Season in Strathglass (20 page)

92

No Name Hill, as I call it, is a small rounded heathery hill on the high ground between Glen Affric and Glen Cannich, anonymous on the map. There's no hurry. I'm walking by 12 o' clock on a good rough stony track. I have a hazel rod picked up in the woods for a stick. It has a mossy tuft at the top and a kink that fits the hand nicely.

Big snowy hills come into view, the white bulk of Tom a' Choinich (Hill of the Moss) filling the horizon ahead and the long ridge of Toll Creagach (Rocky Hollow) stretching to its right. They're not for today. Across the river gorge the ground is spattered with snow but here it seems like summer as a butterfly – a peacock – tempted by the sun rises from the verge and then another of a different kind which I can't identify. Catherine could if she were here.

Runnels of water cross the path, leaving puddles in which stones gleam reddish and blue under the surface. There's a sputtering in the water – two long-legged frogs in a clinch, tumbling over and over in tight embrace.

A little cairn of two or three stones marks where the track to the top turns upwards. Track? Where is it? It's clearly marked with zigzags on the map – a good stalker's path, you might guess – but on the ground it's shy to the point of invisibility. I press onwards between heathery banks. The ground is soft and yielding and there's much water. Somewhere nearby, an unseen trickle of a burn clatters noisily through peaty hollows.

Larger patches of soft snow streak the hillside. Deer, startled by my sudden appearance over a small crest, turn to stare with pricked ears before fleeing – eight in a row outlined against the sky as they canter over the ridge. In another season, this would anger stalking folk but, this being March, they're safe. A little later a dozen more deer resting in a hollow turn tail and scamper away.

Mica glints in the flat stones paving the mossy summit, good to walk on. At the top, I find a stone shelter, a rectangle of drystone walls four or five feet high with an opening in one side. I speculate on its use. Was it shelter for stalkers or watchmen stationed there on the lookout for poachers?

Tom a' Choinich looms close. Two lochs are in view. Looking southwards into Glen Affric I see a long reach of Loch Beinn a'Mheadhoin with dark pinewoods reflected in the still water. A lochan sparkles on top of a bare ridge above the treeline. To the north, the last bends of the road in Glen Cannich are visible as it winds towards Loch Mullardoch – a hazy blue spread of water terminated by the grey bar of the dam. That ugliest of dams looks curiously small and fragile from this height.

I take a different line of descent, ignoring the few rickety little cairns which may or may not mark the line of the supposed zigzag path, picking my own way down. Water gurgles through a snow-filled gully, unseen for the most part except where dark holes reveal its winding course under the snow. At the bottom of one deep hole, I see where the small stream tumbles over a little stony fall. Suppose I fell through, unsuspecting? Up to the armpits, struggle to get out? I take it at a leap.

I eat my lunch seated on top of a boulder shaped like a wedge of cheese and watch a walker, coming from the Tom or the Toll perhaps, striding homewards along the track below, the only human I've seen. By the time I reach the track he's far ahead and we never meet.

93

It's cold this morning with a keen wind blowing, just on the edge of comfort. Russell leads the way with long easy strides, stick in hand and rifle over his shoulder. He's in charge of stalking for the Forestry Commission in the west of Scotland (too many deer and the forest will suffer) and today we're high in Glen Affric.

His young dog Gus, a German wirehaired pointer impatient to be running, circles round his legs. The dog's old predecessor died recently.
‘This one's still got a lot to learn,' says Russell, keeping him in check. The dog's coat, typical of the breed, is a coarse dusky brown threaded with white hairs, which makes him look older than his years. He has topaz eyes.

‘All our forestry stalkers have dogs as part of the job,' Russell says. ‘You may not see a thing in the trees but the dog will know. A good dog will stand and point with his head when he scents deer.'

Down a rough slope we go towards a small stretch of water, Loch nan Sean-each. Two blackcock flying in close formation zip along the edge of the loch showing a flash of white underwing. Running east to west along the lochside is a line of tall rusted iron stanchions supported by angled braces. Old friends, almost – I recognise them as a remnant of the great Iron Fence that William Winans made.

We contour round a craggy heather-covered hillock called Meall Dubh (Black Lump) and raise binoculars to scan the ground ahead, a broad descending valley with scant clusters of pine trees where Russell says the hinds often congregate. The feeding is good there possibly because, in plantation days, the ground was fertilised. But today we're too late and the deer have moved on.

Deer have a regular feeding cycle, Russell says – roughly three hours feeding followed by two hours when they rest and chew the cud. He says that if you know their habits and their feeding pattern, you'll find them. And he's confident that he will –‘Ninety-five per cent sure of a kill,' he says.

We tramp through high heather round Meall Dubh and suddenly, as we round the crag, we're in a milder climate, sheltered from the piercing wind and warmed by the emerging sun. A reach of Loch Beinn a'Mheadhoin lies below.

Russell slips a cord round Gus's neck to keep him close and we enter the pinewood that cloaks the steep slope (this is where the deer shelter after feeding) and make our way slowly through the trees, picking our steps, not talking. Where Russell goes I follow, slithering down a muddy slope, brushing through bracken, ducking under a branch, stretching across
a small burn, hoisting myself up a grassy bluff. Russell stops, crouches, beckons and points below. ‘Sika deer,' he whispers. Just one and it's gone in an instant, slipping into the trees far below before I can catch sight of it. I lack the practised eye.

I remark on the black metal sleeve round the rifle barrel, which he says it to muffle the sound of the shot. ‘If you're firing every day it affects your hearing. Mine's not as good as it was. All stalkers are deaf.'

We sit on a patch of open ground and Russell sweeps the whole slope. He spots a small group of red deer running close to the shoreline but only fleetingly. Again I don't. We resume climbing and find another lookout spot among the rocky outcrops on the eastern face of Meall Dubh, where we perch for another survey. In front of us, a bare notched ridge leads the eye to the rocky top of Beinn nan Sparra. Three lochans glint along the spine of the ridge, the last and largest of which is Loch an Eang. As for deer, we draw a blank. None to be seen.

The circuit of Meall Dubh has brought us back in sight of our vehicle and Russell proposes driving over to the top end of Loch Beinn a'Mheadhoin to see what we can find there.

Once there we walk through a fine stand of open pine trees. Here, says Russell, the Forestry Commission hoped to promote natural regeneration from the fall of seed. They lost heart when too few seedlings appeared and resorted to planting among the existing trees. These planted trees are tall now and to the untrained eye they look natural enough. With the afternoon sun shining through the tracery, it's a true walk in the woods – and a far cry from stalking on the open hill.

Somewhere for sure there are deer. Gus, good dog, has the scent. He holds his head high and his nostrils twitch but no deer show. The pine gives way to birch, many of the trees old and twisted, many damaged, snapped at the stem or fallen to the ground where they lie in various stages of decomposition. Broken branches and twigs littler the ground.

This is not easy walking. Russell treads softly, delicately, slowly, and I follow a couple of yards behind, trying to avoid snapping twigs as I go. Once again, we've fallen silent. The loudest sound is the panting of the dog.

At the end of the day, there's nothing to show. Not a shot was fired. But from my point of view it's been a good day out. We got fresh chill winds and sun's warmth on our faces in equal measure. And no creature died because of us.

94

I knock on the door at the sad hotel and Louise asks me in. Inside the lobby, there's a bale of straw or hay smelling of the farmyard. I crunch over broken floor tiles. The furniture's in disarray, easy chairs crammed into a corner of a barren room – the dining room I think it was in better days. In the kitchen, a young man tinkers with an odd-looking apparatus consisting of a green oil drum set on a table from which plastic tubes connect with glass bottles on the floor.

‘He's making bio-fuel,' Louise remarks as we pass through to the wing of the old hotel which has been acquired by someone from the south and now functions as a pub. Leaning on her elbows at the bar, sweeping back her hair with one hand and gesturing with the other, she fixes me in the eye and talks earnestly about her love–hate affair with the hotel, the village, the folk, and her mission in life. She could write a book about it, she says – the title to be
You Think I'm Mad but I can Help
.

Well, many people think her off-the-wall. As for me, I enjoy listening to her dreams. She's a visionary. I like Louise and I'm not alone. George at Upper Glassburn has a soft spot for her. ‘You can't fail to like and admire her in a funny kind of way,' he said. ‘She's endlessly cheerful – she brightens up the day.'

The hotel is open house. It seems that people drop in, stay for a while, opt in, opt out, leave. Currently resident are a South African girl and her boyfriend the bio-fuel man.

Louise says she aims to help people in need –‘rescuing' is her word for it. Among those she has rescued are the 30 Poles who worked in a fish factory in Dingwall and ended up with nowhere to stay. Louise put them up. The council didn't like it, muttering darkly of multi-occupancy and unimpressed by her claim to be running a legitimate hotel. Court action was threatened and the electricity cut off. The Poles left by candlelight.

‘Did you know I'd been living on a croft in Sutherland?' she asks brightly. No, I didn't. She went there for a spell. It was one of those times when her feelings about Cannich tipped to the dark side and she took flight with her horse and a Shetland pony – I imagine her tramping north à la Stevenson with his donkey but I guess she got transport.

Back in Affric, her plans develop. Currently, she intends to invite volunteers to help her renovate the hotel, in return for which they'll be offered a timeshare in the place.

‘Perhaps you'd like to volunteer?' she asks brightly.

Darkly, I gaze into my glass.

95

There's shouting. I walk across to the Cannich shinty park and find a game in progress.

It's a rough business – a sort of mad hockey.

A lofted ball loops high very nearly the whole length of the long pitch. Sticks clash overhead or whack on shins. One player takes the ball full on the chest, stops it dead. Heart-stopping, more like. There are bruising encounters but no one seems to feel the pain.

Two swallows flit across the field. On the horizon, a large black bird circles in wide sweeps above the treetops. I think it may be an eagle. But as they say, if you only think, then it's not.

It's all action on the pitch but on the sidelines we supporters – in groups of twos and threes and two dogs – lean on a gate or loll on the grass or, in the case of the dogs, express lordly indifference. Hills, trees, river, puffy white clouds in a sky of blue – the scene is idyllic. It's possible, if you try, not to notice the pylon at the corner of the field.

Half-time and a grey-headed veteran comes along rattling a plastic bucket with coins in the bottom. ‘For team funds,' he says.

Did he play? ‘Forty-five years ago, fifty. You had a struggle to get in
the team in those days, not like now. If you were seen out and about on a Friday night, you were out of the team for Saturday.'

It's the second team today.

‘What are the first team like?'

‘Bottom of the league,' says he, ‘and last year they were top.' Like the shinty ball, their fortunes rise and fall with rocket-like velocity.

Life's like that, sometimes.

POSTSCRIPT

It's five years since I last spent time in Strathfarrar and the glens and, since then, there have been changes. The people I met grow older and some are gone.

Donald the Blue Charm died in hospital at the age of 93, felled by a stroke. His brother Duncan – ‘Dunky Affric' to all, Old Duncan as I have called him – is frail but as I write lives on at 99, having seen his memoir
My Yester Years in Glen Affaric
published locally to acclaim. It's now in its second edition – a delightful account of a stalker's life in past times, in harmony with the outdoors. Duncan's son John – ‘Johnny Affric' – though semi-retired, still goes out on the hill. Another John, founder of the Cougie dynasty, who was unwell when I last met him, has died.

Sister Petra Clare, ‘hermit iconographer' as she styles herself, has had to scale down her vision of a colony of hermitages centred on the church at Marydale. I suspect that the Church authorities were cool. Much of her effort now is devoted to setting up a charity to promote links between the western Catholic and eastern Orthodox churches and she is also concerned with encouraging what she calls the liturgical arts – everything pertaining to the ornamentation of churches from vestments and altar cloths to silverware. And she continues to make her glorious icons.

Louise lives on bravely in her distressed home which used to be the hotel at Cannich, solitary but still exuding universal goodwill. She has a part-time job at a new equestrian centre which has been established south of Cannich where it's a joy to see her skill with and affection for horses, including her own Fritz. She's the nearest to a horse whisperer I know.

Among other changes, the Forestry Commission has called time on the wild boar experiment and the piggies have gone. Deanie, the last Lovat outpost in Glen Strathfarrar, has been sold to the neighbouring
Braulen Estate and Scott, who lived there, has moved on, leaving his grove of alphabetical Celtic trees to flourish for others. I hope he took his compost.

As required by protocol, the coat of arms ‘by royal appointment' at Campbell's tweed shop in Beauly has been taken down after serving its time – a small loss to the High Street. And Tim's daffodil-coloured vintage Porsche is for sale – ‘Time to put away the toys,' as he says.

On the larger scale, a public enquiry ruled that the Beauly–Stirling power line should go ahead as planned and now mammoth pylons stalk across the countryside, even in some places thrusting above the skyline. Some former opponents now admit that you get used to them, to the extent of not even realising their existence, others damn them for their intrusion – a sentiment I share.

But the hills and the skies are changeless and the magic remains.