Having just cycled from Croy to Milngavie via the Carron Valley with a headwind all the way save for the initial climb up the Tak Ma Doon, I am inclined to believe that, in the spirit of the Austrian (bicycling) philosopher Karlfried Durckheim who wrote this:
The earth is a supreme breathing process.
The holy Mount Kailas of the Strathclyde region, the highest point in the fells, the almost conical Meikle Bin. I can barely see its top from my fourth floor living room in Cessnock, and each time I do this route and encircle it, I consider it as a sort of prayer. Mount Kailas I should add is a sacred mountain in Tibet (Lord Shiva, the destroyer of illusion and ignorance resides at the top), whose 32 mile basal circumference is regularly encircled by pilgrims, (if you circled the Meikle Bin by the two drove roads on either side, the Crow and Tak Ma Doon, and used the connecting B818 and the A891 + A803 roads, it would probably register a similar mileage).
Prayer, Wendell Berry said, was 'work done in gratitude'.
Prayer needn't mean organized religion and all the dogma that comes with it. Prayer (as pilgrimage) is simply a matter of moving under your own steam. Of sweating a little.
Of joining in on that breathing supreme!
The old stone bridge on the Tak Ma Doon...almost at the top!
The old stone bridge over the Endrick Water on the very quiet B818, a few kilometres from Fintry...
The view of the Campsie Fells (presiding beyond industry, science, art and knowledge) from my fourth floor living room... There's something very strange and interesting about cycling round your horizon.
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