We all haunt ourselves from time to time. Sometimes with imaginings about the future, sometimes with memories of the past. For me it was the past that haunted me as I came to the full reality of September 11th.
Some years ago I worked for a while as an Instructor in an Adventure Sports Center. As is the usual practice I also volunteered for duty with one of the mountain rescue teams in the area, and this was well and good. We went out occasionally finding lost Boy Scouts, rescuing sheep trapped on cliff ledges and generally doing very little. Then the Lockerbie bomb exploded.
Not many people realize that although the majority of the plane and it's contents fell to earth in and around Lockerbie a lot of the wreckage was scattered on the wind from one coast to the other and beyond into the North Sea. This resulted in a massive police, RAF and Coastguard operation to recover as much as possible which was fine for the most part. However in the middle of that part of Britain lies the largest man-made forest in Europe, Keilder Forest. The problem here was although aerial survey could locate the wreckage the Police were having problems finding the exact locations and in some cases finding their way out afterwards. So they requested help from mountain and fell rescue teams to act as guides. I helped. It wasn't pleasant, I never came across anything too gruesome but it still left an impression.
September 11th brought back a lot of those memories and I had a few nights haunted sleep. Even a cup of tea couldn't quite help (but Scotlands golden nectar proved a cure).
From here on I plan to be back to the usual grind trying to churn out a new account for each of the missing months till I'm up to date.
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