragging me from a post lunch slumber ,ah that fine lunch of mature cheese and pickles washed down with one or was it two glasses of “Chateau Muttonburn Stream” where I had had the most vivid of dreams or indeed walked “The Cassie” and travelled “One Step Beyond “

(Photo credit Michelle Montgomery)