The Sandstone Blog
Highland spring
It’s mid-May and my daily walk by the Cromarty Firth is decorated with flowering broom and hawthorn. As far as can be seen the ospreys have not yet returned from Africa, but return they will, and the geese have departed, leaving the wide sandflats at the mouth of the Conon to the anglers and the seals.
As spring turns to summer there is nowhere in the world I would rather be than the Scottish Highlands. July and August tend to be wet but, on the far side of summer, September and October can be as fine as spring, bringing big skies and cloudscapes, landscape detail picked out by low angled light, and life-filled, life-enhancing colour.
The other day I took myself away early to ascend Ben Wyvis, our local Munro. It’s a big fellow and on such a day gives views of far away Ben Hope, the Torridon hills, Beinn Dearg and, nearer at hand, the Fannich Range. Ben Wyvis is a Site of Special Scientific Interest, mostly because of the blanket of feathery moss covering the wide plateau that includes not only the summit but also two subsidiary tops. It is also, now, a National Nature Reserve run by Scottish Natural Heritage.
With the increase in popularity of hillwalking the most obvious and popular line of ascent was much subject to erosion by boots and weather. Many’s the time I have stood on what passed for a path while a stream of mud broke around my boots. For some years it was seriously thought that leaving bad alone would be off-putting enough to protect the mountain. This was not so; the walkers kept coming, me among them.
Radical action had to be taken and now a sort of stone, slab staircase covers the more sensitive surfaces on the most popular route up. It makes for a less than pure experience but the compromise had to be. What can be done about top erosion I don’t know but I feel that, whatever it is, walkers will accept. We are all too aware that we threaten what we love simply by overuse, all too aware that the mountain heals in geological time.
These thoughts lead me naturally to Hamish Brown, since he has been such an important character in the reconnecting of people and landscape. His contribution has been at least three fold.
First of all, he has written a great book, and not many can say that. HAMISH’S MOUNTAIN WALK, the story of his self-powered round of the Munros, inspired the generation who read it first, and has continued to inspire ever since. The book’s diary format has been repeated, sometimes adapted, in probably a majority of the narrative books that have followed, short, punchy passages, filled with interest and information, built around a spine. If Hamish had published nothing else, this book would have been enough. It is the benchmark for every outdoor book that followed.
Secondly, he founded the Coast to Coast walking event that was originally termed The Ultimate Challenge. Some years ago the sponsor, Ultimate Mountain Equipment, relinquished its role and TGO magazine lent its name for the event to become The Great Outdoors Challenge. In May of every year a hundred or so walkers set out to cross Scotland at its bulging widest, on a vetted route of their own devising. After completing it three times I recognised the event’s addictive qualities and tore myself away.
His third contribution, that he would probably put first, is that he has been a great teacher, a pioneer of outdoor education who has positively influenced many people, now adults, in how they live their lives. I suspect all of them would agree that the fineness of their appreciation and the responsiveness of their decision making have been enhanced by Hamish’s influence. They will apply these qualities in the rest of their lives without a second thought. With a little luck they will pass them on.
Built in to HAMISH’S MOUNTAIN WALK, and all his other work, has been a concern about the landscape itself and the fitting together of people and place. The marriage of ‘freedom to roam’ (now formalised in Scotland thanks to the Scottish Parliament) and ‘protection by regulation’ was never going to be easy. Cross country walks, whether organised in the TGO event or self generated, are examples of how it can work, as is the stairway on Wyvis. Erosion has been repaired in such a way as to afford an easier route. Most people take it, although they are free to use other routes if they wish.
HAMISH’S MOUNTAIN WALK ‘puts feet to dreams’, as he described it. Many of us have followed. Happily, most of us have also accepted his combination of enjoyment and responsibility. The freedom and regulation equation grows ever more complex, but there is no way back. Most of us are most at home in an urban environment but need to retune ourselves from time to time with nature. We can do no better than carry Hamish Brown’s keynote sense of total participation into both worlds, eventually seeing them as one.
Hamish Brown has contributed an appreciative introduction to Craig Weldon’s THE WEEKEND FIX. You can read it here: http://www.sandstonepress.com/site/hinterland/a_young_mans_story/
Here is TGO’s web site: http://www.tgomagazine.co.uk/ and here is the TGO Challenge: http://www.tgochallenge.co.uk/