We were nine women walking, tramping over bouncy heather moorland above the steep shores of Loch a’ Chàirn Bhàin, when one of us stopped to point out a bog asphodel which was just coming into flower. We gathered round and marvelled at its starry yellow blooms and stalk and another of us remarked that, in addition to the Elysian Fields of Greek mythology, those blessed green meadows of the afterlife, there were said also to be asphodel fields, though she noted this probably did not refer to bog asphodel.
I looked this up online when I returned home and found that, while the Elysian Fields were reserved for the righteous (and gods and nobles), with a hellish land called Tartarus set aside for the wicked, the fields of asphodel were allotted to ordinary folk.
The significance of the asphodel is debated. Some Greek writers felt the paleness of the petals evoked a pallid, ghostly quality, while others drew on its more ancient connotations of fragrant fertility.
Even in the latter case, however, I sense these asphodels fields are not for me; nor the endless blessings of Elysium. For the afterlife, I want for my part only a rolling peatland, grown over with purpling heather and green and gold grasses, with viridian clumps of moss glowing in the fine northern sun, and interspersed among them all, the pure yellow stalks of bog asphodel, standing everywhere upright like tiny sentinels of joy.
Perhaps, for those of us with an affinity for Scotland, we can spend our eternity meandering in such a place, gazing into lochans and reflecting in the clear summer light. When I think of it though, I find myself imagining not a summer moorland but an autumnal one, the grasses turning amber and bronze, the dried heather flowerheads having become that lovely muted mauve, and the bog asphodel now vivid orange, its little tongues of flame everywhere sparking, everywhere speaking of warm hearts and hearths in the cool oncoming dusk.
And no midges.
Torr a’ Ghamnha, Assynt, Scotland
6th July 2025
