Wildcamping Part Six. I Arrive

 

Sunday 26th

sound diary: https://youtu.be/qjbfArFufBs

To arrive at Glenfeshie, after a week`s cycling and wildcamping, is a bit like taking a slow boat to China. Anticipation of arrival a gradually evolving attunement. I could of course have driven here in a few hours. Sat in an air conditioned car, watching the landscape through the windscreen change like some wide angled "technicolor" film. Parking, I`d have turned off the chattering radio, got out and stretched my cramped back and legs ( with a little groan of relief ), unaware of how the soundscape has changed, during these last few miles in particular. 

Riding my bike close to roads and railtracks for some days now, I am hyper aware of this new noise: it is a deep and reverberating silence. Like closing the heavy oak doors to a country church. Sitting in the tomb-like quiet of a pew. Although this particular quietness, has a different taste altogether. It is fresh. Cool.  It extends for many miles and in every direction. I`m standing on a high wooded hillside. Pristine Caledonian forest confronts me. Noiselessness is below and above me, and ripples out finely textured shockwaves to the far mountains. Frequencies normally overwhelmed by bass rumbles and shrill trebles - I can hear them now. Birdsong, near and far away, small bright punctuations. Windsong singing a canon, here above me in these pine branches, relayed down there by lochanside, taken up in those far plantings. As I gaze out, tree sway, water ruffle render crystal air visible. 

I push my bike down to Uath Lochans. Listen to water lapping at loch`s edge. Xylophonic sounds, in an ancient time signature with no discernible pattern. Down here by the waterside the air hums with flies and honey bees, blown by breezes.

The beauty of Glenfeshie is hardwon. Back in 2004 there was a deeply controversial (though entirely legal) mass culling of red deer. The billionaire landowner had a reforesting vision for the glen, impossible to achieve with such a dense proliferation of ruminants. I think back to a conversation I had yesterday with a wolfkeeper at the Highland Wildlife Park. Andy couldn`t ever see wolves being re-introduced into the Cairngorms National Park or anywhere else in the UK. In his view there are just too many people. In a scenario such as Glenfeshie however, they would keep a deer population in check and help naturally regenerate the land. But these wolves would breed, and the youngsters would seek new territories of their own. And they would breed and expand into areas with ever denser human populations. And ultimately the wolves would be persecuted. Too many people in this land. Too many deep seated pathological fears of wolf-kind, in our culture, in our herd memory.

Just today, on the way across from Newtonmore, I stopped off at Ruthven Barracks. Stark witness to Highland supression at the time of the Jacobite rebellions. There on an information board was the following: 

"The Wolf of Badenoch: Because of his wild raiding and plundering Alexander Stewart, Earl of Buchan .... was known as the Wolf of Badenoch.  One of his most notorious feuds was with the Bishop of Moray, who eventually engineered his excommunication from the church. According to legend, news of this reached the "Wolf" ... he promptly set out to avenge the insult and burnt down the town of Elgin."

Could I see myself camping here while a pack of wolves roamed the forests and hillsides ? I believe so, as there would be deer to hunt and to eat, and wolves are very, very shy of humankind. But ... there are too many of us. And the lives we lead, and attitudes we hold fill the frequencies with overwhelming bass rumbles and shrill trebles, and don`t allow enough space for quieter, more nuanced voices to be heard. Or listened to. Acted upon.

I searched for a camping place. Stepping through a profusion of ripe blaeberries, in a long strip of woodland skirting the river, I found a beautiful pitch some feet above the sandy Feshie bank. I planned to have porridge and softfruit for breakfast, or supper. But then I saw square clods of grass turf pitched down the bankside, blackened logs floating amongst the flotsam, a charred gape in the ground serving as firepit to some idiot clattycampers. Their firewall boulders kicked casually over the bank`s edge. No sign of the folk. No effort whatever to undo and make good their damage. I felt angry. Scrabbled around for 40 minutes or so fishing out the wood, replacing the turf, chucking the smooth sooty stones back into the water. Going back to the bike, I realised a trail leads from campsite to convenient car layby. I wasn`t going to spend the night here.

Further down river I found a pitch on the sand. Weighed down tent pegs with water rocks, spent the warm evening glow exploring, taking photographs. Looking forward to a whole day in this incredible place. I felt I had finally arrived.