Julian Cope presents Head Heritage

Hi Moss,

I must say that I prefer the phrase "Spirit of Place", as I feel that there is more of a feeling of a living presence in the landscape. The outdoor writer Jim Perrin wrote a very good book with that as the title, and I think he expresses how I feel with his prose far better than I can.

Another great writer who gives has the same feel for places is W.H. (Bill) Murray. A leading Scottish mountaineer of the '30s and '40s, he captured things perfectly in his book "Mountaineering in Scotland", when he wrote how, having been conscripted to join the war in 1941, his final climb before leaving was a winter ascent of Crowberry Gully on Buachaille Etive Mor. He wrote the following, which I find very moving, and describes perfectly the "Spirit of Place":-

"...We stepped on to the open mountain-side at seven-fifteen p.m., and came face to face with a cloud-racked, starry sky. The ring of low crags under the summit, the ground beneath our feet, and all the rocks around were buried deep in fog crystals.

Although night had fallen, yet up there so close to the sky there was not true darkness. A mysterious twilight, like that of an old chapel at vespers, pervaded these highest of Buachaille.

We stood at the everlasting gates, and as so often happens at the close of a great climb, a profound stillness came upon my mind, and paradoxically, the silence was song and the diversity of things vanished. The mountains and the world and I were one. But that was not all: a strange and powerful feeling that something as yet unknown was almost within my grasp, was trembling into vision, stayed with me until we reached the cairn, where it passed away.

We went down to Glen Etive for the last time, and I fear we went sadly. The moon shone fitfully through ragged brown clouds."

I have experienced that same thing at times, especially in the mountains, and at some prhistoric sites, and he echoes my feelings exactly.

All the best,
TE.