A9, trying to go South.

I'd headed North up the A9 at 2pm on the 29th to Forres to meet a writer's group, dragging myself from what I had believed for two days to be my death bed, and eventually reached the greatest road on earth, the Dava Moor, which I knew was a huge mistake to cross in this fearsome winter storm ( the first three month one had just been a practice) and who was this time determined to take me and cast me into her deepest snow topped but ice bottomed (like her heart) crater. But I made it, and had seven really scarey andrenaline times on the way ( I recommend scares and fear to keep you going in old age. Yeats said lust and rage but I think he was lying)(or just showing off), to Forres, and met six really great folk, actually seven, and then set out again at 10 pm to go back South, but only arrived today after an extra 500 miles in deep drifts and skids and eighteen hours later and meeting all these drivers and passengers who seemed fairly convinced that none of us had lived until we crashed and had been rescued by this wildly energetic and totally frost-proof tiny police woman (as if Tinker Bell had been born in Inverness)( Actually of course she was born in Inverness), and many times I thought "so this is how it all ends. I should have tidied my room." but it wasn't the end and we came steaming dehydrated past Perth like hounds on the trail of God knows what and the the sun was shining and we'd left behind metal and plastic bits of our vehicles, lost in the snow, but we'd added , maybe even to our souls, that when you are a very small car in a blizzard you are thankfull, maybe to God, or to The Transport and General Workers, that there's this big lorry going ahead (even if you don't know much about the driver, or if he's tall, or if he likes cats, or if he smokes), clearing the path, taking you home.