I love visiting churchyards, particularly ones in a spectacular setting such as Cille Choirill near Roybridge, looking out across the River Roy and the clan lands of McDonald of Keppoch. I love such places, not for the graves of....
...the rich or famous but for the stories that the gravestones tell of ordinary people, of ordinary families. They are like photo snapshots, momentary flashes of light that illuminate aspects of a world long passed, like....
....the story of this family, whose tragedies are told in cold sandstone. There were many similar at Cille Choirill but I chose this one partly for what is visible in the right-hand side of the photo, which brings us sharply back to the present: some badgers are digging up the graveyard for worms.
However, my favourite headstone at Cille Choirill is this grotesquely-shaped lump of rock. I think it tells more of the soul it commemorates than many of the polished slabs of stone.
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