Remembering

It's icy cold on my hill in the highlands late on a November day, although one would not know it from the glorious tints of the deepening sky, the backlit clouds and the fiery setting sun yesterday. The annual deer hunting season is in full swing now, and I added my own soupçon of color to the autumnal Saturday equation, all decked out in blaze orange from head to foot and looking rather like a large squash.

There was a solitary eagle above my head yesterday, and she (I think it was a she) looked as if she was sliding down one of the day's last sunbeams. There was an abundance of wind out on the brow of the hill where I was sitting, and I hunkered down, trying to present as small an object of attention to it as possible. What color is the wind in November anyway, has anyone seen it?

For all the bright sky, the clouds, the sunbeams and the resolute oak trees holding onto their leaves, the day had a sombre ambiance.

It was the eve of Remembrance Day and the 90th anniversary of one of the bloodiest battles of the First World War, the brutal months long campaign waged in the ruined Belgian village of Passchendaele and nearby Delville Wood. We have no way of knowing just how many valiant spirits fell in that prolonged battle, but historians say there are still a hundred thousand good men and an equal number of horses sleeping in unknown graves beneath the green fields of Belgium.

At least one of those courageous and unclaimed fallen spirits is a member of my clan. Today, let us remember our fallen ones, all of them. Let us also remember those who are working for world peace.