The Last Light on Loch Coire

We arrived at the loch an hour before dark. The water was so still it felt dishonest, like the land was holding its breath just for us. There was nobody else around — just a pair of red deer on the far bank, moving slowly, ears tracking sounds we couldn't hear.

The walk in had taken most of the afternoon. Not because it was far, but because we kept stopping. A waterfall that the map didn't mention. A section of ridge where the cloud broke and the whole valley opened beneath us. A boulder the shape of a sleeping animal.

Finding the Rhythm

There's a moment on every walk where your legs stop being something you think about. The terrain does the thinking for you. Your feet find the path and your mind goes somewhere else — somewhere useful, but unstructured. Not meditation. Not daydreaming. Something in between.

That happened somewhere around the two-hour mark. The bog had given way to firmer ground, the gradient eased, and suddenly I was just walking. Present, but unbothered.

The water was so still it felt dishonest, like the land was holding its breath just for us.

At the Loch

Loch Coire sits in a cradle of dark rock. It's not dramatic in the way postcards need it to be. It's dramatic in the way that silence is dramatic — the kind that makes you suddenly aware of your own breathing.

We sat on a flat stone at the water's edge and ate cold food from our packs. Cheese, oatcakes, an apple each. The kind of meal that would feel disappointing at a table but feels extraordinary when you've walked for it.

The light turned amber, then copper, then something I don't have a word for. The deer had gone. The water held the sky like a mirror someone had left face-up.

What I Took Away

I didn't take many photographs. I took one, maybe two. Most of the time I just watched. There's a compulsion now to document everything, to prove you were somewhere. I'm trying to resist that. The loch doesn't need me to remember it. But I think I need to remember the loch.

We walked back in near-darkness, headtorches off for the first twenty minutes, navigating by the last blue light in the sky. The path was easier to feel than to see. Maybe that's the point.