Stu Jenks: Fezziwig Photography, Music, and Writing

"The Devil's Needle, Arbroath, Scotland" (c) 2005, 2008

"The Devil's Needle, Arbroath, Scotland" (c) 2005, 2008 Stu Jenks

[Excerpt from the story "Twenty Four Hours in Scotland"]

    6:30 a.m.

    I miss the sea. Christ, I've only been away from it for a day. I could smell it in Edinburgh last night, but I couldn't see it. I need to see it again.
    A9 to Perth, then catch the A90 to Dundee.
    Dundee. I like the way that town sounds, plus that city is right on the sea. Let's do it.

    7:30 a.m.

    Light now. Overcast. A bit rainy just north of Dundee. Hungry as hell. Got another cup of horrid coffee at a gas station back in Perth. I need some real food and a better cup of Joe.
    Then I see the Golden Arches and laugh out loud. What better place to get an Egg McMuffin and a big cup of strong coffee that at the McDonald's just outside of Dundee.
    Twenty minutes later, I'm fat and happy in the Mickey D. parking lot, sipping a good strong American cup of coffee. On my Michelin map, I notice the word 'Cliffs' just north of the little town of Arbroath. Bet I can see the sea from there.

    8:00 a.m.

    Clouds low. A strong drizzle. Not mist, not rain, something in-between. A soccer field's behind me. The clock tower of Arbroath a few hundred yard to my right. A paved path leads up to higher ground. And right in front of me is the English Channel. White caps roll toward the shore.
    I take a very deep breath.
    Grab the Rollei, the tripod, my smokes and lock the VW.
    The parking lot is quite large. Bet on the weekend, quite a few local folk come here, to play soccer or sit by the sea. Just me and another car are here this morning though.
    I walk across the lot and step onto the smooth asphalt path that appears to skirt the edge of the sea. Then I see a small sign, nicely carved on a plank of wood.
    “Beware of Dangerous Cliffs. Take Great Care.”
    I smile. How eloquent, how English.
    A minute later, I realized they aren't kidding. The path runs right along the edge. Sometimes, the edge is a gently descending hill that anyone could easily walk down, but more often than not, the edge is a sheer cliff face, a drop straight down at least fifty feet to wet rocks below. No fence. Just a park bench every so often to rest on. What a delight, to not be protected from my own stupidity, that if I fell to my death, it would be on me. And if I am safe, it's on me too. And just as important, the view isn't obscured by a silly fence of some sort.         
    Waves explode on the rocks below, showering a curtain of mist. Beautiful.   
    A sign points toward The Devil's Needle. And then I see the Needle itself, a large arch of rock that reminds me of the Canyonlands of Utah. Except the Canyonlands don't have this exploding ocean surf around them. I gingerly walk down a grassy slope toward the arch. Make a spiral in the sand and rock? No. Just shoot a straight shot of the arch and the channel instead. Heavy mist coats me and my camera as I take a few exposures. I try and time it so I get the raising spray in the shot, but I never time it just right. Not a biggie. I click off a few more exposures, and then pack up my gear, but stand a while, looking at the sea. Smelling the sea. The sea smells pretty much the same here, as it does at the Chesapeake Bay in Virginia or at Bahia Kino in Sonora, Mexico. Maybe a bit more earthy and peaty in its fragrance but basically the same. My glasses become foggy from the salty mist. I usually don’t like that, but today, I couldn’t care less.
    Then suddenly I slip on a wet rock near the edge, grab the ground quickly and stop my fall into the drink. I slowly rise to my feet and take a few slow steps back, away from the edge.
    Take great care, Stu. Do as the sign says.

    [Note: The above image is an unintentional double exposure. I got lucky that the horizon lines matched up. And finally I dedicate this image to the comedian/writer/talk show host Craig Ferguson who I think lived in Arbroath for a while, though I may be wrong. Glad you didn't jump off the Tower Bridge, Craig. Glad I didn't fall to my death, as well, back in 1985.]

"The Clava Trio, Scotland" (c) 2005-2007

"The Clava Cairn Trio, South of Inverness, Scotland" (c) 2005-2007 Stu Jenks

[I printed this image a year ago or so, in the old Toole Shed darkroom. Very thin negative it was. Looked like crap, even after a lot of work. I scanned the 8 x 10 anyway, and then let the photograph fall into a coma in my LaCie hard drive, thinking It was gone for good. Then a friend showed me this Soft Light Layer thing in the CS2 and I was able to awaken this lost photograph, burning in the sky and the ground, deepening the Standing Stone and fluffing the cows a bit, like I couldn't before. The sepia color was inspired by a 100-year-old photograph of my great-grandparents on my mother's side, that hangs in my bedroom. The megalith and cattle were from a pasture, a stone's throw from the Clava Cairns. These two cows and many others were wonderful models, that late afternoon in October. I miss the livestock, the trees, the people, the grass, the wind, the sea spray, the rains, the soft drinks, the biscuits, and the Standing Stones of Scotland. More than I can say.]

Megaliths and Soda Pop: [The Table of Contents] (c) 2005-2007

[Throughout the StuBlog, you'll find my third photographic journal called MEGALITHS AND SODA POP. Unlike a traditional website (and due, in part, to my freshman skills as a blogger), the stories are helter skelter, here and there, not in the order that I envisioned for the book. Easy solution? Below is the table of contents for MEGALITHS AND SODA POP. Read the stories in order or as you come across them. Either way is fine. Most of them are written as stand-alone stories so you should be OK. All comments are welcome. OK, not all comments, but you know what I mean. Enjoy the journey and maybe someday, you'll be able to hold this book in your real hands rather than your digital ones. But this'll do for now.]

MEGALITHS AND SODA POP: by Stu Jenks (c) 2005 - 2007

[The Table of Contents]

LONDON:

1) “My Tribe”

SCOTLAND:

2) “The Clava Cairns”

3) “The Skye Cow”

4) “IRN-BRU & The Storr”

PARIS:

5) “The Taxi Goddess”

SCOTLAND:

6) “Charles Murray”

PARIS:

7) “Three Eclairs”

8) “Ambulance Blues”

SCOTLAND:

9) “The Standing Stones of Callanish”

10) “If Fairies Live...”

11) “The Uig Ferry”

12) "The Quiraing and Portree, Isle of Skye”

PARIS:

13) “Double Shot. Like Bang Bang”

SCOTLAND:

14) “Twenty Four Hours in Scotland”

15) “Findley McLean & Isebella McIntosh”

"The Quiraing and Portree, Isle of Skye" (c) 2006, 2007

"The Quiraing, and Portree, Isle of Skye" (c) 2006, 2007 Stu Jenks

[Image: "The Heather Chair, The Quiraing, Isle of Skye, Scotland" (c) 2006]

           The ferry has berthed in Uig. We've been instructed on the PA to return to our cars, to prepare to disembark. I'm alone on deck, looking down at the gangplank where pedestrian passengers will soon go ashore. Sean and his mom came on board this way. They must leave this way too, I suppose.
            I saw them ahead of me in the cafeteria line during our passage. I saw them later sleeping on some sofa cushions in the bar a half hour out from Uig. I saw them once more on deck, when she was having a smoke. Sean's still a handful. She, still looking sad and discouraged. I never said hello even though I felt like striking up a conversation once or twice. I didn't want to freak her out or was I just being cowardly? But what would I say?
            "Hi, I'm Stu from Tucson, Arizona," I'd say, "And I couldn't help but notice how much you miss your parents on Harris, how dejected you look about life, how overwhelmed you seem to be, being a  single mother. Well, you'll never see me again but I just wanting to say I'm wishing you and Sean all the best and much love to y'all. How do I know your son's name? Oh, I was eavesdropping on you when you were say goodbye to your Mum and Da."
             Yea, that would've gone over well.
            She'd probably think I was just trying to get into her pants and ever worse, that I was some weird middle aged guy stalking her. So I settled on sending some silent love their way when I happened to see them on the ferry and left it at that.
           I don't know why. Why I'm standing here, needing to see them one last time though. But I'm here, watching a number of people walking down the short gangplank to the pier, hoping to see Sean and his mom again. A young attractive couple disembark, walking their expensive bicycles toward shore. A single man with a backpack, quick in his gait. A couple of young girls laughing. Then no one for a long time. Finally, one last guy. I hear another announcement over the speakers for us to get back in our cars. One last look. No Sean. No Angel Girl.
           I put out my hand and send love into the air.
           "God, take care of them," I quietly say.
           I then dash for my car in the hold.

           Minutes later, I'm driving up the big hill out of Uig. I could have taken the main road to the right that goes directly back to Portree but I decided, while on the ferry, not to do that. Yes, Christmas shopping calls in Portree, and I bet the stores will close at five or six, but it's three now and there's a single track that I need to see. Hell, Portree only twenty miles on the main road and this road will only add ten miles or so to the trip, so says the map. I figure quickly in my head. Allow a half hour of driving, thirty minutes of play. That'll leave an hour worth of shopping for the folk back home in Portree before everything closes. That'll do. That'll have to do.                      
            Up and around and another right and I'm on a paved single track heading across the heather. Water flows in barely visible streams concealed under the shrubbery but now and than you can see flashes of white from small rapids. I left most of the peat behind in Lewis and Harris. Now, it's all heather, all the time here.
           Quicker than I thought I would, I've peaked the ridge and am now looking at the Sound of Raasay off to the east. I smile. On my right, I pass a couple of tour buses from somewhere, unload tourists to hike the gentle ridgeline of The Quiraing. I don't think twice about not stopping here. I drop down the other side of the ridge and head down a narrow single track that winds to the Sound.
           Emma at the Royal Hotel helped me pronounce 'Quiraing' but it’s hopeless, me trying to roll my 'R's. Not much of a Celt that way. You'd think living in Tucson, embedded in Mexican culture, I'd speak reasonably good Spanish and be good at the trilling of my 'R.'s. Wrong on both accounts. I can barely speak English, I mumble so much.
            I saw The Quiraing yesterday morning when I was driving the long way to the ferry (Christ, was it just yesterday? Seems like a week ago.). The Quiraing is just a single ridge I suppose but a very high one, rising close to 2000 feet above the sea, just over there. I believe I read something yesterday about it having been made by a big rockslide of sorts, not an uplift but a crashing down. It is beautiful.
           Where to park? Not much time. Just need to hike a bit in the heather. May not have another chance again for a good long time. Less than a minute passes and I see a very small place to park my very small car. I quickly glance in my rearview mirror and slam on the breaks after I see no tour buses behind me. In reverse and I’m tucked in, lickety split.
            Grab the smokes, the Rollei, lock the car and I'm off up a sheep trail, or something that looks like that. Over a gate and up some more. Higher and higher up into the hills. No place to go or be, but right here, right now. I'll sense when I need to stop and where. I hope. Gut and God, don't fail me now.
            The trail ends and I'm now walking in heather up to my knees. Tight with little blue flowers. I can wind my way through the thick heather but it's not easy. A small stream rushes just off to my right. I begin high-stepping toward it but I then get a bad feeling. Swarms of Midges over there maybe? Those hellish biting bugs I've heard about? Na. It's October. Just a gut feeling, like I'll turn my ankle or something, or maybe just knowing, in a few minutes, that I'm wasting precious time being at the wrong place, at the wrong time.
            My head turns and I see a small domed hill, just off to the south. A steep climb but not too steep. Like something out of Middle Earth, where the Rohirrim ride. I lower my head and dig my boots into the ground beneath the heather, stair stepping up the incline.
            Time slows and then stops all together.
            How long have I been sitting in this heather bowl at the top of this hill? A white feather is in my hand. Where did that come from? I place it in the heather and line up a shot with the old Rollei. Red filter on. Measure the light with my hand held meter. Compose. Looks hokey but I push the cable release anyway.
            I reach up and take the feather away and lay it beside me. I lean back in the deep impression of the Heather Chair, surrounded by three-foot tall thick knurled branches on all sides, topped with small purple flowers. The fragrant is distinctively…well…heathery. I had a similar feeling of being held by the earth just yesterday on the Storr to the south, but that was with peat and rock. This is with heather, flowers and loom.
            I stop down the Rollei to f4.5, focus in on the row of heather between me and the top of the Quiraing. Quiraing out of focus, Heather as sharp as sharp can be. I take an exposure, then another. I turn to the Sound and take one more. I then pack up the camera and the meter and lay my camera bag gently on the top of the flowers.
            I'm done shooting.
            I sit, and look at the sun, the rock, the sky, the flowers. 
            And then I don't think about anything at all. Nothing at all.
            I just lean back into The Heather Chair and breathe in.
            And time stops again.

            Checked back into the Royal Hotel. Said hello to Emma. Oh, to be twenty years younger.
            A little after 5:30. Sun's going down and the shopkeepers are starting to close up, and the pubs are beginning to open. Most of the family Christmas shopping is done. For my sister I purchase a Runrig Greatest Hits CD at a tiny music store on the main block in Downtown Portree. Found an Isle of Skye plaid scarf for my mom, just across the street at an up-scaled (for Skye) clothing store. Got myself a detailed topographic map of Skye at a combination bookstore and sugar shack. Bought some more Ilford black and white film at the wee camera store next door.
            I put on my bright yellow Hawaiian waterfall shirt back at the Royal, after I'd showered a half hour ago. And everywhere I walk now in Portree, I'm getting stares. Some pleasant smiles from the locals but a good number of grumpy wrinkled foreheads from the Euro-tourists. Yep. I look around. No one else is wearing a shirt like this. But it's Saturday night for Pete's sake and this is my party shirt. At least the Scots don't seem judgmental, unlike the almost dirty looks I'm getting from the Germans and the Japanese.
           I'm getting hungry. But I still need one more thing. A refrigerator magnet with the blue flag of Scotland on it. I hadn’t found hardly any frig magnets at all in my shopping, much less one of The Flag. Maybe I’ll to get one on the main land tomorrow. Then I see an old hardware store just across the street from the village's tiny grocery store. I briskly cross the street and enter the store. I've only got about 15 minutes before it and every other store in town closes.
          "Hello," says the proprietor, as I shut the door behind me. He's a older gentleman, perhaps in his late 60's, earlier 70's, with a white shock of hair on his head and a large genuine grin on his face.
         "Hello, How are you?" I say.
         "Just fine, thank ye. Anything I can do for you, sir?"
        "I'm looking for fridge magnets. Do you happen to have any?"
         He points down an isle with not much merchandise on it. As I look around and notice there's not much merchandise for sale in the entire store.
         "You'll find some just down that isle," he says.
         "Thank you, sir," I say.
         "Me pleasure."
         I wander down the isle and lo and behold, among the general slim pickings of the store, is just what I'm looking for. In a little plastic bag to protect it from scratches is a heavy magnetic flag of Scotland, about three inches by two inches, with bright gold trim around its edge. I turn it over to look for a price. Half a crown. A Gonga, as we say in Tucson, meaning a really good deal.
         I walk up to the register and hand the shopkeeper the magnet. A woman that is perhaps his wife is just a few feet off his right shoulder.
         "Will that be all?" he says.
         "Yes sir, that'll be it," I say.
         "So do you all get much snow here in Skye?" I ask. I like this man. Maybe with some small talk I'll get to know him a little better before he closes up.
         "Aye, we get some snow," he says, “Quite a bit at times.”
         "Now we don't get that much. Mostly rain in the winter," the woman behind him says. Yep, I think. Wife or at least his girlfriend.
         "Well, we did get some snow last year. Not much but it was a few inches," he says, defending himself.
         "Remember?" He continues, "We had that snow and then we had some rain and then a flood and it killed that family over in the Western hills." He points to the west
         "Aye, I remember," she says, with some sadness in her voice.
         "Good lord," I say, "What happened?"
         "Oh, we got a little snow and then a bunch of rain behind it. This family of four with a house by a creek got washed out in the middle of the night. Killed them all. Husband, wife, the two children. A boy and a girl."
         I don't say anything for a bit. Neither does he or the woman.
         I speak first.
         "Truly some tragedy happens in every life. Some worse than others, " I say.
         "Aye, so true, so true," say the man.
         And we don't speak for a good while again. Just the three of us with our heads slightly bowed.

         After six now. All the shops are pretty much closed except for the grocer. I wander the streets, watching folk walking back to their homes or their hotel rooms or their hostel dorms, getting ready to go out to eat or drink, or just stay home and watch a bit of TV on a Saturday night. I'll have to decide soon what I’m going to do for dinner, but the air is so light and sweet right now in Portree, a twilight like in a fairy tale. The last thing I want to do is go back to my room. Let’s walk around just a tad more.
         As I stroll down a sidewalk, I hear a car approach behind me and then a light tap of its car horn. A small Ford whizzes by. A man waves at me. I wave back not knowing who it is at first. Then I see the full head of white hair and realize it's the shopkeeper for the hardware store. My wave becomes bigger and faster now.
         "Hey," I say quietly.
         He speeds on, continuing to wave at me in his rearview mirror.

http://stujenks.typepad.com/photos/megaliths_and_sodapop_los/thequiraingbw.html

"The Uig Ferry" (c) 2006, 2007

“The Uig Ferry” © 2006, 2007 Stu Jenks

[Image: "The Uig Ferry" (c) 2006]

    “I love you, I love you”
    She says this over and over again.
    Her son fidgets at her feet. She leans over the rail, again, shouting her love.
    “I love you, Mum. I love you, Da”
    Mum looks to be in her fifties. Da looks older but his rugged appearance could just be from living a hard life. Mum’s heavy in the hips, wearing a long red and white print dress and light cotton jacket that doesn’t match. Da is in jeans and a brown checked shirt, windbreaker open at the chest. He waves mechanically up from the dock. Mum waves faster and harder up to her daughter. Mum is crying. Da just looks sad.
    The woman standing just 20 feet from me on the starboard deck of the ferry appears to be in her twenties. Not pretty but not plain either. Porcelain skin and the wings from a tattoo peek from the top of her blouse. Angel wings perhaps across her chest. Her hair is dyed jet black, cut in a rough scattered Mod way. She also in jeans, as old as her father’s but a hipper cut. Her son looks to be around four, uninterested in the tearful goodbye, more interested in tugging at the railing like an ape. He’s angry at something, could be nothing. He is just four.
    “Sean, say goodbye to Gran and Gramps,” says the mother lifting her son to her chest, grabbing his arm and waving it for him.
    “Bye, Gran. Bye, Gramps!” she says.
    “Bye, Bye,” says the boy.
    “Bye, Sean. You mind ye mother now,” say Mum.
    “Bye, Mum.”
    The woman sets Sean back down on the deck. She then lights a cigarette. Then Mum lights up, then Da, then I grab a smoke. Sean doesn’t smoke yet.
    Suddenly the ferry gently lurches and begins to slowly back out of its berth. The waving increases in intensity between mother and daughter. The boy is back to pulling at the railing. Da waves slowly, not saying anything, not crying. He almost looks the saddest of all. Mum and the woman stain to make eye contact until the very last moment, when the ferry begins its turn, obscuring the pier from view.
    The boy is now standing, hugging his mother’s legs. The woman stops looking back, taking a long draw of her smoke, and exhales. She wipes the tears from her eyes with the heal of her palm, for about the tenth time since I’ve been standing here. I’m trying not to stare.
    She now fixes her gaze toward shore. Not looking at anything really. She looks scared. She bites her nails.
    “Ma, I want to go inside,” say Sean.
    “In a minute,” she says.
    “Now!” orders her son.
    “Please, in a minute,” she pleads.
    Single mother I bet. No father in the picture. Alone with a rambunctious four year old. Quick visit with the folks. Get a little help with Sean. Get a good meal. See my Mum and Da again. I imagine she lives in Glasgow, probably works a crappy minimum wage job, wishes she has someone to help with Sean. Glad the piece of shit father is out of the picture but misses having a man around. Extra hard to find a good man with Sean in tow. Bet she goes to the clubs a couple times a month, just to dance with her girlfriends. Then home to her two room Council Housing flat and a cranky Sean.
    Then again, I’m just making this all up in my head. But she does looks overwhelmed by her son, crestfallen by the weight of her life. Too alone and dispirited for someone so young, I think.
    I look at the two of them without them knowing. I send as much love as I can to them. I feel like crying myself. The Brownie does not leave its case.
    I continue smoking my cig, and look out toward the southern shore of Lewis as well.
    Sean still wants to go inside.
    She finishes her smoke and flicks it over the side.
    “Let’s go,” she says, walking past me, holding Sean’s hand.

    [Postscript: The accompanying photograph was taken 30 minutes later off the port side of the ferry, looking toward the small isles of Dun Corr Mor off the Isle of Harris.]

http://www.stujenks.com/gallery/megaliths/uigferry.html

"If Fairies Live..." (c) 2006, 2007

“If Fairies Live...” (c) 2006 Stu Jenks

[Image: "If Fairies Live..., Isle of Harris, Scotland"

    I get to Talbert with over a hour to spare. I wish I had another day or two to play on Lewis and Harris but I don’t. But I do have a hour. And a car. I don’t take the left to Talbert but rather head up the hill to the Isle of Harris.
    Harris and Lewis are geographically one island but they are called two. And there are differences for sure. I hear that Harris has an amazing beach at its southern tip but I won’t be able to make it there today. But almost immediately after topping the first hill, I notice more heather, more grass, a bit less peat, and off in the distance, I can see some real live conifer trees on the top of a mountain.
    The two lane is a bit windier here than on Lewis. Slower going. Then within only a few miles of Talbert, I see a road sign that points to the left saying, ‘The Golden Road’.
     I smile.         
    Gotta take it. It’s the Golden Road.
    The Golden Road quickly becomes a single track with only a few Passing Places here and there. The smooth narrow asphalt road that snakes through little couple-house hamlets with names like Mhiabhaig, Drinisaidar, Ceann-na-Cleithe, and Plocradol. There’s as much water as land in this place of miniature hundred foot hills. Everything seems like it’s half size. Tiny roads, tiny hills, tiny lakes, tiny valleys. Miniature boulders sprinkled here and there. Not big rocks but tiny boulders. A fence gate, white, old and rusty, the width of a small child.
    If fairies live, they surely live here.
    Suddenly, between a couple of grass-covered hills, I see The Sea again. A cove, a row of cliffs, some waves. I look at the clock in the dashboard of my car. I’ve got 45 minutes before I need to be in line for the ferry. It’s taken me 20 to get here. I’ve got 25 minutes to play. That’s all. I let out an angry sigh and look for a place to park the VW. I pull the car off the road and on to the grass near the fairy fence gate. Grab the Brownie, the car keys, my hat and coat and go. I find a break in the fence and head toward The Sea.
    I’ve never walked on such soft grass in all my life. Yellowed by the cold October temperatures and kept short by the sheep, it’s like walking on a large quilt that covers a firm mattress, a bed acres wide. Large rocks peek through the grass, some as large as garages, as if they are buoyant, rising to the surface. Sheep droppings sit in neat piles here and there. Clouds are breaking up a little overhead but still no blue sky. The smell of the ocean differs from what I’m used to. Less salty, more musky. Probably from the sheep and the peat, but still the sea smells clean and neat and fresh.
    Down one miniature hill, then into a tiny valley, then up to the top of a mini peak, always making my way in the general direction of The Sea. My boots grab the soft spongy ground so tight it's as if they have magnets on their soles. More grounded and more in the sky than I’ve felt since…well, this morning.
    Then my mood changes. I have to leave real soon and I’ve just fallen in love with The Golden Road. I’m sad and angry and hurt. Like leaving a new sweetheart as I go off to war, not knowing if I’ll ever see her again. I plan to come back to Lewis and Harris someday but when? I’ve already maxxed the credit cards to come here on this trip, and I only take home 20 grand a year. The world may violently change in the future or with higher and higher oil princes, plane fares may soon only be within reach of the rich. Or I may simply just get sick with something and die. A lot can happen. And it’s impossible to soak up a day on the Isle of Harris in 15 minutes. But I’ll give it a try.
    One more hill and a cove open up. Steep cliff walls, with a few places here and there to climb down but no place to dock a boat. I creep down a grassy ravine and make my way toward some wet black rocks on the shoreline. Appears the tide is going out. Wind’s at my back, blowing the spray away from me. Be careful, Stu. Don’t slip on the wet rocks.
    I take out the Brownie, look through the viewfinder but the shot isn’t there. I close my eyes and breath in the surf for a minute. Open them, and look down in a slot in the rocks nearby. Some flotsam and jetsam are there, a plastic bottle, a piece of rope, a ragged piece of red cloth. I look back out into the bay. Maybe the shot is higher up. I climb out and up the tiny ravine back to the top of the mini-hill that’s 50 feet above the surf.
    I see the shot. A triptych. I measure it out. I look at the back of my Kodak Starflash. Only four exposures left in this roll. No time to change rolls. Make it good.
    Click: the inner cove.
    Click: the rocky peninsula.
    Click: out to sea.
    I put away the Brownie and feel out the time. Probably should leave in about ten minutes. Damn it all.
    “Sit and close your eyes,” says the small voice within.
    I do.    
    I sit. I breath.
    I fly away, for a minute or two.

    [Postscript: A PBS special on Reconstruction plays on the small flat screen TV over my shoulder. I’ve put in around 10 hours of work just cleaning off the dust spots from this scan. I've just tried adding subtle red and blues using the Selective Color button in the Photoshop. Dull. They’re talking about the Islands off of South Carolina now. How ex-slaves took the 40 acres and the mule and tried to make a new life for themselves in 1865. I want to stop work and watch the show but I’m in that place now, that groove. Picasso once said “When inspiration comes, I hope she finds me working.”
    She’s here.
    More contrast? No, the pop is right. It’s a print from a thin negative. Gotta have the big pop. I push the blue all the way to the right. The Sea becomes something it wasn’t back then in October. It was more green than blue on that very cloudy day. But the blue is the feeling of the day. I do the same with the red, push it way out of the envelope of Normal Photoshop. I look at it. I don’t know. Looks wrong but it feels right.
    The small voice says, “It’s right. Trust me.”
    I rotate the image and print up a small 8 1/2 x 11 on my Epson 2200. I take it to the bright white kitchen light of my apartment.
    “Wow,” I say. I do like that blue. That red. That white of the sky.
    A few minutes later, two pieces of 13 x 19 Epson Enhanced Matte Paper lay on the carpeted floor of my mini-dining area just off the kitchen. I stand over the 13” x 34” image of “If Fairies Live...”. Way over the top, but good. I like it.
    I turn toward the TV. Andrew Johnson is making deals with Southern Planters, allowing them to do what they will with the newly emancipated Negros.
    I sigh, feeling a little sad, a little mad, and then look down at my image from the Isle of Harris on the floor.
    And I then crack a crooked smile.

http://www.stujenks.com/gallery/megaliths/fairieslive.html

   

"The Standing Stones of Callanish" (c) 2005, 2007

    “The Standing Stones of Callanish” (c) 2005, 2007 Stu Jenks
    [Images: "Callanish: 28 mm", "Four Megaliths at Callanish", "Callanish 127", "Callanish Hoop Dance"     & "Callanish at Dawn" (c) 2005, 2007]

    We ain’t in Skye anymore.
    The Isle of Skye doesn’t have many trees but it has some here and there, and the hills of Skye are covered with heather and grass and life.
    Not here. Not on this part of Lewis. Rock and peat and more rock. I ain’t complaining. Sort of like the desert at home, but with water. OK, it’s nothing like home, but it feels like home.
    I’m beating feet toward Callanish. Left the ferry town of Tarbert thirty minutes ago. Looks like the turnoff to the town of Callanish is just a few miles up ahead. Then, if the map is right, I got about a fifteen-minute drive and I’m there. Hard to believe I’m really this close.
    I’m rushing, for the Sun looks to be only an hour from setting and Christ Almighty, It’s only 3 o’clock. I’m guessing I’m farther north than I’ve ever been, including my time as a child in Upstate New York. And it is October after all. But Good Lord.
    A sign points toward a paved road t-ing into my road from my left. ‘Calanais: 12’ it says. That’s it. Man, I’m close. I think. I’m thankful too, that Calanish in Gaelic is close to how it reads in English. Can’t be said for other places on Lewis, for the main city of Stornoway to the north is spelled Steronabhigh in Gaelic, that's pronounced Stornoway or close to it. And unlike Skye, where the traffic signs are in both languages, only Gaelic is printed on the highway signs here. This is a Gaelic land with a Capital G. A mix of Norway and Ireland as much as it is of Scotland and England. I take the left in my black VW and head due west.
    It’s cold and moist with a wondrous peaty smell. A dark rich fragrance, like centuries old dirt. I smile. That’s exactly what peat is. Rotting vegetation slowly compacting over a thousand years, not ever really dry due to the poor drainage of the land and the constant moisture in the air. It’ll stain your shoes like nothing else, and heat your home as good as coal. Once it’s dry that is. There, just off to my right is a tower of peat drying, stacked like a Boy Scout’s crisscross log fire, six feet high. It’s said that how they found the Standing Stones of Callanish was when digging peat in the 1850’s. I love the smell. Stirs something in my DNA almost.
    Lots of clouds, but no sign of rain. Big clouds, moving fast. Wind at about 20, 30 miles per hour. Again, there was wind on Skye but nothing like this.
    I check the odometer. Wonder if I could miss it. Map says they’re on the left near the village of Calanais. I crest a hill and there, I see them. A good two miles away, on the top of a flat hill, like fingers coming through the earth. The Standing Stones of Callanish. I need no sign, no point of interest plaque. I’ve seen photographs of these boys for 25 years. It’s them. I cry.
    I take my foot off the accelerator and look in the rearview mirror. No cars. Haven’t seen a car in 15 minutes. I look through the windshield at the stones in the distant. Time to get down to business and take some serious shots. Now how do I get up there?
______________________________________________________________________________

I’ve been shooting for hours now. As the sun set, after the sun set, with the Brownie, with the 35 mm. Long lens, wide angle. Rollei on a tripod. I touch the stones from time to time but I’m more busy than spiritual right now. I tried some hoops dances at dusk but I doubt they’ll work. It’s almost completely dark now yet the Full Moon lights some of the eastern sky. A few more hoop dance shots, I think.
    “You have it in the can,” says the quiet still voice within.
    I know, I think, but I just want to be sure.
    “You have it in the can,” it repeats.

______________________________________________________________________________

    It is so cold. Probably not freezing but close. Add the heavy moisture in the air, the 40-mile an hour wind and my desert-thin blood and I can’t get warm. Granted I have on my heaviest North Face jacket and a wool scarp tightly wrapped around my neck two times, but I brought only my Krispy Kreme baseball cap with me from The States and left my wool boo boo hat at home. A big mistake.
    It’s been hours since I arrived, but it feels like only minutes. Things in slow motion and fast at the same time. Hard to explain. I’ve been here on a little while and forever. My arms are sore from swinging the metal hoop with the battery powered Christmas lights on it. A good sore, like lifting artistic weights. Something like that. I can’t think anymore. I only see and that not so well right now. I’m hungry but I don’t care. Get some Gorp in a minute. Another hoop dance, another smoke, now a walk back to the car eat for some food, to drink some IRN-BRU. I’m cold but I don’t want to leave. I can’t leave. I’m in my body but I'm not. I’ve felt like this in the past but nothing this strong. Usually I’m hot and sweaty not cold and damp. I don’t know. I don’t know much of anything right now. I think all my shots suck. I’m starting to feel depressed or something like that. I don’t know.
    After a bite of food in my car and a smoke, I walk back to close the shutter on Hoop Dance number seven. Angle number two. I’m sure it sucks.
    “It’s in the can,” the quiet voice says again. Number four for the voice and the can statement.
    “Really?” I say to the wind.
    “Really,” it says.
    I’m done and as soon as I say to myself ‘I’m done’, I feel a light in my bones, the depression lifts, the Full Moon is brighter. What’s this all about?
    Then I get it. For hours, I’ve been in my head, looking at angles, composing, taking images more out of fear of not getting the image, than in the hopeful joy of the moment, shooting at Callanish. Living in future time, as Ronn would say. And as soon as I decided I was done, I’m back in my body, my soul’s humming loudly in my ear and I’m seeing the stones as if for the first time.
    I walk up to a favorite stone of mine. I may have been out of my body but I ain’t blind. I’m quite familiar with this boy, but I haven't really made friends with him yet. I walk up to him and notice the worn spots in the grass at his base. I ain’t the first one. I put my back to the stone and lean against him. The roar of the wind is mostly gone, blocked by his mass. I close my eyes, and adjust my feet away from him so I can put more of my weight against his surface. I hear the wind, whistling off the other stones. I open my eyes and look toward the collapsed cairn to my right, the loch to my left, the village of Callanish right in front of me, its edge just a few hundred yards from the low fence that surrounds the stones, the fence that keeps the sheep out. A car motors down the lane, its headlights noticeable, not blinding, very far away. It turns into a driveway and even though I can’t hear it, I know, the driver has turned off the engine. He turns out the headlamps. He exits the right side of the car.
    He’s home.
    So am I.

______________________________________________________________________________

    I’m so tired. My eyes cross as I drive. Got to stop. I pull off onto the shoulder of the road just a few miles out of Stornoway and check the map. The road back to Callanish is just up ahead but I don’t remember many pulloffs on that road and no way I’ll make it back to Callanish to sleep in its parking lot. Im just too tired. The little village of Liurbost is just a mile or so ahead. Maybe there I can get some rest.
    The single track to Stornoway was fun. Lots of sheep blocking the road. Tall grass growing in the peat on either side of the narrow piece of asphalt. Slow going but a good slow. Drinking Diet IRN-BRU, eating peanuts, life is good.
    Stornoway was hopping. High school kids everywhere in the streets. The beginnings of the Celtic Singing Competition. Charles Murray was there somewhere but I didn’t stop and look for him. Already tired and I had no plans to get a room tonight. The plan from the start was to sleep in my car tonight. Saw some real live trees in Stornoway, trees mentioned in the tourist literature. They are proud of the trees they planted a hundred and fifty years ago. I made a big loop through town and got back on A859, heading south. Callanish still called and the broch near the village of Carloway, north of Callanish looked interesting too. The plan was to sleep near them. I ain’t going to make it.
    Heading through the dark night on A859. The waxing moon mostly hidden in the clouds. Some houselights up ahead. Must be Liurbost. A short row of houses appear on my right. Maybe a half dozen and a small store. Reminds me of little towns in the Northern Neck of Virginia. Off to the left is a wide paved turnoff next to a sheep ramp. Perfect. I put on the breaks and pull into it. I see street lamps across the way that may get in my eyes as I try to sleep. It’ll work though, I think. I get out and take a pee in the grass. Wind’s not bad, but it's still really cold. I shake and get back in the VW. Take off my shoes, lower the driver’s seat to almost level, crack a window, pull my North Face over my head and try and get some sleep. Within a minute, I’m gone

    I’m awakened by a car whizzing by. I check the clock in the car. 2:00 a.m. I’ve slept for 3 hours. I raise the seat and look around. Do I want to stay here? I don’t think so. Before I put on my shoes, I get out of the car, walk over to the sheep ramp and take another piss in the grass. Back inside, I put on my shoes and take a long draw of the Diet IRN-BRU stuck in the console. God, that is good stuff. I start the car and put it in gear and get back on the deserted road. Friday night in Liurbost. Everyone’s asleep except for a tourist from Tucson.
    Within seconds, I see the road to Callanish and take a right. I’m pretty awake but not all together. At least I’m not driving cross-eyed. Minutes pass. BBC Scotland plays on the car’s radio. My constant companion for a few days now, not just playing Celtic reels and pipe marches (which they do) but great folk music from Aberdeen and Glasgow and from as far away as Austin, Texas. Right now, it’s sad slow songs in Gaelic.
    The turnoff for the Standing Stones is up ahead but I don’t take it. I stay on A858, and the road to Carloway. My map says the broch there is just ten miles away. I’ll make for that and sleep there, I think. I’m getting tired again. Hope I can make it. The Moon is out again, its light reflecting off the lochs that surround me. Literally, small and large bodies of water are everywhere.
    The road unexpectedly turns to dirt. New road construction. This’ll keep me awake. Soon, I see a sign saying ‘Dun Carloway’ that way. I take it. Up a hill and I see another sign, and a small parking lot. I pull in. Built into the hill like a hobbit hole is the visitors’ center for the Broch at Dun Carloway. Just a wee place. Must only hold a person or two. I scan the parking lot. Just me, but I don’t feel comfortable about sleeping here. Don’t know why. Don’t question it. I just back up and get back on the rough paved road. Looks like it goes down toward a small loch over there, after some houses. I put it in first and head down the hill.
    I pass a couple three houses and continue down near the shore of this good size lake. A bit of land is off to the west and then I see the large Loch Roag, then more land, miles away. Just then I see a pull off near what looks like a dinghy tied up near shore. I park the car and get out. Need to take another pee. I walk just off the road and do my business. As I walk back to the car, I stop at the boat. The Moon’s back out again and I can see it’s just a small two man rowboat loosely tied to a thin stick stuck on the bank. The wind rocks the boat slightly. A piece of hardware gently clangs inside the hull somewhere. The lake water laps against its side. I first wonder if this quiet cacophony will keep me awake and then smile, and realize it’ll probably put me to sleep.
    I get back in the car, light a smoke, and crack the window. The hardware, the water, the wind, it’s all good, as the kids say. Off come my shoes, back goes the seat, and eventually I put out the butt and hit it.
    In an instant, I’m out.
______________________________________________________________________________

    I’m awake and a bit cold. What time is it, I think? The car clock reads 6:15 a.m.. God, I slept good. I don't sleep this well at home, waking up briefly a couple times a night in my own bed in Tucson. Feeling groggy most mornings. Not this morning. I feel wonderful. I've slept three more hours but it feels like a dozen.
    I hear the boat clanking off to my right through my slightly cracked car window. Smiling to myself, I think maybe I need a tape of the sounds of this rocking boat playing in my bedroom at home to help me sleep.
    I find a Diet IRN-BRU, ice cold, behind my seat and crack the top. A loud hiss comes from the tall plastic bottle, exhaling the fragrance of Quinine. I remove the cap and take a very long draw.
    “Ahh!” I say,
    “Sweet Jesus, I love this stuff!”
    I take another draw off the soda and light a Camel. No coffee or tea this morning. Sun’ll be up soon. I look out of my driver’s side window. No moon. All cloud. Or at least it’ll be light, I think. I start the car and turn the heat on high. I shiver a bit. Inhale smoke deep in my lungs and exhale. I can see my breath. We ain’t in Tucson anymore. I sit in the idling car for a good while, both of us warming up. The broch at Dun Carloway is just a mile up the hill. I want to be nice and toasty before I get out on this frosty morning.
    Ten minutes later, I’m cruising up the hill, leaving the little loch and the wee boat behind. Dark homes are on my left. A dog barks. The sky might be getting lighter to the east. Might not. Soon, I’m parking in the gravel lot for Dun Carloway. The hobbit house visitors’ center is still dark. Feeling better, warmer now. I grab my Pentax 35mm with the 28 mm lens, pocket my smokes, exit and lock the car. Coat, scarf and baseball cap. My uniform in the Hebrides. Sure miss my boo boo hat though.
    I stop at a plaque near the hobbit hole and read about Dun Carloway. Seems that a broch is a large Iron Age stone house, this one having been built around 2000 years ago probably by the Picts, though no one knows for sure.
    (I love the Picts, the truly indigenous people of Scotland. The Celts sailed from Ireland to Scotland in the 5th Century AD it’s said. Some legends have it that the Celts didn’t conquer the Picts, just merged with them. Others say it was bloody mess. I like to dream that it was a peaceful coming-together. More on the lines of each group falling in love with ‘The Other’, not killing the Stranger. A red headed Celtic woman seeing a muscular man with blue paint on his face and finds him more attractive than the freckled faced guy next to her. And visa versa for the guys. Then again, I am a hopeful sot at times.)
    The original use of the broch is speculated as being a refuge or defensive structure to protect people and livestock during attack. Attack from whom it doesn’t say. By the time of the Middle Ages, the rich of the area were using this broch as a show place, a sign of their wealth, a fancy house, to rub in their poorer neighbor’s faces I suppose. Dun Carloway is at least three stories, says the sign, with the first floor for the animals originally. Wow, that’s big. I look up the trail but I can’t see the broch but I do see the trail. I check the eastern horizon. A bit more gray over there. Dawn is coming, yet slowly. Total overcast. No moon, no stars. I shoulder my Pentax and head up the trail, with my mini Maglite in my hand. I don’t really need the flashlight but it’ll help me not stub my toe and fall on my ass. That’s a good thing.
    I reach a gate in no time. I pass through the gate and look up ahead. Is that it? Can’t tell. Still dark. I slowly walk up the trail and then I notice a hill to my left and then suddenly I realize it isn’t a hill. It’s a house. My mouth drops open. Though its in partial ruin, the broch rises at least 30 feet over my head. I scan the structure with my flashlight, seeing tight stone masonry work.
    “Wow,” is all I say, over and over again.
    I find the front door or what’s left of it and climb to a grassy landing ten feet above the ground. Behind me, the large remaining wall of the broch looms, sheltering me from the wind, that seems to be increasing with force as the dawn approaches. The eastern horizon sky grows lighter, from black gray to mid gray, but not light. My guess no sun today. I sit on the edge of the northern wall and dangle my feet over the side. I place my camera in the short grass behind me. I light a Camel Filter.
    Directly in front of me is The Sea. Not a loch. The Sea. The Atlantic Ocean.
    I feel like I’m in a movie.
    I drag hard on my smoke. I lay back on the grass behind me, my legs still hanging from the wall, and I daydream about The Picts.
______________________________________________________________________________

    “Annie, it’s me,” I say into the phone.
    “Where are you?” she says.
    “I’m in one of those little red phone booths in the middle of nowhere just down the road from Callanish. How are you?” I say.
    “I’m OK. I sent an Emil to your hotel in Skye. Did you get it?”
    Shit. I did but I didn’t call her when I got it. It was regarding my mother’s upcoming colon surgery. That Mom is fine but in quite a bit of pain and going under the knife tomorrow.
    “Yes, I did. Damn, Annie, I’m sorry. I should have called you but the time difference is weird and then I just forgot. What time is it there now?”
    “1 a.m.”
    Yikes. That means it’s 9 a.m. here. Man, it still isn’t very light yet.
    “Did I wake you?
    “No, I was up.”
    “Annie, I know you were envious that you weren’t with me here, and that you were angry I didn’t ask you to come along.”
    “I’m over that,” she says. From the sound of her voice, she ain’t completely over it.
    “Yea I know,” I say, “But I’m calling just to tell you that some how, some way, I going to bring you back to Scotland someday. I’m having the best time. And I wish you were here. Callanish was absolutely amazing last night.”
    “How’d it go, the shooting?”
    “OK, I guess. Hell, I don’t know. My little inner voice is telling me it’s fine so I’m just trying to trust that. But I don’t know. I’m telling you though, I really want to bring you here to Lewis and Harris and Callanish. You would just love it, Annie.” She would.
    “We’ll see,” she says. Annie stopped being my lover six months ago. Probably as good an answer as I’m going to get out of her. I don’t blame her for not being enthusiastic about a future trip. She’s the one that came to Skye a few years back. She’s the one that helped me get off my ass and finally go to the homeland. Can’t really expect her to like it when I decide to go on an artist’s sojourn, without her. Then again, I don’t feel that guilty about it either.
    “I even pay your way, “ I laugh. She laughs too. She know I don’t have a pot to piss in, nor a window to throw it out of.
    “Well, I gotta go, Annie. This call is costing a fortune and I gotta do some things before I get back on the ferry to Skye.”
    “Well, be careful.” Through it all, we still care a great deal for each other and she really means it when she says be careful.
    “I will, honey and thanks so much for letting me know how Mary is doing,” I say.
    “No problem. I miss you,” she says.
    “I miss you too.”

______________________________________________________________________________

   
    This time I don’t park in the visitors’ center’s parking lot. I kinda know my way around here now. This time I’m parked at the edge of the fence that encircles Callanish I. (There are at least two other smaller sites of standing stones. Callanish II and III). I put out my smoke, grab just the Pentax and get out of the VW. May not even take a shot. Just had to come back is all.
    It’s completely overcast. Looks like rain. Winds have picked up since sunrise. Back to about 30 mile an hour I bet. Cold but good. I pull my baseball cap down low on my head and make my way to a tiny gate in the fence. A hinge is bent a little but I get the gate open eventually and enter the large area of stones.
    I stroll around slowly, in a wide circle and look for a shot I may have missed. I see one. I take it. I complete the circle and put down my camera bag. I walk up to the stone fella I leaned up against last night.
    “Hey guy, how’s it going?” I say softly to the megalith.
    I turn around, plant my feet, and fall back against his flat tall surface.
    Feels like old times.

    Ferry leaves at 1:30. 11:00 now. Need to be in line by 1:00. An hour’s drive to Tarbert. Gives me a hour to play around on the Isle of Harris just south of the ferry port.
    As I drive up a hill, I see Callanish III a few hundred yards over there. I smile and decide I’ll save that for next time. When I bring Annie. That way, there’ll be something that both of us can experience for the first time.
    The clouds have lowered, misting a bit. Not rain, just mist. Good Scottish weather.
    “Aye,” I say out loud to the interior of my car.
    I turn on the windshield wipers to ‘intermittent’ and head down the damp two land blacktop.
    A half hour out of Talbert, I need to pee. Drinking a lot of IRN-BRU today. Even drinking some of that spicy Ginger Beer I bought in Inverness. Found a few cans of that rolling around under the passenger seat. Man, I got a pee. I find a pulloff and take it. No traffic, anytime today really. I can piss anywhere I want.
    I get out and the wind about blows me over.
    “Damn,” I say into the howling wind.
    I walk up a bank and down the other side, so I have a little bit of privacy. Off to my right, a wide valley falls away. Way over there is a smooth thousand foot high treeless ridge. Look like a man lying down. A lot of space between me and that ridge. A light mist is in the air, not enough to pepper my glasses but enough to chill the air.
    And the air is flat out moving here. Guessing around 40 miles an hour or more. Steady too. Not just gusts.
    I put my back to the wind and unzip. Momma didn’t raise no fool. I know better than to piss into the wind. I begin to do my business when I suddenly I feel moisture on my face. I look skyward. Is it starting to rain, I think? I shrug and look down at my pee. With my legs slightly apart, the wind’s now hitting my urine with full force, redirecting it so that now my piss is traveling parallel to the earth. Since my body is creating a bit of vortex, my piss makes a big looping circle, and is now hitting me squarely in the face.
    I laugh out loud. I stop peeing and the rain stops. I start peeing again and the rain begins. I stop pissing and I wipe my face.
    “Fuck a duck!” I say. I’m still laughing.
    With my dick still in my hand, I walk over to the high bank I just crossed, place my penis a few inches away from the earth and finish urinating.
    No rain’s flying in my face now.
    Thing is I just can’t stop laughing.

http://www.stujenks.com/gallery/megaliths/callanishandcroft.html

http://www.stujenks.com/gallery/megaliths/dawnatcallanish.html

http://www.stujenks.com/gallery/megaliths/callanishandbrownie.html

http://www.stujenks.com/gallery/megaliths/hoopdanceatcallanish.html

http://www.stujenks.com/gallery/megaliths/fourstones.html

"Charles Murray" (c) 2005, 2007

   

“Charles Murray” (c) 2005, 2007 Stu Jenks
  [Image: "Charles Murray" (c) 2005]

    The sea is relatively calm. Minimal spray is coming off the bow. I light a smoke and lean against the railing, watching the Isle of Skye fall away. The croft buildings on its northern shore becoming smaller and smaller.
    I’m on the Uig Ferry, going to the Isle of Lewis, and hopefully get to The Standing Stones of Callanish by sunset.
    I drag hard on my Camel Filter. My VW is stowed below deck. No desire to brave the cafeteria that is forward. I’m not hungry. Too excited to eat. Maybe a cup of coffee later at the bar. This is a two and a half hour ferry. I’ve got time.
    I wander from the starboard to the port side, to see if I can see the Isles of Lewis or Harris. Maybe that’s Harris over there. i don’t know. I wander back to the starboard side to look again at Skye, when I notice a man in a kilt. Not some funky urban kilt, like the camouflage one I have in my closet at home but a proper Victorian plaid, a green base with blue and red highlights. He has his Sgian Dubh knife tucked into his right sock and a simple leather Sporran across his lap, to hold his wallet and such. No fancy waistcoat though. Just a Henley shirt and a Down vest. He’s tall and lean with wire rimmed glasses, gray hair and a neatly trimmed beard. Guessing around 50. Fine looking chap. And he looks friendly enough. I wander over to his section of the railing.
    “I don’t recognize the plaid,” I say looking at his kilt, “What clan is it?”
    “Murray clan,” he says, with a bit of a rye smile.
    “My ex-girlfriend is a Murray. She’d be pissed off that I didn’t recognize the plaid,” I say. Annie won't really. It's just something to say.
    He chuckles. I laugh. We hit it off.
    Seems that Charles Murray is an executive for a mid-sized Scotch distillery called MacDuff International. Their big seller in the U.S. package store states is Grand McNish but the scotch that Charles seems particularly proud of today is Islay Mist [pronounced I-la]. A peaty blended Scotch, he tells me. He’s on his way to the town of Stornoway on the Isle of Lewis where a Gaelic singing contest is taking place this weekend and in which his company is one of the sponsors.
    “I’m taking pictures so I can prove to the rest of the staff I’m working,” he laughs, pointing his camera over the side. I really like this guy.
    I tell him that I’m a fine art photographer from Tucson, on a journey to fulfill a life long dream of shooting the Standing Stones of Callanish. I tell him about Arizona. He tells me about Glasgow and his hometown of Ayr, 30 miles to the southwest of the ‘Big Smoke’, Glasgow's nickname. He lives alone there, near the coast.
    “I’m not much of a sailor myself but I’m a West Coast man,” he says proudly, “I like to look out at the sea and see islands out there. Don’t like the East Coast where you look out and see nothing,” he says.
    Two chatty guys on a long ferry. I give him my business card. He promises to give me his, when he can get to his car.
    After a bit more talk of him and me and the sea and the land, he excused himself.
    “I have to speak with the gift shop manager about something. See you around, Stu.”
    “I’m sure you will,” I say.
    It’s a big ferry but not that big.
    Lo and behold, for the next hour, I run into Charles all over the ferry. In the gift shop I see him again, where I actually considered buying a fifth of his Islay Mist, but I haven’t any one to give it to.
[Plus I stopped drinking 20 years ago, but I’m still an alcoholic so I don’t know if it’s a good idea to have a bottle of great Scotch, my personal drink of choice, chilling in one of my bags. Have to admit though, I’ve only been in Scotland for 24 hours and the single malts are calling me, like sweet sirens across the sea. Stu, Stu. Single malt. Come, Stu, come into our arms. Sweet Jesus Christ.]
    I saw Charles again on deck and in the hallways too. It became a joke after a while.
    “I really not following you around, Charles,” I say.
    He smiles and goes about his next errand on the ferry.
    With about an hour left in our passage, I was walking through the bar to get to the stern of the ship, when once again I see Charles.
    “Stu! Come on over and have a wee dram with me. It’s on me!” he yells.
    I stop and shake my head.
    “No thanks, Charles. But thanks anyway,” I say.
    “Oh, come now! Just a wee one,” he says.
    “No, but I do appreciate it,” I say to him.
    Then I say to the barkeep, a pretty thin blond woman,“Could I get a cup of coffee with cream?”
    “Sure,” she says.
    I get my coffee and Charles chats me up about something but I’m not really paying attention. I flooded with feelings. Angry, that I can't drink anymore. Afraid, that Scotland might end up being one long trigger to drink The Single Malt. Amused, that in all of my years of excessive drinking, I was never offered free drinks in a bar. Now, I’m on a ferry with the executive vice president for a major Scotch distillery, who is offering me free scotch and I’m too alcoholic to accept. Fuck me.   
    Close to an hour passes. Back on deck again. Just a couple exposures left of this roll. Charles is on deck too, with his camera, taking pics. I line up a shot and then walk over to him.
    “Charles, do you mind if I take your picture?”
    “Sure, that’ll be fine,” he says shyly.
    I walk back over to the far bulkhead where I was just standing. I’m using a 100 mm lens on the Pentax. Need some distance. Charles knows I’m there, focusing in on him. He’s looking out to sea, like the proud Scotsman he is. He looks great, I think to myself. I pop the shot.
    “One more,” I say, getting closer for a headshot.
    He doesn’t flinch. Just staring off the starboard side of the Uig ferry, looking toward the approaching port town of Tarbert.
    A man of this time and of another one too.

    [Note:  A few days later I was driving on a narrow lowland road not far from the East Coast of Scotland when suddenly, I rounded a corner and found myself behind a slow-moving tanker truck of Chivas Regal Scotch. A goddamn tanker truck. In the Rooms, there’s a saying that ‘one is too many, and a thousand not enough’. In my case, it’s ‘a wee dram is too many, and a tanker truck is not enough’.]

http://stujenks.typepad.com/photos/megaliths_and_sodapop_los/charlesmurray.html

"IRN-BRU & The Storr" (c) 2005-2007

“IRN-BRU & The Storr” (c) 2005-2007 Stu Jenks
[Images: "The Old Man and The Storr" & "The Giant's Chair and The Storr"

    My flashlight batteries are weak. Who would have thought, foiled by an old pair of AA.
    The pine forest is so thick that the rising Full Moon barely breaks through the branches overhead. And I’m cold, and tired.
    It’s getting around midnight. I stop along the trail and consider and then reconsider. Go back to the Royal Hotel in Portree, says the quiet voice within. I know it’s right. I almost stepped off the trail just a few feet ago, and more importantly, my major moonlight photography is going to be tomorrow night at Callanish. This was just an afterthought after dinner tonight. I need to be reasonable fresh for tomorrow night.
    I turn around and head back down to my VW parked in the car park off the single track. Tomorrow I think. Tomorrow.

    I awaken before dawn, like a small child on Christmas morning. I have a lot to do today. Hike up the Storr, drive around Skye a bit, and get to the ferry dock at Uig no later than 1:30 for the 2:00 o’clock to Talbert and the Isles of Lewis and Harris. Can’t miss the ferry. I already paid big bucks for the ticket and it’s the only ferry to Lewis and Harris today. Can’t just catch the next one.
    I make myself a cup of Earl Gray. Ever since Ben made me a cup within minutes of my arriving at Helen’s Willesden Green flat after my 10-hour flight from The States, I try to have Earl Gray whenever I can. I bought some tea in Inverness yesterday, and some milk last night at the Somerset’s Grocery around the corner. I’m good to go. Ah, still a couple of scones left over from last night. Lovely. Christ, I am in the UK only a few days, and I’m now using words like ‘lovely’. I watch some BBC Scotland on the tube, finish my tea, and take my gear out to the car. Besides one suitcase with my clothes and such, I have another suitcase with just camera equipment, and another larger one with just my hiking boots, my full winter North Face jacket, my Camel Bak water pack and one of my Christmas Light Hoops. Amazingly enough, the hoop got through customs, it being a circle of heavy wire, with a hundred lights wrapped around the hoop and four plastic boxes blacktaped to the hoop where the C batteries go. I can just picture the alarms going off on the big X-Ray machines in every airport baggage area that my luggage passed through. Before I flew out of Tucson, I put a copy of one of my hoop images, “The Three Surrenders” on top of it along with a typed written note:

    “To whom it may concern:
    My name is Stu Jenks and I’m a professional photographer.
    This is a lighting instrument that I use in my work.
    Thanks for your consideration”

    When I first unpacked my stuff at Helen’s in London, I notice that someone had taken the batteries out of the black boxes, but the hoop was in good shape. Life is good, even in these times of Extreme Terrorist Fears. I don’t particularly have those fears, but it seems like most of America does. Anyway, I have the hoop with me in Scotland, ready to cross over on the ferry to the Outer Hebrides and hopefully do some hoop dancing among the stones tonight.
    Car’s packed. Sun’s barely up. Bought a bad cup of coffee across the street. I really should stick with tea. Like ordering Mexican food in Chapel Hill, N.C. in the 70's. Hiked around town for a few more minutes just to breathe in the dawn.
    One last stop now before I leave Portree. AA batteries, some more scones and a six pack of IRN-BRU from Somerset’s.
    Aye, IRN-BRU.
    Last night I remember talking with Emma, a raven-haired lovely who works as a desk clerk at the Royal Hotel.
    “Stu, have to tried IRN-BRU yet?” said Emma, speaking in her sexy brogue. We've been talking about food and drink. I believe I had just mentioned the Earl Gray up in my room.
    “What’s that?” I said.
    “Ah, it’s a Scottish soft drink. Very tasty. We all drink it.”
    “What’s it taste like?” I ask.
    Emma pauses for a second. She quite a lovely girl. I’d guess in her twenties. Black hair. Fine features. Sweet face. A fine looking Scottish lassie.
    “Hard to describe, it is. Made partly with Quinine Water. Try it. I think you’ll like it,” she said.
    “I will. Thanks, Emma.”
    “No bother,” she says, smiling a little at me. A lovely girl.

    I’ve gotten my batteries, my scones, my IRN-BRU. Car’s load. Plenty of gas. Time to head for The Storr, that rocky ridge that I attempted to climb last night. But first, I open a bottle of Diet IRN-BRU for the road.
    Good fizz. I sniff the bouquet through the narrow opening in the bottle, as if it was a fine wine. Sweet but bitter. Hmm. I take a long draft.
    “This stuff is great,” I say to the interior of the Volkswagen.
    A blend of bitters and Quinine and something I can't place (I found out later that only two board members of Barr’s Brewery know the secret ingredient that give IRN-BRU its distinctive flavor). This is a wonderful soft drink, I think to myself. Then again, I drink Tab at home.
    I start the car, and back up, not knowing whether to look over my right shoulder or my left as I go in reverse. Another day of shoulder driving I suppose. I turn on the heat a bit, and take another long draft of the brew.
    “Oh man,” I say.
    “I need to import some of this when I get back home”  [Note from Tucson: I bought a case just a couple of days ago. A.J.’s, a luxury grocery store owned by Eddie Basha, ordered me some. I cost me a fortune. Worth every penny.]
    I take another sip as I leave Portree, driving slow on its tiny narrow streets. No traffic at all. Just me.
    Before too long, I’m out of town and on the Single Tracks.

    [A little discussion on Single Tracks on the Isle of Skye.
    Unlike the single tracks on the mainland, these one-lane roads go on for miles and miles. Due to the relatively treeless terrain of most of Northern Skye, you can see approaching traffic from a long way off, day or night, but it is a little hairy when you are cresting a blind hill at 30 to 40 miles an hour. I just got in the habit of pulling over into the Passing Place at the top of the hill, just in case. Then again, the person approaching on the other side could do the same thing. No matter. We would just have a gentle head on collision as we were both putting on our brakes. And throughout my stay on Skye, this was a great way to be polite to folk and make friends too. I would see someone coming toward me and I would always get in the Passing Place closest to me, rather than wait for them to getting in their nearest pulloff. A couple of times, we would both pull off at the same time, me in mine, they in theirs, and I would blink my high beam letting them know to come on down. Except for the occasional European tourist, everyone would wave as they passed me. One last thing: I discovered you could always tell the locals from the tourists by how the Skye folk flew down the Single Tracks and the Two Laners. They would just barrel down the road. Makes sense to me. I remember when I lived in the mountains of North Carolina, I would go at high speed down winding mountain roads because I had driven down them innumerable times, for they were the only way to get from one place to another. The little road was the main road. I could almost drive them blind. Did a few times blind drunk. And at night, I would drive even faster than in the day, for I could see forever. It’s the same here on Skye. There is only one road to Uig, one road to Staffin, one road around the entire edge of the Northern Skye. Another road that cuts across the high ridge of The Trotternish to get to Uig too. A few local streets in the little villages here and there and that’s about it for hardtop. If you grew up here, you could drive these roads with your eyes closed as well.]

    The drive's dramatic this morning. The Big Sound on my right, the ridge of the Trotternish beginning on my left. The rough high cliffs and outcroppings of The Storr straight in front of me. Within a few minutes, I’m back at the parking lot I was at last night, this time I see a hatchback parked there and a middle aged man fiddling with some camera gear. Shot. I was hoping to be alone this morning. As I park my car, I check out the guy. Tall, stocky, salt and pepper hair. The vibe is fine. Hmm. Let’s not prejudge, Stu, I think to myself.
    I start up a conversation with this fellow. Name’s Rob. From down by Glasgow. Hiked to the top of the Storr this morning and took some early morning shoots. Nicest guy you'd ever meet. We talked about some camera geek stuff for a while (Speed of films, medium format cameras, etc. I rarely talk about this technical stuff. Frankly it usually bores me to tears.) After talking about some night photography experiences, I then tell Rob a little secret.
    “I actually make quite a bit of money using a 50 year old Kodak Brownie.” I say.
    He scrunches up his forehead.
    “I’ll show you,” I say.
    I got to the backseat of my rental and grab my Brownie. As I walk to him, I unzip the camera case it’s in, and then take out the old camera and hand it to him to inspect.
    “Wow,” he says, gingerly cradling the camera in his big hands and then handing it back to me.
    “And the lens is really good,” I say, “Not too sharp, not to soft. It takes 127 film too, and the only place that makes 127 anymore is a factory in Croatia. Ain't that something. High silver content. 100 ASA. Really great film.”
    “You don’t say,” he says with a smile on his face.
    Rob continues,“Just goes to prove that it isn’t the equipment you use, but what you do with the camera."
    “You bet,” I say to him. I’m smiling now too.
    We talk some more about the places he’s been over the years in the Highlands. I get out my Scotland road map at one point and he points out his favorite spots on the mainland. Not on my way to anywhere, but they look nice on the map. Next trip to Scotland I think.
    We laugh and laugh some more, but then I’m suddenly aware of the time. The ferry in my future. Gotta get up The Storr.
    Just then another car pulls into the lot, and this time I recognize its occupants. It’s the foursome from London that I met on the plane to Inverness. Two couples. The couple I wish I had sat next to, were in the seats behind mine. The couple I ended up sharing the flight with were truly odd ducks. He, a nurse in London, Her, I don’t know. Nice enough people but they had come to Skye to party. I hadn’t. I saw them on the streets last night in Portree and waved and smiled but didn’t stop and chat. Just had a bad feeling. Not that they are bad folk. Hardly. Just that we had very different goals for our stay on Skye. Mine, spiritual. Theirs, more about spirits.
    “You been following us again, aye,” says the nurse with the shaved head.
    “Been waiting here a while for y'all to show up,” I say. He laughs. So do I.
    “I should get ready to go up to the Storr,” I say now to Rob.
    The nicer couple of the foursome waves at me from across the car park. I wave back. Within minutes, they have the packs slung on their backs and they are loudly walking into the forest and up the hill. I wait just a bit for them to get ahead of me, and then I grab my Camelbak, stick my Brownie in its pouch, and put it on my back. Finally I sling the Rollei over my right shoulder and grab my tripod. Got a feeling I’d regret not taking this old boy up there today.
    I lock up the Volkswagen and go and say goodbye to Rob.
    “It really has been great to talk with you, Rob.”
    “You too, Stu. Have a great time today,” Rob says, rolling his ‘R’s on the word ‘great’.
    “Shot me an e-mail if you like some time," I say, "I’d love to see the pics you shot today.”
    “All righty,” he says.
    I smile. I love the Scots.
    “Be well,” I say.
    “Same to ya,” says Rob.

    I enter the pine forest.
    The path is easy an