Edge of the Business Park

What are those blue remembered hills
What spires, what farms are those?
I spent my childhood roaming those distant hills, before the creeping Business Park came. Before the ring road and the Wester Hailes Scheme. Before the water feature and illuminated waterside walk. On a day like today I remember walking up there with my canvas satchel and compass. A proper walker. I knew the heights by heart. Was the Black Hill 1644 feet? Carnethy was 1890, I'm sure. Or was that Scald Law? The world was opening out before me. So much ahead. Now and again, you have to say, there still is! And yet the sheer unanchored excitement that could make your head light and dizzy, where every step was the first one, won't come again. That's not written in sadness, that's just the way it is. A notion so real, that you can lay your weary head back on it like a pillow, close your eyes in the sun, and feel the heat there; and just for a moment you feel again how it felt the first time.