BEN STACK
Lying on today’s A838 between Lairg and Laxford Bridge, Ben Stack ( Scottish Gaelic: Beinn Stac) dominates over the A894 running north, and the village of Scourie which seems to sit at its foot: a great grey pyramid of a mountain. The fact that it can be seen, together with Arkle and Foinaven, dominating the skyline even from Handa Island and Oldshoremore, means that those standing atop its 731 metres (2,365ft), can see the comings and goings of the traffic at sea, as Norman Macaig describes in the poem below.
APPARITION by Norman MacCaig
Before me, the solid cone
of Ben Stack
looks in all directions at once
without needing to turn.
I climb and climb and climb,
disliked by a peregrine
no friend to a lizard,
shunned by a hind
with two followers.
At the cairn I turn round and scan
the jumbled wilderness
of mountains and bogs and lochs,
South, East, North and then - West
- the sea
where a myth in full rig,
a great sailing ship, escaped
from the biggest bottle in the world,
glides grandly through the rustling water.
September 1985
Published in The Poems of Norman MacCaig edited by Ewen MacCaig
Rectory Ramblings 