Same route today but this time, emerging from Taniel Wood, I stopped at a fast flowing burn to stretch and drink from cupped hands amongst the bracken and stones. I stood up from the fresh water break and felt dizzy, energy sapped, vision wavering. I stumbled on upwards along the wide, open, curving forest road. At the elbow I stopped again, shaky. I looked down to my side, (Traquair House a tiny white smudge in the distance): in the foreground floated a purple/orange haze of young larch trees and, hemmed in, old stumps poking through; remnants from the last tree harvest; and a tall thin pine trunk, left as a lookout for predatory birds. Once or twice I`ve seen buzzards launch out from this platform, like hang gliders.
As the path rose I tried to coax energy back to my body. I knew it would return so, while waiting, stumbled up a new path that rose through a fire break; might this be a new route to the upper road - up by Kite wood and, eventually, opening out to the north ? My impulse to explore these forested hills is, in part, driven by a wish to connect these paths, make sense of them, like circuits in the brain. But no upper road. Disappointed I stood looking back at the western sky: black branches against light blues and pinks, dusk falling.
Reviving now I jogged down again through long, pale grasses and green, green mosses. Then, glancing right, 50 metres away, a Roe deer, dark russet bodied, bounding into cover, thick white rump accentuating its hop. So they`re still here ! Hidden in the quiet places.
Finding the lower forest road once more I replayed the encounter: how long ? one second, two ?
Larch needles muffled my steps as I wound down, the sun`s light now a memory.
Then, before gliding down the steep tracks above the back road, I saw a fox or a hare racing across my path. I stopped and it stopped - both sizing up the other - then it dashed upwards: a large buck hare ! Maybe the "fox" I`d seen last summer...
I`m always looking for new routes to interesting places, chief among these being the high moorland pass along which the drovers` road travels. Since last week`s gloomy encounter down at Elibank castle I was glad of the chance to explore an unknown-to-me path to the Minchmoor`s airy heights
Leaving our house, I took a left turn up into the forest, following the Bold burn logging road a mile or so until it turned sharply right and upwards. Soon after, climbing an abrupt left, I ran southwards again, up and up. Two mountainbikers (rare in this neck of the woods) whizzed down past me. We waved hello. Minchmoor burn came to greet me as I pulled upwards to the crest.
I`m often looking out for deer. Usually I glimpse them crossing the forest road far in front. If I look into the deep green forest glades to left and right I never see them. My clackety running shoes, smell and general noisiness (down or upwind ) puts paid to that. In "The Wild Places" Robert MacFarlane describes climbing high into "his" tree and, after sitting there quietly for a long time, the birds returned to it and he could observe them, be a part of them. Perhaps if I stop moving and instead sit on a cut tree bole, quietly absorbing the colours, smells, sounds surrounding me, these elusive deer will, in time, appear..but during January, resting too long on a cold stump is chilling...
I sometimes lie awake just before the break of dawn and imagine that to run in the forest now will be to merge with, rather than intrude upon, the shy wild creatures: the roe deer, badgers, foxes, as light slowly grows and birdsong fills the spaces.
I don`t so much feel kinship with the deer of these hills and quiet, wooded tracks, but the silence and listening quality of their habitat draws me deeply; the great surging breath an acre of scots pine takes, trees as impassive as Easter Island statues.
Climbing out from the forest I reach the drovers` road , jostled by wind and light.
