In contrast, the sky this day is ware and noisy, with giant dazzle-headed cloudboys swimming their laughing crawlstroke through wavetroughs of rolling rock, splashing wind and shadow into the tilt of rising fields.

Strathdurant. Strathfar.

And myself, driving and driving for hours, trying to re-thread these labyrinthine lanes to search out a friend I've not seen for several years. Sat behind the wheel, a selfconscious bundle of pulses beating within a steel cranium while the toiling motor worries the unmarked miles, it already seems a fool's journey; the returnee from fey-time, unsure even of being remembered, much less welcomed.

2. The Home-leaver

I got lost the last time I was here, weaving my clatterside way between these huge ruminant humps in an old 5cwt tinkervan. That was seven years ago and I had a curious cargo: a small girl who spent most of the eight-hour journey sleeping in the back of the van, curled in a nest of raincoats like a clutch of deserted eggs. She was the victim of private religious wars between Motherlode and Fatherland, and I was taking her to stay with my friend in the hope that her light might grow again. Though I was a complete stranger to her she had climbed into the van without question, without a look or a tear. Not trusting, so much as utterly adrift.

On that occasion, too, I was trying to remember roads that I'd not travelled for a number of years. Towards evening I pulled tentatively into what I hoped was the right driveway, but a tall, dour man came and stood himself suspiciously between us and his house. I tried to explain our difficulty in a language he did not speak. I was searching for Esk-Dale-Muir, while he'd lived for generations only three miles from Ezzlemeer; my friend lived in an old farmhouse called Gar-wald, whereas he could remember Garr'ld when it had been one of the largest farms in the valley. Eventually, though, he managed to set me right.

And that van still dwindles between drystone walls, nudged to its destination by the sheer mass of gloamgathering hills. As its small doubledoors recede they seem to be trailing a cloud of sorrowing dream, plus the driver's own exhaust of thoughtguard, settling in tenacious residue.

These memorised eventrails, trickling like unseen waters among the roots of sedge and moorgrass before spilling as rivulets into the emptying Esk.

3. Realising the impermanence of all things

On this occasion, however, a different time, a different vehicle, in a response more conditioned by desire than informed by memory, I have been able to find my way unaided, even the unmarked farmtrack which leads to the house itself. I negotiate its craters and cattle-grids as though steering a laden boat, rolling carefully between windbattled walls, causing sheep to clamber resentfully through rubbled gaps. After turning and climbing for nearly a mile, the walls finally thicken into a farmyard of low, collapsing sheds whose primitive doorways are dark with old nettles and decaying iron. I stop the car and turn off the engine. A grove of trees, gathered protectively round the house, rustles its shawl of silence down; the sky observes me from distant summits. There is no sign of people.

The old greyhewn Farmhouse, its groundfloor windows low-silled, deep-set and barred with iron, reminds me as always of a fortress settling slowly into its own stern past. Today, though, it feels unnaturally quiet, with none of the usual family overflow like tools, toys or washing. The back door is definitely and sadly shut against the fine flatlake of summer air which warms to its ancient, scarpocked boards. The bell, when I tug on the gnarled iron lever, cries:

Emptyng-ka-ding.

Its imprisoned tones rolling slowly through a storage of damp desertion.

But wait! There is a sound. Someone clearing a path through the debris of neglect. My Pasthistoric Friend in reclusive mood, perhaps, or wary of troubles.

The door is opened guardedly by someone I've never seen before; a serious young man wearing a roll-necked sweater and pious air who seems to inhabit these denied premises silently and alone. He tells me that my friend has moved away, unknown miles and years beyond, and that the old Farmhouse has been taken over by the nearby Tibetan monastery. He directs me to the main building for any further information, and particularly to a woman named Alie, in the art room, who knew my friend better than he. He is kind, this usurper, but he stands at the threshold of consecrated property and that's all he can give me.

Closing a door that in my mind stood always open.

Retracing my steps to the car, I feel like the very last of their ghosts to be expelled. Before getting in I turn to look back at the house, perhaps to fix it permanently in memory since I'll have no reason, now, to come this way again. Look: there are its narrow gables; the steep slopes of its slated roof, standing against wind and winter; its upper windows, receiving their light from scattered hilltops. But I find I am also looking through the walls, peopling its bare, draughty rooms with figures from the past, replaying events not always happy, and seeing myself traverse the stairs and landings as I had so vividly anticipated doing with my future-mind. So involved in this am I that when something stirs within a window's glaze I am sure it is the face of my friend, actually at home after all ^___but no! It's only the bloom of a reflected cloud. And silence.

I allow the breeze to blow all such gossamers away. Let them go. Let this house be as deserted as a hill. In my last glance before driving away I see the white mass of a cloud building, building, above the line of the roof as though claiming it for its own use, and it tells me I trespass. Very well, then Jack Tale's-End...

Be on your unbefriended way.

4. The Devas whisper encouragement

The monastery was once the local manse, sheltered from the ruder gaze by a wall of dressed and mortared stone and a dense stand of fir trees. Its grounds slope right down to the River Esk and like the Farmhouse it has a feel of elemental solidity, an outcrop of natural rock. On a levelled lawn in front of the house the Tibetans have erected several tall poles and hung them with prayer-flags which flicker constantly, particoloured and mildly bizarre, in the lean Scottish workwind.

I always expect too much from any religious establishment so I am a little shocked to find that the women in the monastery office are like office workers everywhere, deeply absorbed in their own gossip and loathe to generate Helpful Energy. I am regarded like a vagrant in an estate agent's and they at once close administrative ranks around any information they may have about my departed friend. They are even reluctant to allow me to see Alie-in-the-artroom, though they do finally agree to that.

Walk me like a prisoner through restricted schoolhalls. Backturned. Offhand.

To me, 'art room' has always meant a large cluttered place with high windows which chop the light into sloping cubist shapes and diffuse it with worldgrime held at bay. They should smell of chalk, paint and radiators and inspire an intense, echoing hush, broken only by a feverish scrape, scrape of charcoal on paper and strangled whispers of artistic anguish. They should feel like long Victorian draughtrooms for the infusion of varnished fire. The place I am actually taken to, part of a newly constructed block, is small and impersonally clean with large, blankglass windows filling the whole of one wall. Its purpose is not art, as I prefer to understand the word, but the fabrication of thangkas, religious ikons painted onto richly bordered and tasselled cloth. There are two of these still under construction, stretched on large easel-frames which take up most of the floor space, and one completed one, a showpiece, hung on a wall. They are dizzyingly elaborate in both line and colour, and the smallest of them is over five feet square.

As I am ushered through the door an announcement is made ^___to no-one at all, it seems. But then Alie peers round the edge of the frame she is working at and smiles with tentative myopia, shyly, waiting to be interviewed.