Sometimes you just don’t see what’s on your doorstep.  I live beside the river Ness. I see it every day, watch its moods change.  I see it on calm, lazy days when its surface is thick like molten glass and it strolls through the town on its way to sea.  I see it when the snow melt swells it to bursting point and it barges it past in a break neck hurry to be free of the land and out in the wide waters of the Moray Firth.

But sometimes, I realise, I don’t see it at all, or at least I don’t look.  I forget to stand a moment and pass the time of day with this old friend of mine.  I overlook the need to ask him how he is or how the day has gone.

Just outside Inverness, near Torbreck wood, on the way to Dores Village, I’ve passed a small path a thousand times and every time I’ve wondered where it led.  Yesterday I decided to find out and took my camera on a windy, bright kind of a day on a walk of discovery.

I found this island with its hidden secrets there standing against the river for a thousand years.

I found this green boat tugging at its mooring rope, keen to get away on its next journey.

I found this old tree and, in its wrinkled bark, saw time and winters passed written there.

I saw this tree reaching up into the light in death as it did in life.

I found this old twisted branch and wondered who else had passed this way.

I found somewhere new to walk, somewhere else to spend my time wandering and listening to the world turn.