Lord of Falcon Ridge (36 page)

 

 

 

B
ACK IN
R
OMAN
times, Scotland was called Caledonia. By the middle of the ninth century, it had become Scotland. Loch Ness was also called Loch Ness by Viking times. However, I couldn't very well call the Loch Ness monster Nessie. I decided to call her Caldon.

Loch Ness is twenty-four miles long, on average a mile wide. It has never been known to freeze. It's fed by eight rivers and countless streams, the course of all these water-ways having changed dramatically over the centuries and millennia. The loch's only outlet now is by the river Ness into the Moray Firth.

It's true that Saint Columba was the first person to record sighting of the Loch Ness monster way back in the sixth century. From that time onward, there have been countless sightings, reports, descriptions, most of them surprisingly alike. The number of reported sightings took a huge leap upward during the 1930s when the thick trees were cleared around Loch Ness's western shores for the construction of the new A82 Highway. It was during the 1930s that Nessie became well publicized and looking for Nessie became the thing to do.

Do I believe in Nessie? Back in 1990, when my husband and I were traveling through the Highlands, we decided to get out of the rented car and do some exploring on foot.
We left the car at Urquhart Castle near Drumnadrochit, one of the favorite Nessie-watching sites. It was a damp warm day. There was a heavy mist—a perfectly normal day in the Highlands in midsummer. We fetched a picnic lunch and hiked to the ruined fortress that stood on a promontory that hung out over the loch. Because of the thick mist, there were few tourists, and those who were there eyed our lunch and were nice enough to leave. We spread out our tablecloth and feasted. The mist dampened the baked chicken, the bread, even the wineglasses. We didn't care. My husband fell asleep. I read a novel. The afternoon was lazy. The mist got thicker. I looked up at the sound of a soft hissing right in front of me. Hissing sound? A snake? In the water?

The hair on my neck stirred. My heart went south. There it was again, that soft hissing sound, but it was closer now. Then, suddenly, there was an abrupt clearing in the mist, as if someone had taken a knife and cut out a square in a swatch of filmy material. Framed in that rough square was a small head. Slowly, with no sound at all, the head rose higher and higher out of the water. I realized then that I was staring at Nessie, just sitting there crouched forward over that promontory, staring, not really believing that I could be seeing Nessie, but then there was this long neck, incredibly long, rising, rising out of the water. I remember reaching out my hand. I remember whispering something. Just as suddenly, the mist filled in again. And there was nothing. I sat there for a very long time, not moving, wondering if I'd lost it, wondering if the chicken had gone bad before it had been baked, wondering if that sweet red wine had held more than eleven percent alcohol. And I decided, finally, that the picnic had nothing to do with anything.

Nessie is there and so are her children. I have no idea how many of her generations have passed since Saint Columba saw her in the sixth century. Five? Ten?

It doesn't matter. She's there.