Acid Rain by R.D Rhodes (ebook reader txt) 📕

up to his face and stroked his nose and lip. “That’s good. Yeah, feels like it.” He said blasély, “How’s your leg, now?”

“Och, it’s fine. It hasn’t bothered me for days.”

“That’s good.”

His knees kept bouncing.

“Aw man, I’ve got so much energy. C’mon, you want to get goin’ soon?”

“Yeah, I can see that.” I laughed. “Give me a chance to wake up first. This is good soup.”

“It is, eh? Just the cheap stuff, too.”

“Hm.”“You been up long?”

“Yeah. Got up hours ago. Went for a pee and a run through the woods. It is stunning out there. Then I came back and finished my book. Oh, and I’d like you to meet my new friend. Ha-Ha! Look!”

He came away from the entrance, directing to the left. I kneeled over and looked out- at a seven-foot-high by ten feet wide Loch Ness monster, the periscope neck poking up from the ground along with four raised bumps and a tail. “Wow!” I said, impressed. “How long did that take?”

“Thanks. Three hours. C’mon, let’s get going then!” He twisted, and bent his knees up and bounced them.

“Okay. Okay.”

I finished my soup and wriggled more clothes on under my sleeping bag. Then we packed up, folded up the tent, crammed everything into our rucksacks and stepped through the shin-deep snow. We got back to the road, not knowing where it began and the forest floor ended.

A few cotton clouds patched the blue sky. It didn’t look like snowing again. I bent down and scooped up a handful and rubbed it in my face, then I packed some into a small ball and popped it in my mouth. I chewed it to ice and let it dissolve on my tongue as we walked.

We really were on our own out there. The road rose up and away from the river, leaving a vast silence to reign over the land. Apart from our footsteps I literally couldn’t hear a sound. My heart was soaring. The road kept dipping and rising. Harry stopped and shook his head.

“This is stunning.”

“Wow.” I said.

On both sides of the road we were surrounded as far as the eye could see by biblical-looking forest made up of knarled and twisted trees that must have been at least several hundred years old. And despite it being almost winter, and snowy, there was green everywhere; in the lichen dangling like old men’s beards from the branches, in the moss clinging to the trunks, and in the white-dusted pine tree canopies above us that stretched way out onto the other side of the river.

It was one of the most beautiful things I had ever seen.

We carried on. With each lunge, the snow came up above my boots, melted quickly, and soaked through my socks. It was heavy going. But the scenery drove me on, seeming to give me extra energy.

Down to our left, the white river was winding and swinging away, smashing down waterfalls and powering through the gorges it had made. Time and again the sun managed to break through the clouds and was shining beams everywhere, illuminating mythical-looking spots amongst the distant trees.

“Wow!” I gasped. On the other side of the river, the light beams were now landing on some of the most pristine-looking places I had ever seen. It looked boggy and wet out there, and was in the middle of miles of forest. Nobody would go there.

“That’s where we need to go.” I said.

Harry’s eyes followed the river. “How though, we can’t cross?”

“Maybe the road circles the glen and comes back down the other side. Or we’ll find a bridge further down. C’mon.”

Chapter 42

W e carried on for miles, but there was no bridge. And the river was too wide and fast to think about crossing. It soon opened out into a loch, full of little pine-filled islands, and at its side we came to an empty car park buried under a foot of snow. We skim-read the ranger signposts and went on, to another car park further up. The tarmac turned to stone. We had to keep stopping and looking to navigate through the white.

“Want to have a break?” Harry asked.

We’d been walking for hours. “Okay.” I agreed. “Where do you want to sit?”

“What about up there?” He pointed to some boulders further up the hillside.

We left the loch and climbed, and sat down on the separate rocks. Harry handed me sandwiches as we stared in awed silence. It was like the earth was breathing. The clouds were sweeping the sky, laying down shadowed shapes on the ground and shrouding the hilltops in mystery. The loch lapped onto the shore, then calmly pulled out again. God’s searchlights shone from heaven to check out beautiful spots everywhere below. And that’s what it felt like- heaven. How could heaven be any better than this? I thought.

I took out my bottle of water. Harry was kicking his legs out from the rock he sat on, his eyes roaming from left to right.

There was a high-pitched screech from behind us, and a bird shot over our heads and glided across the loch. I watched its tiny figure get smaller until it disappeared into the opposite mountains, and when I looked away, I noticed down below- grey rocks piled up in intricate patterns, poking up out from the snow. I knew what they were. Walls of houses.

Everything was here, I thought. This is all we had. We lived off the land, changed with the seasons. Are we any happier now than we were then?

But I didn’t know anything. For all I knew that old stone cottage could have been burned down during the clearances, the tenants forced to move to the towns for jobs, or to starve where they were while the landowners stood over their bodies.

Maybe that was the reason, they were