As soon as Scotland knew me for a warrior, that land unsheathed its brutal genius; faces appeared in its every root and in all the moss, conniving where to suck rainwater, where to lay the next silt layer. Unlike this place, Scotland leaves nothing to leisure—land in highlands and lowlands alike is not given to ease. It gathers freshness and a kinetic clarity that has no kindness in it, only eerie attention, greedy to suck a man’s marrow, and his brain as well should he recline in the moss too long.

A soldier need not be slaughtered for the moss of Scotland to invade him. Simply lying down for a rest turns him into occupied territory all the rest of his days.

When I was eighteen I never confessed to my mother what befell me in Scotland—I hid the haunted dereliction of my mind from her, and with my father I stuck to military news: how he loved comparing my situation with campaigns of his own though the two bore no resemblance, his mind and mine being like the minds of two men who are wholly unrelated.

If I wrote to my mother of ancestral presences I called them evanescent as the sheen on a pigeon, and never told her how phantasms loitered shy until I’d slept weeks amid ruins and standing stones far from English conversation.

I’ve pretended never to anguish. I mocked any man among my soldiers who became afraid of the spectral realm, accusing him of weak conscience and an overblown imagination. To no one did I admit the outlandish presence of malevolent enchantments whether we bunked in roofless chapels or in shattered coal cellars—the whole of Scotland is laid bare to rain, frost and mischief. From its rocks and roots rises the green man enwreathed with oak leaves. Half man and half animal, he guards Scotland from soldiers like myself not through cannon or grapeshot but through driving madness into our intellect.

In Scotland I kept seeing the green man’s face not only over pub doors but in the woods. Any time I asked a local about him I was met with a blank unknowing, a secret stare. To sleep in the Highlands for a fortnight with no roof was to forever dread the green man’s influence over my mind.

Culloden! That’s where my regiment had the drummer named Ronnie. And I did bring him here with me, to Quebec—I’m not remembering incorrectly….Ronnie did not use a regulation stick but tore a branch from whatever tree would yield him one. He told me such a stick spoke for the land and meant the land would not treat us as invaders. After Culloden he formed a habit of finding a stone seat with a vantage of many miles, and he drummed with his naked hand and cocked an ear to the drum as if it were talking to him.