“Over the garden fence, behind the railway and the cherry trees, the Cairngorms are waiting. They should be more than a mere background to life.”
Category Archives: Prose
The Oaks of Sunart
As soon as the man on the phone stopped shouting at me and hung up, I made up my mind about going away. A few minutes later I had a self catering cottage booked in the village of Kilchoan on the Ardnamurchan Peninsula. I reasoned that besides being a place I’d wanted to spend timeContinue reading “The Oaks of Sunart”
Land the Person
It occurred to me the other day, while I was walking up a hill through long grass beneath shady birch trees, that the most important and enduring relationship we have in our lives is the one we have with the land we live on. It then occurred to me that this should always have beenContinue reading “Land the Person”
Glen Torridon and the Awe of Time
On a cloudy October morning in 2008, I quietly opened the door of Ling Hut, where we had arrived in darkness the night before, stepped out into the damp air and looked on the mountains of Torridon for the first time in my life. Since I was such a cartophile I was already familiar withContinue reading “Glen Torridon and the Awe of Time”
Looking Closely at Things
One of the great joys that photography can bring you is the ability to notice things that other people can’t see. I mean this fairly literally – until you learn to draw your attention to a particular thing; until you’ve learned to recognise it, you really can’t see it at all. Seeing takes place inContinue reading “Looking Closely at Things”