Bog Myrtle & Peat

After a fantastic honeymoon in Wester Ross, we returned from the distant North and hit the ground running, trying to catch up with work and the maddening minutiae of moving house. There has been time to type up a few bits and pieces of notes from the trip, including this block of text from an ascent of Beinn Dearg:

Two eagles circled together over Gleann na Sguaib. One had cruised over in the stillness from the soaking bones of Creag na h-lolaire and it was soon joined by a second bird. They turned together in total silence, long black fingers swept upwards at the end of each massive arm which sailed in the wind like a child’s bedsheet. Through the binoculars it was possible to see their talons bunched up like fists beneath them, and as they turned again and moved back towards Loch Broom, a tiny crow like a gnat wheezed carefully behind them at a respectfully defiant distance.

But the aerial performance was soon overshadowed by a far more demanding presence. For three days we had endured the constant thunder of roaring all around the cottage by the shore at Letters, and when I had gone down to water’s edge to watch the divers sleekly pouncing, the overture had almost become oppressive. Several stags were bawling on the hill above Leckmelm, and the sound found it easy to rumble through the intervening half mile of water and stone. By night under the moon they had roared on until it was possible to identify individuals from the comfort of my bed, and it seemed as though the noise made the curtains tremble under the stars.

In amongst the beasts on the steep sided glen, the noise rolled back and forth between the scree and the heather, lingering among the yellow birches and battling the rattle of the burn as it tumbled in strips of foaming white through the stone. For a timid lowlander used only to the surly yap of a roe, this opera was more than a little intimidating. Some of them drawled with a lazy, almost bovine moan, but others were infinitely more sinister – deep, schisty bellows drawn from some raw vein of intolerance. Silhouettes flitted around the saw-toothed horizon – heads and ears distended by wrist-thick bars of horn which were invisible to the naked eye but which resolved into fearsome tools through the binoculars.

Crowds of hinds browsed uneasily between these fretful monsters. Grey calves jostled between them and turned to look down at us as we laboured up the path far below them. This path would ultimately lead us up to the cloud strewn summit of Beinn Dearg, from where all of Wester Ross would lie prostrate before us. But until we gained that height, we were intruders from below, inspiring sneers and curled lips from those who held the higher ground.

Once we stopped to watch a stag with his party of hinds. Dripping with peat and piss, he fretted back and forth amongst his harem, singling out individuals and working frantically like a deranged collie dog. His nearest rival called and he could not resist a wild, drawn-out response. The hair on his neck had split into a row of sodden dags, leaving gaps like the gills on a dogfish. A beat after he was finished, the sound reached us – a torrent of torment and exhaustion. Clouds of steam and vapour looked sulfurous as they rose from this vision of hellish, ked-infested fury.

The sound still rang as we crossed into the world of ptarmigan. A pristine burn gurgled into placid stillness as it looped between the gnarled chunks of quartz and granite. Tucked in beneath the vertical faces of Cadh’ an Amadain, we were forced to call it a day by a darkening sky and the onset of some minute flakes of rain – what promised to be the first of many. We had covered six miles and suddenly felt overwhelmed by the enormity of the dripping cliffs above us. When we spoke, we did so in whispers. The horizon was divided by the monstrous bealach between Beinn Dearg and Meall nan Ceapraichean – a low slung trough in the high and breathless space. In the windows of bright sun, half of this world was bright and wincing while the other sulked in gloomy silence.

Somewhere up on the sheer faces, the sound of goats rang musically between the gutters. Searching for ten minutes, I finally picked out the blue roan figure of a billy goat wandering carelessly through a vertigo nightmare like a urine-stained satyr. I had to crane my neck so far back that I felt sure that if he had fallen, he would certainly have landed in my lap. I had to remind myself that goats don’t fall. I prepared to dodge, just in case.

Having come to within a few hundred yards of the peak, we looked back down to the sea. Cloud lay on the Minch and blotted out the shapes of Harris, but several of the smaller isles were easy to see as the wind picked up and carried snatches of rattling water back into this forgotten trough between horizontal and vertical.

Gruinard island squatted like a tortoise shell, and still the roaring of deer rolled over the white crumbs of scree overhead. There were more stags up there, with hinds like chamois gliding through the shreds of red grass. I watched one black hummel lie down on a cushion of lichen and grit, resting his frame on the sliding discs of stone. The budget which had been meant for antlers had been squandered instead on bulk and fatness like a luxuriant eunuch.

We turned for home as the ravens clocked the time, back down into the jungle of alder spoons and red pine stems.