HERMIT

During a winter in what societies conceptually labelled The Transition the body of a young man was found, frozen to death, in a metal porta-cabin beside peat bogs at Cape Wrath, the most north-westerly peak of Scotland. The cabin had been air-lifted and placed on its side at the remote location and was formerly used for target practice by military fighter jets passing over during airborne exercises. He had on him a few belongings: sheets of paper; a pen; minor food items; a flask of nettle tea; a Nikon FE manual camera; dry-bag containing a wetsuit, together with an orange sleeping bag and a small container of fire-lighting accessories, found outside of the cabin. It was these latter items that caught the sight of the walking party and led them to the location. The body was transported initially to a bunkhouse with its identity for several days not revealed. In a jacket pocket was a map, used by the police when they revisited the location where the body was discovered. It was concluded in an initial report that the young man was planning to provide this at a later date, as a means of someone else discovering what he had buried; or perhaps this was never an intention. In some way, unless it was a voluntary act on his own part, the young man had become trapped when a timber fencepost holding open the cabin’s heavy metal door became dislodged, likely due to high winds. The door jammed closed. When the walking party alerted the authorities, who followed instructions from the map and excavated the site around where the body was found, they unearthed a series of books, many of which were meticulously handwritten, wrapped in a cloth parcel and plastic. This title: Hermit, is Book I.