Wildcamping. Part Eight. Under the stars.

 

Tuesday 28th 

sound diary: https://youtu.be/alkTWLGd0jU

And so, I opened my eyes at around 5.30 am. Quite naturally so; not nudged awake by cold or damp or river water. Nor by gouging bull horns, trampling horse hooves, probing mole noses. I lay and thought about what clothes I had that were dry. Those would be the ones I was wearing, in the sleeping bag. The river (or rather my poor judgement) had waterlogged any aspiration to wild camp again, south of Inverness. I was pleased to have stuck it out very nearly to the end, and to have remained in a buoyant frame of mind throughout. 

I have this notion that a journey only becomes an adventure after something goes wrong, and we lose control of the narrative, when we find ourselves summarily dismissed from our comfort zone. If I had booked a later train, say 3 days later, I could`ve stuck it out. Despite the damp, I could have returned to Glenfeshie and hunted for shelter. If I`d researched and prepared better (brought my map even) I could have made for Ruigh Aiteachain bothy [Roo-ee Etchachan]. Or, maybe there are caves or overhanging rock formations further up the Glen. Enough of a roof under which to gather dead wood. Peel old birch bark from fallen trees for kindling. I have dry matches, and so could have made a heartening fire in my bear cave (or Lynx cave; either may have been true once) then laid out wet clothes and a cold, foggy camera to dry. Constructed my meths stove and peeled open those tins of mackerel, the red onions and the couscous brought all the way from Glenbenna. Wits gathered, and dry once more, the air mattress and sleeping bag would be laid down on the cave`s earth floor. And I`d stare contentedly into the flames. 
However, there being wifi, I googled "backpacker hostel. Inverness" and booked a room at Castleview Hostel for £45. This felt like the right thing to do.
On the long cycle north, sandaled feet numb in the cold drizzle, I kept my mind occupied by recounting out loud the tale of each day. Tangling myself in the chronology and geography. Finally unravelling the puzzle of impressions into a linear, map-like story. How could so much happen in ten days . . .  ? And as I pushed and pulled the pedals, this tale continued to spin along. A few miles from Culloden, on a terrace of dinosaur limbed beech trees above the river Nairn I stopped at the Clava Cairns. 4,000 year old bleached stone houses of the dead. Contemporaneous with the Crannogs at Loch Tay, with an ancient Caledonian forest stretching across the Highlands, and with wolves and wild boar. I waylaid and "interviewed" a couple of brothers from Glasgow there. We`d talked earlier from the saddle so I knew they were cycling the North Coast 500 and wildcamping all the way. They spoke so eloquently about the simple joy and freedoms of pitching their tent somewhere new every night.
Culloden approached. Another memorial to the dead. My route lost its signposts, so I bypassed those killing fields. Riding through these city outskirts of poor and socially deprived housing developments I wondered if even today that battle scars its impact-zone like some cultural Hiroshima.
Reaching my night`s lodgings, demoted from Castle View to Budget  Rooms a couple of doors down Ardconnel Street, I luxuriated in a hot shower. My recently redecorated room was heavily perfumed to disguise its being in the basement. But I didn`t mind. It was clean and warm, and the staff were friendly. I arranged damp items of clothing around the electrical storage heater, texted myself the entry codes, and made for the town centre. 
Now I sit, in a window table at Hootananay`s. Sipping from a cool, creamy pint of Guinness to wash down chicken pie. Loving the sense of living in this particular moment, after such a rich train of consecutive moments. Almost the entirety spent alone, but in the company of nature. And supported and encouraged by a virtual community of friends. Thank you friends. 
Earlier, outside the fine baroque-looking Town House I`d encountered two identical stone sculptures of wolves, flanking the entrance like hard, compact bouncers. They are new carvings, still promulgating the myth of wolf as devil incarnate. Each of these snarling, threatening creatures pinions a human skull under its forepaw. The other symbol that caught my eye was mortared into the stone facade of another High Street building. Choice evangelical trigger-texts such as "Resist the devil and he will flee from you" and "Whosoever was not found written in the book of life was cast into the lake of fire". And both instances highlight the nub of the matter, for me anyway: that we fear nature, fear our own natures, and therefore seek to control, dominate and eradicate elements we perceive as existential threats.  I`ve just read a poem from the Highland book of Minstrelsey (written nearly two hundred years after the last wolf in Scotland was killed): 
He steals the sheep from the pen,
And the fish from the boat-house spars,
And he digs the dead from out the sod,
And gnaws them under the stars.
One day, perhaps, we may learn to stop demonising the "other". And it may happen that, given time, apex predators will return to Scotland`s budding, regenerating natural landscapes such as at Glenfeshie, and will take their place once more within the family of a wider symbiotic community of creatures. Of which we are but one. One day perhaps we`ll shake off the mindset that uses the verb "to conquer" when describing encounters with wild places. It`s all a muddle to which I don`t have solutions. Especially not after this my second pint of Guinness. 
Here`s to Sustrans and the National Cycle Network, to our precious Right of Responsible Access, our National Parks. And here`s to you, and your very good health. 
Sláinte.

Wildcamping. Part Seven. Waterworld

Monday 27th

sound diary: https://youtu.be/9p0gNQI0lJE

This was to have been a day of intermittent rain with dry spells. However, the revised forecast was for heavy, unrelenting rain and so I awoke once more to a steady drumming. I lay listening for variations, a petering-out perhaps... Hearing none, I rolled over philosophically, took up my £3 specs and found my place in the novel I`ve been carrying, nibbling on the last of those Orkney oatcakes, the lump of cheddar cheese. Snug and cocooned. I`d wait and see what happens, choose the moment to come out and explore.

Back at home, I live very close to the river Tweed and have noticed over the years, how it changes after heavy downpours of rain. It rises, sometimes rapidly. Even swells up to the top of the wrought metal pillars supporting the local road bridge. Remembering this I poked my head out of the tent flap. The mighty Feshie was where it had been. I was reassured, surmising this vast forest of a river valley absorbed excess water efficiently into its mossy, peaty, rooty foundations. So I started a new chapter. An hour or so later, dog-earing the page of my travel worn book, I bent myself into the various shapes and positions required, and was soon clothed, waterproofed, camera and audio recorder-ready to meet the day.

Riding the bike without panniers, tent, sleeping bag or guitalele, I whizzed along.  Knew that tomorrow would be a cycling day:  I`d be reconnecting with Route 7, camping somewhere south of Inverness. My train was at noon on Wednesday, so not much time left. Resting the bike under a large granny pine I retraced yesterday`s perambulating tracks and boardwalks around the four lochans. The water was a gun barrel grey, puckering drops scattering across its surfaces. Like goose pimples. Today blankets of mist muffled all sounds and sights from middle and far-ground. My senses were refocussed on the wetnesses nearby: sodden, clotted-blood-red sphagnum mosses, water beaded pine needles, bleached reindeer moss, columbine, cuckooflower, drooping foxglove. The sharp song of a wren. Heavy drops of rainwater thudding to needle carpet where I took refuge awhile. On a whim I stretched my arms around the sheltering tree, embracing but a quarter of its girth. I felt no reciprocal hugback. It seemed to hold itself aloof.

I thought about where all the creatures would be, and how well evolved they each are; lying curled in burrows, in nests or undergrowth, their fur or feathers naturally repelling and shaking off the rain. Warm and dry.

Without our ingenuity, our technologies, men and women`s furless, featherless bodies are defenceless against persistant rain and cold. And, over-reliant on these appliances, we`ve forgotten the craft and the art of survival. How to be naked in the woods. 

I returned to my tent before the damp permeated the skin of the thin waterproof jacket. River level was where it had been before so I shook off my sandals and jacket, climbed into the plastic nest, opened up at the folded down page corner, read a bit. And fell asleep. 

But there was a subterranean uneasiness to my doze. Floating in and out of my dreams were childhood memories of "What`s the time Mr Wolf ?" The frisson of creeping danger.

Emerging again after an hour, all sounds were as before. Just the rain beating time to river melody. Unzipping the flap to be sure, I angled out my sleepy head. Alarmingly the river had swollen to twice its size and speed, was now but a yard from the tent skirts. Scrambling into action, within 5 minutes tent, bags and bike were dragged to relatively dry safety and, breathing deeply, I began to hunt around nearby for another pitch. A little bit shaken. I no longer trusted the Feshie. Not in this mood.  Its whitenoise lullaby was now a hard raw roar to me. I wanted away from it. 

Everywhere I looked, the ground was a floor of waterlogged peat mosses. The rain wasn`t letting up. It made sense to pack everything away and find a quiet, well drained field or woodland beyond Feshiebridge.  And by now early evening had arrived. Setting up camp by torchlight would be challenging. 

And so I left wild Glenfeshie. We skimmed, bike and I, the wet roads to Lagganlia, the outdoor centre, where I`d spent a skiing holiday, during the final year of primary school. A notice said it was closed due to the pandemic and so I seriously considered breaking into one of the wooden armadillo huts. Then decided not to ...

Eventually, as dusk fell, I skated the slippery road into the Rothiemurchus estate and found a saturated field of tall grass in which to lay down my tent and my sorry head. Vigorous rubbing with the microfibre towel dried well enough my mattress, sleeping bag and the tent floor. And warmed me in the process. I peeled off clothing that was wet. Salvaged and separated the damp from the dry, found my warming Findra socks and beanie, pulled the sleeping bag as far over my ears as it would go. And slept. 

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.