The Dark Moor
“I have come home at last! This is my real country! I belong here. This is the land I have been looking for all my life, though I never knew it till now…Come further up, come further in!”
C.S. Lewis
Below the mountains, Ocean to their Island, lies the forest. The deep reaches of the Caledonian Forest are nothing like the rural countryside woods that dot the tapestry of lowland fields and towns. The forested hinterland that lies miles back from the roads, cut off by rivers and distance, where only the lost (or those inclined to be so) find themselves, is an entity unto itself. Where the forest rises up right on the slopes of the mountains, and the sun throws spears of light over the shoulders of the hills, the life seems richer, the trees full of ancient grace and dignified beauty. There is a disorderly elegance to everything. Living pines spread great canopies of needles; in death they stand like white skeletons or lie mouldering among the heather and peat with dragged-up root plates exposed. Ramshackle bits of broken wood lie around and jigsaw patterns of bark flow into each other in just one of a trillion points of detail. There is a pattern to everything, but regulation in nothing.
My visits to the secret parts of the forest began in earnest after I discovered the place I have come to know as the dark moor. This place was something extraordinary in a landscape where special was the norm. I discovered it by accident, on a day when the line we followed across the map again offered no warning of the beauty of reality. I found myself walking over a low hillside, overlooking the deepest parts of the wood. The moor was adorned with birch trees and a sea of pines washed up its flanks on three sides. Across a gulf of space the enormous mass of the Cairngorms themselves stood with a physical presence that could be felt in the heart. As I stood there for the first time, spellbound, the sun pierced a raincloud and illuminated the whole northern face of the Cairngorms with a strip of gold, and softly drew a rainbow from an invisible sheath.
That first visit was all too brief, and it teased me with the promise of what lay further in, once I had found the way. It became an obsession. No walk was worth considering unless it began or finished at the dark moor. The dark moor offered almost immediate access to some of the wildest parts of the forest, and an easy start for journeys farther afield. At home I pored over maps obsessively, tracing out the lines of paths and tracks into and through the woods and then going and finding out what they were really like. More of the mapped tracks than I expected did not really exist, and many more tracks existed that were not mapped at all.
But the paths were not taking me to the places I wanted to go, or revealing what I wanted to find. I was not even sure what I was looking for, but I became sure that the paths could only take me to places where everyone else was going. Known places. As I eliminated the last of the marked trails my attention started to turn to the blank parts of the map; the bits that lacked details or were marked with nothing but suggestively vague symbols of tree, marsh and river. Tiny glyphs on paper that pointed the way to where, I knew, the real woods waited to be found.
One winter morning I took myself up to the dark moor. The morning air was bitingly cold, the sun only just starting to rise over the mountains, touching the surface of everything with bright but cold light. Hoar frost filigrees coated every twig and pebble, so everything the sun touched was illuminated as if by its own internal light, with an edging to it that made things stand out sharp and clear. It was like arriving in the world on the very first morning.
The moor was like a round boulder standing above the sea of trees, and I stared down into the forest like a diver taking a breath. The overlapping silhouettes of the pines receded into the shadows beneath the mountain. I wanted to be among them, and for a moment I was thirteen years old again, staring absent-mindedly out of the window of afternoon French class to the hillside above our house where the woods beckoned. I always wanted to get up there, underneath the branches, to look out from the halls of the woodland, not in from some over-civilised countryside. I finally realised that the only way to find a way into the deep, secret parts of the woods was simply to walk straight ahead, ignore the paths, and head right on in.
The forest lay ahead. Not waiting for me, though it seemed so. The only way to go was forward.
The path ran in braids down among the birches. My feet danced along the rocky soil, taking me down among the trees. I felt nimble and fit; alive and full of vigor. The track spat me out from under the canopy of a huge Scots Pine onto the white grit of one of the constructed forest paths – an incongruously straight slash through this twisted place. I paused there, and stole a look to the left and right to check no-one was watching. Today I did not intend to turn either left or right on the track but go straight over, and I felt like starting in secret. I did not want there to be any chance of someone following me into the secret places that lay ahead.
The track was empty, so I crossed, ignoring its dull binary command to go either this way or that. Instead I brushed my way through into the thick juniper bushes at the edge, broke through, and quickly found one of the living animal trails that thread their subtle way through the stalks of deep heather like rivulets of water on a pane. People are not the only creatures of habit, I am to learn. Over the years that followed and the many times I would walk this same trail, I would trace the imprints of deer hoofs in the soft soil, pick up the fragments of pine cones – both squirrel chewed and crossbill cracked – and watch those creatures flit away into secrecy as I approached. They left me all the clues I needed to find my way in. But this was the first time; I followed the trail, finally starting to peel back my own ignorance step by step.
I weaved downhill past scrub bushes of juniper, small rowans and birches that threw black lightning forks of shadow on the frosty ground. A thick stand of pines lay ahead, and I wanted so badly to be underneath their branches, moving through those illuminated spaces. But every few yards I stopped as I found some new wonder – some detail or unseen view of the forest was revealed. The crisp whiteness of the frost was beginning to turn gold at the edges as the sun crept higher over the white mountains. The forest was a place of pure light, shadow and shape. Golden sunlight bounced into the depths of the trees and up into the canopy of needles, where sparkling drops of melted frost fell in myriads. Pine branches with frost trimmed clouds of needles lay in overlapping layers of shadow and depth above welcoming corridors of open space. I was captivated by every part of it. My tentative forward steps were repeatedly halted and wobbled ungainly back into place as my eyes found some new sight that must first be appreciated from here before I went any further. I did not want to reach there too quickly, and miss something by rushing.
I entered among the pine trees at last. Like a colonnade they created and defined space with their elegant dimensions. Under a sweep of branches I felt as if I were beneath a wing. I saw how each tree reached out with their canopy but nowhere touched the canopy of any other tree. Their needles formed a neatly arranged ceiling, through which light poured. The frost cold spaces between trees were wide and full of light. I reached out a finger to touch the delicate ice crystals that coated the bark, and felt it melt instantly beneath the heat of my skin. I brought the drop of water to my mouth, and saw the dark spot of bark where I had touched.
I continued, entranced, passing beneath bough and needle to the opposite edge of the copse. There I found an arcade of branches, framing a sublime view of wintery mountain and forest. Once again, space was given meaning by the shapes of things. The hills slanting back to secret summits, the trees arrayed in layers. The sun poured silently down onto the land that glowed with brilliant contrast. It was utterly peaceful.
This was it. This was no known place, trammeled by foot and by noise. This was the place I had been looking for. An atmosphere of total peace lay over the woods – a sacredness of timeless beauty. No sound of car or plane penetrated this far in. I stood there breathing in the cold air, exhaling mist.
My feet took me onward, in constant search of what was next. Above the tops of the trees I could see the sweeping curves of the mountains, as elegant as the line of a calligrapher’s brush stroke. I found a clearing where a venerable and ancient pine held court to a rough circle of younger trees. The young ones leaned in toward the granny pine slightly, as if listening to her stories of the forest. Stories I wished I could hear. Stories of storms, of aurora, of sunsets and mists. Perhaps I would indeed hear such tales, if I was patient enough with the listening.
Beyond the clearing I crossed an ancient stone wall, broken down where an old branch had fallen on it, and I wondered who built it and why? Some ancient boundary marker? It put the lie to the momentary idea that had risen up, of the forest as terra incognita, but it was also clear that it was a long time since this place was worked by any will of man. Since then nature had crept back in. Quietly dropping a seed here, a seed there, until the forest was renewed. Without struggle, without purpose, gently reclaiming its place.
I clambered over the jumbled rocks of the broken wall, crossing into whatever lay beyond. My foot sank into soft grasses, knocking bits of frost from each stalk. Every footstep crunched with the rustle of crumpling paper. Every footprint behind me was an oddly dull brown wet patch in the glinting white frost, giving me a pang of regret over my clumsiness. Evidence of carelessness, I thought, as if I had trampled some priceless work of living art. Why should it bother me? The sun would be higher soon, and all the frost would be gone by the time I left here, so did it matter? Yes, it seemed to matter. It felt vital that I must show the forest that I was respectful of it, as considerate of every blade of grass as I was of myself. I wanted to pass as gently as a ghost, as softly as a young deer. But I couldn’t help my clumsiness, though I continued walking as gently as I could, with a crunch of frost and a line of melted steps.
After a long while but a short distance I found a pool, skimmed over with the most delicate of ice patterns. Crystal feather shapes of light and dark lay across the surface, intermingled with white frozen bubbles where some gas had risen up from the ground deep beneath. A pattern of light and dark ice rings contoured the edges of the pool, and wherever a blade of grass poked through it was circled by a tiny frozen meniscus. I let my feet carry me around it, studying it from all angles, careful not to break it. Another tiny marvel; a priceless work of art.
The top of the pool of water was free of ice, where it was fed by a quiet stream. Narrow, deep and dark, a black slash cutting through the frozen heather. I began to follow it along its winding course, until it bent at ninety degrees in front of me and I decided to cross. I did not care where I was going. I knew I would end up somewhere. Wherever it was it would be the right place. But before crossing I knelt to take a drink from the water with my hand. It’s an old tradition, something of a superstition of mine, for me to do this. For as long as I can remember I have always taken a drink from the first stream I cross in any journey in the mountains or the forest. If I have brought water with me, I first pour it out and then fill my bottle anew. For me it is a symbolic moment of respect to the place – by making an offering and accepting what it gives me in return. A moment of physical transference between person and place. Then, whatever else the mountain or the forest has in store for me today, I accept. If you will let me pass I am grateful. If not then I’ll accede.
As I walked ever deeper into the forest I started to wonder whether a hill or a wood can indeed have a will of its own. It feels like it sometimes. I’ve had more than one day on the hill where the wind and rain felt like the manifestations of a personal vendetta – as if the place really were determined to turn you around and see you off, at the very least. And I’ve had moments of good fortune, where things could have gone badly wrong on rock or river, but worked out against all the odds. Chance? Maybe. Too big a question for an answer, but a good question to enjoy.
Some people believe there is a God. One God, only one, everywhere. Some say none and nowhere. But no matter how many times I toss that coin it always lands on its edge. Perhaps it means both yes and no. Or perhaps that means it’s up to me to go find out? I like the idea of small gods. A god of trees, maybe? Perhaps just a god of this tree, and I stopped to lean with both hands on the gnarled bark of an ancient pine, twisted by age into greater beauty than it ever had in youth. I placed my nose on the bark, melting the frost with the tip, and inhaled the soft earthy scent of the wood. I stood back to admire the pattern of jigsaw curves and layers. Knock knock? I tapped on the tree. Anyone in there?
I paused to listen, but had no answer but the silence. I reminded myself that just liking the idea of a thing does not make it so. Wishful thinking. And yet, something made my hand go back up to the tree, where it melted the frost in a temporary recreation of a neolithic hand painting. To the tree I thought “Sorry to disturb you, maybe you’re asleep. Or maybe not. Why should you come out to speak to me? I’m a stranger here, though I don’t want to be. You have to earn some things. Some wisdom can only be bought with time and the tread of feet. Or maybe you are speaking to me and I just don’t hear it. Well, I’m here at last, and I’m ready to look and to learn and to listen.”
The sun continued to shine on the trees, the frost melted into the ground – changing silently from one form to the next. My handprint on the bark grew wider and wider as the frost gradually vanished, until it was gone. Or maybe I could say it grew until it covered the entire tree. I stood there breathing in the cold, looking and listening for the next question.