Autumn in Ardgour

I needed to gasp some lung-fulls of the clear autumn air that the last few days suddenly gifted us, and grasp at some of that scoured-sharp light before the clocks changed. Ardgour was my target - the diamond shaped piece of land more or less bounded by Lochs Shiel, Eil, Linnhe and Sunart.

The area first demanded my attention from Strontian at its south-western corner when I was walking through the territory of my radio play 'The Three Knots', about the anchoring of a floating church in Loch Sunart in the 1840s. I walked the coffin path between Strontian and Polloch, and looked east, admiring the rough crags, wondering.

The great sharp spear of Garbh Bheinn, and the M-shaped peaks of Sgurr Dhomhnuill and Sgurr na h-Ighinn draw the eye from many directions in Lochaber, characterising Ardgour's rocky and precipitous nature. In complex twists of peak and ridge and bealach, where no summit exceeds 3000 feet, there is a sense of remoteness exactly because it attracts few walkers and because of the rugged punch of the summits above their height.

I'd spent many hours staring at the map, at its dense and contorted contours, its web of old paths. I was seeking a solution to the puzzle of a route across Ardgour. This week I finally set out on a journey from Loch Eil across the heart of that interior. I always thought it would need to be broken with a night in a tent. But my day was stolen between the coldest October night for 17 years and the first of the season's hurricanes - not so conducive to camping. I just had to press on through the daylit hours.

As I set out a full moon still hung low in the sky while mists hung over the loch, blurring its edges with the land. It was an exciting start striding west with numb hands along Glen Scaddle, cleaved between russet ridges still hard with frost, amongst the roaring stags.

The weather began to change as I left the Glen and climbed the steep nose of Sgurr Dhomhnuill, thick cloud lowering over nearby peaks, billowing apart to allow views back to the pretty blues of Loch Linnhe, the clarity of eastern skies behind me. The two tops were exhilarating and unforgiving - steep, not offering obvious routes between raised knuckles of rock. But the cloud stayed off and my views opened west to the far end of Loch Sheil, the Rum Cuillin, and beyond.

Then the gnarled ridge took me down to the old lead mines at Bellgrove. And there, starting to tire after at least six hours of walking, I was happy with the certainty of a route ahead, the old mine road laying a steady way towards Strontian, through an oak forest hung with gorgeous green velvet robes of moss. It was here in the Ariundle oakwoods that I'd located one of the 'Three Knots' characters in a woodland croft. Having written about it, a wonderful familiarity greeted me, from the time I'd spent here in my imagination.

And just as dusk fell, the quiet embrace of the trees released me to the incipient edges of the strung-out village. The Ariundle centre appeared, a perfectly timed refuge of food and sleep and instant comfort as the windows darkened outside and the rain and wind set in.

John Muir Trust and wild writing

Last Wednesday myself and co-judge Hamish MacDonald announced the winners of the John Muir Trust's wild writing competition at Fort William's fantastic Mountain Festival. It's the third year I've been involved in some capacity and the way that JMT has joined the Festival in developing a creative response to mountains and wild places in our lives has been fantastic and creates more and more interest each year.

For the full results, see here but Tom Bryan of Kelso was the overall winner with a beautiful reflection on his relationship with Suilven, the iconic Assynt mountain that follows one's eye, shape-shifting as it goes, around that part of north-west Scotland. Alan Gay of North Berwick took second place with a mysterious poem called 'Deer Path' which for me made the visible and invisible worlds of the mountains touch for a moment. There were three runners up - all prose pieces - from Kate Blackadder, Stephen Busby and Jenny Holden.

Joyce Carol Oates criticised 'nature writing' for what she called its "painfully limited set of responses: reverence, awe, piety, mystical oneness." We may have found those responses amongst the entries but we also found exhilaration, confusion, boredom, coldness, joy and grief.

Congratulations to all!

Meanwhile, if you get hold of a copy of the latest JMT journal (46/Spring 2009) you will find an illustrated extract of my piece 'The Beat of Heart Stones' about a walk along a dry stone dyke on Schiehallion this time last year.

wild writing competion 2009

It's time to start scribbling an entry to the John Muir Trust wild writing competition.

“We are looking for inspiring short stories with the broad theme of' ‘experiences in wild places,'” commented competition organizer Alison Austin. “Your entry can be factual or fictional and could incorporate a journey, a place, an expedition, a mountain or river, a walk, climb, sail or kayak.” First Prize is a place on a Writing and Place course at Moniack Mhor, Scotland’s creative writing centre.

I'm very honoured to be one of the judges, and get to go for the third year running to the fantastic Fort William Mountain Festival.

Glen Nevis, glen of stones

Saturday in Fort William may have been one of the wettest and windiest this year, but it didn't deter twelve workshop participants from joining me to respond creatively to the experience of walking beside the swollen river in Glen Nevis. Note-taking as we went, we used observation and imagination to generate words.

We got tuned into the place with senses of touch and sound and smell by denying our sense of sight, working in pairs - one guide, one blindfolded. One person trusted their partner enough to end up lying on the river-bank, head hanging over the racing river; another knee deep in a ditch, plunging his hands underwater to feel the skin-like texture of the bottom.

We created a character to inhabit as we walked - on a journey as film-maker, stalker, cattle drover, munro-bagger. We imagined what they had on their feet and what they carried in their pockets, what filled their heads as they walked and how their state of mind shaped their perception of the landscape. This led to some very interesting pieces including one from the point of view of a dog.

We changed scale - looking closely at a rock, lichen, moss, tree bark – and imagining it is a vast plain or forest or sea. What would it be like to walk through this landscape?
Back at the Ben Nevis Inn, participants wrote up their notes into short pieces. The diversity was astonishing - historical stories; a description of music created by the combined rhythms of river and footfall; the reaction of a rock to the fierce river that is challenging and overwhelming it today, etc. Each piece of writing was unique - the individual's response to the world in that time and place expressed through their own idiosyncratic choice of words.