I walked, I walk again

I was out and up and over in the fields around my hometown this afternoon. A walk I know well, filled with memories of my childhood and growing up. The type of landscape that triggers deep wells of memory and emotion in me.
I climbed the hills in a facial scrub of weather. A bright burning sun, a coarse and chilly whipping wind. In the fields were lots of pregnant ewes but no lambs. The birdlife was commonplace: the corbids of crow, rook and jackdaw; robins and blackbirds, tits. Daft woodpigeons bursting from the tree branches. A kestrel wing-still in the blustery air. A buzzard wing-wide in glory circling high above.

But never mind. The walk was not to compile a list. The walk was to be out in Spring uncoiling with life, to be among the landscape I love to walk, the memories and personal history that thaw into mind, into emotion, into the very ground I walk upon.
This was my first home as a baby. This was where I came with friends to run and play and learn among the trees and burns and boggy fields. Where I grew to love the dappled light among trees.
This was where the constellations were made to move and I followed my first satellite high and bright and arcing across the night.
 This was the place of my first girlfriend, my first valentine - the perfume of it a rising vapour of sense memory as I type.
This is where I walked countless times before. This is where I walked for another time today. Not to record a passage of time or experience, but just to be out in my element.
Ohh I was tired and happy as I entered Port Glasgow. There, just at a fence on the first row of houses, was a wee bonny bird to welcome me back.