Stob Coire nan Lochan by Alan Clarke
It was on the summit of Stob Coire nan Lochan, an outlier of mighty Bidean nam Bian in Glencoe, on 17th October 1970, that I really started life. I was twenty-seven years old, and at last free from those twenty-seven years.
Freedom: what is it? The word was one of the mantras of the twentieth century. Freedom fighters: another word for bloodthirsty terrorists. Freedom, man: the hippy sixties slang meaning to do what you like, smoke what you like, be as dirty as you like, so long as you leave me alone and I leave you alone and we both enjoy this beautiful life in our own ways, man. Democratic freedom: a cynic might define it as the ability for every person to vote for the party that has been most successful in persuading that person that it will fulfil its promises for a better nation.
I didn’t talk like this in October 1970. I didn’t know the language. In October 1970 it was very simple - at last I was free from an all-encompassing, hyper-exclusive, mind-destroying sect which controlled your reading material, your eating habits, the way you took your meals, who you ate with, who you married, who you had sex with, where you went at weekends, where you went every evening, what you did on Saturdays, how you spent your Sundays, who you entertained, how you addressed your parents, what type of clothes you wore, how you cut your hair, whether you could have a holiday or not, what sort of education you could have, where you could live after you married, where you could get money for a mortgage, what sort of a job you could get. The following was not allowed: radio, television, theatre, concerts, cinema, modern novels, cameras. There was no long hair for boys or men, no short hair for girls or women; no moustaches or beards for men; no trousers for women, no make-up for women; no marriage outside the sect; no sex before marriage or outside of marriage; no going out with anyone outside the sect; no homosexuality of any form; no visiting churches, no going to any religious service outside the sect; no reading any philosophy or anything to do with the occult; no missing the Sunday morning meeting at 6am; no men praying with their heads covered, and no women praying with their heads uncovered; no playing cards, no gambling; no swearing, no bad language; no calling your parents ‘Mum’ and ‘Dad’- it had to be a respectful ‘Mother’ and ‘Father’; no eating, drinking, or even having a cup of tea with anyone outside the sect; no family Christmas festivities; no membership of any professional association, nor of any social club or society; no life assurance; no membership of any pension fund that involved common benefits; no mortgages from mutual building societies; no holidays abroad; no holidays at all over a weekend (you had to be back at your home gathering for every Sunday); no staying in hotels, no eating in restaurants, no going on business trips which would mean you missed any of the sect’s meetings, which were held every day.
So in October 1970 my definition of ‘freedom’ was very simple: throwing away all these restrictions. But it’s not quite that simple! When you’ve had twenty-seven years of that form of control, it will take another twenty-seven years, maybe more, to get rid of it. I had been born and brought up in the sect; for the last two years I had agonized over how to extricate myself from it, but now I had succeeded; I had finally broken free. The future was something to think about later; it was another world, where they do things differently.
What an exceptional day that was! I had started from Edinburgh with a friend, Ian (also just out of the sect), very early in the morning under a cloudy grey sky. We drove to the head of Glencoe, getting there at ten o’clock when the clouds were beginning to lift, promising a fine day. We parked by the waterfall and walked up the flank of Beinn Fhada, along its rocky summit, and scrambled up Stob Coire Sgreamhach, then down to the bealach at the top of the Hidden Valley, then up to the highest point, Bidean nam Bian. By this time the heat of the midday sun had burnt off the clouds, and the sun shone brightly out of a cloudless blue sky. The view was fantastic: to the north, the great bulk of Ben Nevis, and even further (was it Ben Wyvis we could see?); to the east, Ben Alder, and beyond it the bulk of the Cairngorms; and to the west, the Morven hills and the sparkling Atlantic.
We ate our lunch up there, at the top of the world; there was not a breath, not even a zephyr. No other soul disturbed our solitude.
Then we descended steep natural rock steps down a sharp little ridge and up to Stob Coire nan Lochan. From the summit, high over Glencoe, we could see the road three thousand feet below us, with miniscule cars seemingly in another world; in front of us strode the wonderful notched ridge of Aonach Eagach, and behind it the long range of the Mamore hills, dappled now in the shadows of a few afternoon cumulus clouds, and behind the Mamores the great top of Ben Nevis.
It was precisely at that moment that there came welling up inside me this terrific feeling of loosening, of release, of throwing away garments, of discarding prejudices, of starting again: in a word, freedom. I felt as light as a bird: I could have taken wings and soared like an eagle in the blue sky.
I have now lived considerably longer outside the sect than within it; but the start of my true life was on the summit of Stob Coire nan Lochan on that glorious October day.
