Ben More (standard:non fiction, 287 words)
Author: Cyrano	Added: Feb 05 2012	Views/Reads: 2821/2	Story vote: 0.00 (0 votes)
When writing about a place, its good to make that place another character in your story. It's good practice, try it.

Ben More 

It cast shadows over my days, over my youth, just as surely as it cast
shadows across the fells and over the farm on which I lived.  Most 
mornings the swirling sea mist lifted off the fells and licked its way 
up the rugged, rose-pink granite face where it hung like a shroud till 
noon. The mountain restricted me as it must have restricted my father 
and his before him, punished to live on one side while the rest of 
human life, it seemed, lived on the other. Ours was the only farm on 
the western shoreline of the island, while on the east side white 
cottages with their chocolate box thatched roofs littered the fells, 
crossed by dry stone walls like a checker board.  Life under the shadow 
of the mountain was sometimes a lonely existence. I don't think I spoke 
a dozen words to a stranger during the winter months. We never had a 
television set my whole childhood. We tried it one time but the 
mountain blocked the signal and dad took the television back to 
Tobermoray. I climbed the mountain most days but only to free myself 
from its capture and to feel the elation of seeing clear across the 
island toward the mainland, sometimes catching sight of a yacht tacking 
hard, fighting the wind ‘mid-Sound' and me waving like a city kid might 
wave at a passing train.  It somehow connected me to something or 
someone far off and for a moment I felt the promise that one day I 
might leave the Mountain's shadow. Fifty years on I return to its 
shadow just to hear the snow fall, and feel protected from the storms I 
never knew were coming. 


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