This ‘natural growth’ forest, is the remains of the ancient forest that once covered most of the hills and glens. Walking through the patches of sunlight we fell silent. Giant ant nests, butterflies, blueberries and the springy sphagnum beneath our feet, cast a spell. Tolkein fans thrilled to the Elvin nature of the place. The vitality and texture of the soft green vegetation on the forest floor gave an almost ‘mist like’ quality. The light filtered gently through leaves, flickering like water. Unlike the plantation forest, trees here grow far enough apart to make walking easy and a pleasure, while bracken, moss, and other vegetation receive sunlight to grow and provide a habitat for the fauna to thrive. This is crucial for the maintenance of biodiversity. We believe beauty inspires us, not only to protect this planet’s biodiversity, but to give us something important in our lives.
The team look through a high powered telescope - not for hunting purposes - but to see the many red deer herds that live up on the hills. Deer descend into the glens in cold weather, but the ticks and midges (which Scotland is famous for) keep them up on the high ridges in August. One female was standing outlined against the sky on the ridge and framing her were two sets of magnificent twelve point antlers - the two great stag owners of which must have been sitting just beyond the horizon line. It was a wonderful and evocative sight. Shifting the lens slightly our guide, Jim Cornfoot, found a herd of young males, all sitting peacefully, their graceful antlers like natural crowns. Edwin Landseer would have reached for his paintbrushes. What was most amazing to us was how, with the naked eye, we simply could not see any sign of the deer at all. Without Jim’s knowledge we would never even have known to train our binoculars on the hillside - mistaking their shadows for naturally occurring bumps in terrain.
Our guide, Jim Cornfoot, who generously and graciously gave us his time as a donation to Ginkgo Music, has lived and worked in the area for many years. He spoke passionately about the area and about the skills needed to preserve and rejuvenate the biodiversity of the Cairngorms National Park. He showed us how the areas where deer and goats (which have gone wild, having once been released to act as ’sheep goats’ – keeping sheep away from dangerous cliff edges with their presence) are now beginning to re-forest. Small clumps of beech, alder and rowan are growing back, right the way up the hillsides on the lower hills. It surprised us – we’d thought the altitude was the reason the forest didn’t grow, creating the ‘traditional highland’ barren hillside.
Irma, the gorgeous Cuban looks out over the loch. If you look behind her head you can see the traditional way the hillside’s heather is cultivated – burnt off in patches during the last of the winter snows – so the patches of snow stop the flames. Whole sides of mountains are pink, while the velvet green sweeps downwards with its soft enveloping texture across the valley floor. Thus, the baby grouse get new low growth to feed on, while mummy and daddy grouse can build their nests in the older, higher growth – out of sight of foxes and humans with guns. Although forest would have grown here originally, this heather moor maintenance is hundreds of years, if not millennia old. But this traditional method is now being challenged and displaced by newer, and less effective measures. Grouse shoots are finding not enough prey, and are erroneously blaming wild birds of prey – including the magnificent (reintroduced) osprey (a fishing eagle). In the past it was gamekeepers and shepherds who were thought to have contributed to the near extinction of these birds in this area.
Mthoko, a Zulu by tribe and nature, conjures clouds using a mixture of traditional South African dance (using his wellies as a drum box) and T’ai Chi. His favourite part of South Africa is the Dragonsburg, so he felt very much at home in this dramatic, regal environment. Luckily, he was less successful at conjuring rainclouds, and we marvelled at the azure blue sky seen above the craggy hills that tumbled one after another across the glen. The weather is notorious in the Cairngorms. The morning had started ‘dree’ or grey, rainy and misty, and by midday we had brilliant sunshine. Thus we knew the place loved us as much as we loved it. However walking the hills is no joke – if you go, make sure someone knows your exact route, that you have proper kit, supplies and a compass. A compass you know how to use. Every year people are lost out on the hills. Rescuers scramble from nearby villages and risk their own lives looking for them. There are so many ways our behaviour can impact a rural or wilderness place, and all those who make their lives there. Including the humans.
Small jewel flowers, like this beautiful yellow specimen, grow amongst cushions of sphagnum moss along the Findhorn River valley. A wild version of the ‘pincushion’ (scabious) you may grow in your gardens, and bright purple members of the violet family were also flowering. Butterflies flitted about the place. We tried to keep our great city feet off the flora, the fauna usually got out of the way quick enough. We sighted many red squirrels, the native squirrel species of the British Isles, long since extinct in most other parts of the country. It was quite adorably cute. Yes I know we shouldn’t anthropomorphise animals (apparently it’s bad for some reason – oh yes, human egos) but they did not disappoint and on the ‘Beatrix Potter Scale’ (a scale for measuring cuteness) they scored a top eight out of eight. The local cattle varieties, whose calves looked like a cross between a teddy bear and a cow, scored a six point five.
By the side of the loch, peace and quiet. Babchicks, and grebes with their astonishing amber eyes, show us that it is not only in Ecuador that beautiful and exotic looking creatures can live – if we let them have their habitat. The beech has small delicate leaves that flutter in the wind. There are both a ‘weeping’ and an upright variety. Ants ‘farm’ white fly in the branches (occasionally dropping off onto horrified city ginkgo members’ shoulders or arms). ‘Old man’s beard’ and other lichens create the illusion of coral reefs over the boughs and branches, in the ‘underwater’ quality of the green-tinged, leaf dappled light. Branches and trunks are covered in thick green velvet moss, as though some mad artist has sewn them soft green suits. Birds call and sing. A woodpecker hammers. The waters of the loch are glimpsed through hanging green pennants. We want to lie on the soft mossy floor and sleep.
This is a traditional and beautiful view of this area of Scotland. A view down the glen, with the Findhorn river and its dark amber waters. This is not pollution, but the leeching out of the peat moors along the way. It is this fine water that gives the many different Speyside Malts their distinctive and delicious flavours. Neil – a team buddy – handed out whisky and water before dinner. As with many aquried tastes, some found it unpleasant, although many of us had our eyes opened to the divine nature of the drink and finally ‘got’ why people make such a fuss about it the world over. The trick seems to be – drink with water so you get the flavour, rather than just the alcohol kick, and drink with a soft water – like the water it was made with in the first place. We were lucky our soft mineral water flowed free out of the tap. But all of us loved the deep whisky colour of the Findhorn. With the blue sky reflected in it, dotted and framed by granite pebbles and boulders sparkling with pyrites, it was a glorious sight and sound.
The Ginkgo Team originally went in search of ospreys, but they had already ‘left the nest’. Some of us were worried there was not much else to see or do – we couldn’t have been more wrong. Simply being in that beautiful place was a balm for the soul, mind and heart. This is why we think city people need wildernesses to be not only protected, but also ‘regrown’ wherever possible. Despite the lack of osprey sightings the Ginkgos had a great time in the Cairngorms National Park, hosted by the wry and dry (as wry and dry as a fine malt we may say) Ian Bishop and his wife Liz in their superbly comfortable, warm, clean, and spacious Green ‘hostel’. www.slochd.co.uk. We can only thank them, and guide Jim Cornfoot whose passion and love of the area inspired us. Lock up your whisky - We will be back.
