Heroes Not Zombies

You don’t really get a sense of scale from this photo but these rocks are about two metres high…..which is what makes them all the more remarkable. Rain, water, ice and wind have all shaped this rock over many, many years, slicing it up like a loaf of bread!

I took this photo on one of my most favourite walks in the world, up the hill behind Callander in Scotland, to the Bracklinn Falls.

Callander is a pretty, small town, not far from Stirling, the town of my birth. I’ve never known a time when I didn’t want to be a doctor. I first expressed the desire when I was 3. I don’t know where the idea came from. There were no doctors or nurses in my family. I guess it’s truly one of those “calling” things. A “vocation”. But I do remember watching a tv series when I was still very young – “Dr Finlay’s Casebook” – and thinking “that’s the kind of doctor I’d like to be”. That story was set in the fictional town of “Tannochbrae”, which in real life was Callander. When you walk up to the Bracklinn Falls you pass the house which was used as Dr Finlay’s surgery in the tv series.

I read a quotation from the artist, Jesse Murry yesterday…..

…….through the power of imagination to progress beyond the literalness of fact to the poetic dimension of fiction.

I thought of that again as I wrote this piece today….how, through the power of imagination we transcend the literalness of fact to enter “the poetic dimension of fiction”.

What would life be like without imagination? What would it be like without stories?

A sorry, harsher, more plain life I suspect. We need to be enchanted and we need to make sense of our lives….Thank goodness for imagination.

I wonder what stories there might be about these massive rocks at the Bracklinn Falls? I wonder what those shapes might have inspired in a storytellers mind?

I wonder if these rocks will stimulate your imagination……