August Wednesday 28th
I boarded the train to a day not quite yet consumed by gloom, A feeling of indifference transitioned to hope as the rain cleared and a few scattered beams of light penetrated through the clouds.
The mountaintops were clear as they rolled on by my window, the sun warmed my skin through the glass, her soft touch gracing me. I felt lucky to be in her presence.
The hills cried out in green and gold, and then in an instant she disappeared behind the cloud.
The preceding days had been bitter and cold as I waited out the storm, never knowing when the opportunity for clear weather would arise, but knowing that I had to take my chances or I'd never embark on this adventure.
I keep thinking back to what a worker on the boat said about how Scotland is unspoilt. Hardly. Overpopulations of deer, forestry and human impacts have severely reduced the true wilderness.
Though there is a rugged, naked beauty about the landscape. Its worn and weathered faces tell an ancient story of mankind’s relationship with the land.
I made my way out of Inverie where the boat had dropped me off this morning. The path was a continuous gravel road. All I could think of as the monotonous stamping of my boots echoed a reminder of man's mark on the landscape. I hoped it wouldn't continue for long.
The path wound around the first mountain pass and in the next valley the gravel path that had been the cause for my disdain slowly gave way to the familiar sight of mountain track. One dredged with water, rock, and mud, leading the way to the looming mountain pass ahead.
Momentum stalled as the track slowly disintegrated and turned to slush.
Atop the mountain pass, the hope of the morning light was soon shrouded in darkness. The wind dropped and clouds thickened. A dreary ambience ran through the valley, broken only by the continual trudging of my footsteps as I descended from the mountain.
In the glen stood the carcasses of buildings, weather torn and broken, the roofs probably gutted for lead in some forgotten age. Scars across the landscape from an unfamiliar time, now left to rot.
Between me and the bothy stood an expanse of bog with no clear way across except the occasional sunken wooden board. Dry feet were out the equation.
The clouds opened and heavy rain fell through the glen.
Sourlies Bothy
Arriving drenched to the bothy in the early afternoon I met two other hikes seeking refuge in the dry. They weren't staying the night. Their plan was to make a break for the next bothy, half a day's hike away, with the aim of arriving just before nightfall. The competitive streak in me wanted to go with them and to make good use of my next 4 hours until dark. But that voice in my head I often neglect told me to stay, for you don't know what might happen if you give it the chance.
As I said goodbye to the other hikers I wandered the glen, wading out into the retreating loch as the tide fell, skimming stones to pass the time.
Then in my patience, far in the distance, something magical happened.
On the horizon the clouds parted, and a patch of clear sky slowly moved closer, shining light that lay glimmering across the loch. I stood in the shallows with my camera mounted on tripod, as the light moved closer.
It rained golden and the light followed, until I was basked in light.
Standing, toes submerged in the retreating tide, the sun had now lit up the patch of pale sky which was approaching in the distance. The rain playfully stroked my face as I stood eyes shut letting the elements surround me.
I journeyed past the headland, clambered through a field of slippery seaweed, and traversed up over the wet rocks to reach the vast open glen. There in front of me was a large herd of deer, resting in the solace this remote part of the highlands offers. They seemed indifferent to my presence, as I watched the mist wrap around the mountains summits behind.
Not everything has to be a challenge, in being slow and purposeful I had realised, and my bad thoughts disappeared. Grey it seems is the destroyer of wonder. Grey wants to dilute my enthusiasm and seclude my smile from my view.
And as soon as it came, the patch of clear sky was gone, illuminating the next glen over, leaving instead giant clouds, the wardens of the loch, towering high. In the dying light I sat and watched them swell with colour until it was dark and blue and time for bed.
In contentment, my final thoughts were nothing good happens in a rush.
August Thursday 29th
That was a cold night of light, broken sleep. I vaguely recall an anxious dream but mostly I remember the shivvers of cold down my legs and the pressing feeling in my bladder. There were times I was convinced I could feel some sort of insect crawling up my wrist.
The sound of rain pierced through my earplugs, inspiring memories of sodden clothes and a reminder of the misery to come of putting my dry feet into soaked boots.
I look back at last night's refuge. I wonder how long I stayed there. Each day is an endless repetition of the next. The homogenous gray sky looks no different between the time awake and asleep. I'm living on the border line, purgatory. Desperate to leave this place but too scared to leave.
Am I awake or still asleep, shivering in the bothy? I feel as permanent as the relics on the shelves. How soon until I start singing to the same hum of the water as it drips down the cold stone walls.
My journey carried onwards and soon the cries of last nights slumber were drowned out by the rain. The mist followed me. Mist and then the rain, followed then by intermittent dry periods, only to be followed again by rain just as heavy as before.
It was over the first pass that the river who’s banks Id been meandering along, avoiding the bogs, widened, and soon it was apparent that I had been walking along the wrong side of the river.
Walking as far as made sense, I stripped myself down. Rolled my clothes up to my knees and waded barefoot fighting the current. I didn't think I could get wetter. But I did.
In the clouds, waterfall blend into waterfall and glen into glen. The only indicator of the passage of time is the growing aching in my back.
My mood is the weather and progress is slow. Determination and indifference battle in the forefront of my mind.
People are few and far between. Fleeting connections between downpours. Small updates and weather comparisons. Yes I am wet too.
I collect these conversations like miles on my boots. They're brief and soon forgotten, lost amongst the mist.
I left the looming crags behind, and the path once more changed from unnavigable rivers of mud to a paved track. The tight winding valley opened up and endless trees sprawled out in every direction, suffocating the glen. All the same, non natives. It is mans descent upon all that is natural. The beating of order where there was none. Manufacturing stability to a system that had already found it without our interference.
The forestry seemed to go on for weeks. It wasn’t long before my spirits were felled and my thoughts became as monotonous as the trees.
Finally the dense cover parted and the rocky crags loomed over.
The sight of the bothy couldn’t have come sooner as then the winds howled and the woods groaned.
Do you think the woods can hear the felled tree’s screams? And does it echo through the plantation every time the wind blows?
Dark clouds circled the mountain peaks ahead and began their descent down into the glen.
Soon darkness flooded the valley.
The weather here is an animal which cannot be hunted or tamed.
Alone I write by candlelight. The last owner of the bothy left here in 1926, thats 100 years ago and here I am sleeping where she slept. It is as cold a night as any back then.
Everything changes and yet so does nothing.
August Friday 30th
All is silent in the bothy nay the gentle sound of a distant river and the rustling of my sleeping bag.
My eyes pulse, unable to focus through the fog inside my brain.
Coffee, I need coffee.
Outside the birds chirp and dance, the more I sit and listen, the more I notice.
The brightest of the sun beams pierced through the bothy and like an insect to the light I joined the hoards of midges to bask in the morning glow, to recharge what little I had remaining, before I leave the safety of the nest.
The direct line out from the Both is a wicked reintroduction with my unavoidable fate. The destruction of the dream of dry feet. There is no avoiding this face, there is only embracing it.
As I leave the sodden track behind and rejoin yesterdays forestry track, the sun carries me like a second pair of legs, lifting me up upon its currents.
The sun disappeared and a cool breeze swept through the valley. I was glad to leave the forest.
The path ahead today seems simple through perhaps not to be underestimated like yesterdays slog. Mostly straight path with one 450 metre mountain pass to navigate. It looks steep. Only time will tell. It always does.
Crossing rivers barefoot has become as habitual as brushing my teeth.
Bracken has a real knack of grabbing at your ankles, desperately trying to pull you down. And there’s these small flies. Not midges, but something even more sinister who revengefully get back at you after an unsuccessful swipe. They are a resistful kind.
The approach was long and slow. As energy hung low I stepped up and into the bowl of a glacial valley. The curving walls falling gently to the valley below sing the song of ancient ice, once filled but now reduced to a dwindling river, one still humming that ancient song.
And after a never ending walk through the glacial valley, I am atop the final mountain pass. I'm not sure what I expected to see but the vague traces of civilisation lie ahead. A path. A road. It is perhaps anticlimactic, no celebration. Only relief. Relief and a slight sadness. The journey is almost over.
There is no crowd to cheer me on but the solitary peak of some unknown mountain, watching me in the distance.
When I look at the mountainside I see the traces of time. If the last glaciers retreated some 10,000 years ago then the river show what 10,000 years of erosion looks like. It is palpable.
I see mounds of earth like pimples across the hillside, each reminiscent of the slate piles of spoil I am so familiar seeing at home, but reclaimed by the earth hidden beneath its carpet. Hidden but still so subtly sharing its story if you stop to notice.
When I am in the mountains I feel the weight of it all.
Billions of years of earth's history condensed into a single moment of existence.
The here and now. A sense of belonging. A part of the whole.
Perspective is powerful. Only yesterday I was tortured by the endless plague of monotonous pine plantations. Today, they’re luminous and green,warm and pleasant against the mountainside, giving the illusion of fertile ground. They spur me on. Giving me strength to continue down the final straight.
Signs of civilisation continue, a manor house, an electric bothy, perfectly planted trees protected from the wild. Until finally I emerge into a crowd of people, blissfully unaware of my adventure through the mountains as they stand atop a hill waiting for the chance to see a train pass over the viaduct.
