An Encounter in the Monadh Ruadh of Scotland
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Transcript of An Encounter in the Monadh Ruadh of Scotland
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The following is an account of a trip to the Cairngorm Hills of
Scotland. Some of the details are a little sketchy and the reader
will understand why as the story unfolds. Almost from the
beginning I lost track of the days. It was winter 2006 and I had travelled
by train to An Aghaidh Mhòr from Leeds looking for the kind of intense
experience wild camping in the High Cairngorms at the turn of February
and March can offer. Since my first visit to the Red Hills as I prefer to call
them or more properly Am Monadh Ruadh, I had become fascinated
and mildly obsessed with the forests, hills, gullies, stories and myths
which constitute a very special landscape.
¶ I started to write down what had happened to me in the Cairngorms as
soon as I could after the dramatic culmination of events. What became
obvious as I wrote was that the sequence of events seemed a little
disjointed. To this day I am uncertain as to what really happened to me.
Anyway, I believe I have left nothing out.
s
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illustration 1
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I
It was evening at the Pools of Dee, not quite dark and the snow
reflected a meagre light that fell from a cold, clear sky. Something
was standing at the edge of the first pool just over the southern side
of the Pass of Lairig Ghru and I naturally took it to be a red deer. I had
walked out from Drochaid na Cuing’leum intending to camp at the Pools
that night. Why it did not hear me approach I do not know. I had just
passed over the ridge at the summit of Lairig Ghru and was within sight
of the first, small, pool which stands higher than the others and it was
from this pool the deer appeared to be drinking. I crouched and slipped
off my rucksack quietly. The shape moved and to my utter horror and
surprise stood upright, listening and sniffing the air. It was covered in
deer skin and I could hear its breath and see the tiny movements of its
head as it scented for me. It bent to drink once more and I realised then
that I was down wind of it, so I approached cautiously and quietly. When
I was perhaps three or four metres away it started and ran diagonally up
the slopes of Beinn Mac Duibh splashing as it left the pool and moving
with such agility that I thought my eyes were truly deceiving me and it was
indeed a deer.
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¶ I walked over to the place from where the creature was drinking and
it at once became evident that there was still something beside pool.
When I looked, my heart pounded into my mouth because the objects
appeared to be primitive deer-skin boots or moccasins. They were sewn
in the foot part with thin gut or strips of leather but the upper part was
cut to wrap around the calf of the legs and tie. The fur was on the inside.
I collapsed into the bank of snow on the south side of the pool because
the most terrible, perplexing and horrific fact about this strange event was
that as the creature started, it put out a hand, a palm, a human hand to
me and I swear, although I did not believe it a few minutes later, that it
uttered the word “No”.
¶ The evening events did not fit easily into my plans for the week. I
pitched the tent and fired up the stove to make hot chocolate. While the
water was heating I looked again at the creature’s footwear. They were
uncomplicated but robustly made kamiks or high moccasins like the
Apache wear, broad over the toe with an overlapping flap that extended
from the instep up the calf, making them knee high. I placed them next
to my feet and legs so as to judge the size of the creatures feet and its
stature. They were a little smaller than my size eleven mountaineering
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boots and broader. On my legs the top of the creatures boot would be a
few centimetres short of my knee. Underneath the flap were ties made
from thin strips of hide with the fur still attached. At last I put them aside
and cooked some pasta and vegetables. I followed this with more hot
chocolate accompanied by biscuits and then wriggled into my sleeping
bag to read. At about 2040hrs I went outside to urinate and on returning
took off my outer clothes and settled down to sleep in my base-layer. It
was a clear cold night. A light breeze whispered northward in the Lairig
Ghru and my tent glistened with frost inside and out.
¶ In the early hours of the following morning, the light southerly breeze
swung north and it started to snow. The wind smashed into the tent and
snow blew in to the porch under the door. It quickly filled my boots, the
creatures footwear and completely covered the stove and cooking gear.
As I had done on other, sleepless, memorable, stormy nights, I decided
to dress, go out and check the pitch of the tent, guy-lines and tension
of the flysheet. I had half an idea to shovel snow into a defensive wall
against the northerly blizzard. After dressing, putting on my head-torch
and emptying the snow from my boots, I unzipped the tent door and
struggled out into the chaos of the storm. The head-torch beam scanned
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illustration 2
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around and suddenly caught the creature in its beam. He turned quickly
and disappeared to the south again. I ran wildly in the direction he had
gone but the powder snow was soft and I fell on my face.
¶ Struggling to my feet, I realised why he had returned. It was not that
he was curious. There are plenty of mountaineers in the Cairngorms.
No. Before me in the beam of my head-torch, with the northerly storm
nudging me, urging me to run before it, the snowflakes rushing obliquely
forward, in that shaft of white turbulence were his footprints, his bare
footprints. The poor creatures feet were unprotected and I had stolen
his footwear. He was trying to retrieve his deer skin boots. I waded back
to the tent through deepening snow maddened with ideas. I would follow
him. There were no footprints round the tent just some disturbed snow
on the bank to the northwest. I grabbed energy bars, map compass and
the creatures footwear. I could drink from the burn. Before long his
footprints would be covered so, zipping up the tent I hurried south down
the Lairig Ghru, stumbling and tripping. At least the wind was with me
but it would mean he could scent or hear me following. I stopped. He
would be well ahead of me now. By the time I arrived at the confluence
of the Alt a’Garbh Choire and the Dee at the vast opening of An Garbh
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Choire, I would not be able to tell where he had gone.
¶ However my heart seemed to pound suddenly and I determined to
keep going. It was 0109hrs. My Petzl head-torch would die after about two
hours on its halogen bulb but I would not be able to make out the rocky
broken, snow covered terrain with the standard but more economical
bulb. Hours of slipping, ankle twisting, tripping, falling, sinking into snow
filled hollows, ensued. I had lost his trail completely but blundered on.
At last, with great reassuring relief I came to the confluence of the two
great burns and decided to give up my search and make for the refuge in
An Garbh Choire. It was now 0240hrs and the combination of the snow
storm, the dark and the difficulties of making headway on the uneven,
boulder strewn ground were beginning to tire me. Another kilometre
would bring me to the refuge where I planned to rest and sleep if I could
before setting off back to my tent at the upper most Pool of Dee. Now,
I turned right, keeping to the northern bank of the Alt a’ Garbh Choire.
The beam of my head-torch, comforting, reassuring, lit up the burn and
the going was easier but I feared and knew that the head-torch batteries
would soon fail.
¶ At 0304hrs I had paused and my headtorch began its inevitable demise.
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I stumbled on now and eventually the friendly beam of light left me to
the mercy of the Cairngorm night. The burn could be heard but it was so
dark I could see practically nothing. I knew I must move however, and
proceeded carefully straining to make out the terrain. What happened
next remains to me a mystery. Whether I tripped, fell or passed out I
do not know but a pain like that of an electric shock combined with an
explosive spasm in my head took hold of me and I fell forward.
¶ When I awoke, my eyes would not focus. I was disoriented and all
was a bluish white. I could smell something strong, pungent, animal but
I did not know what it was. A shadow or shape, dark brownish passed
in front of my eyes and a noise reached my ears but I fell asleep again.
The same whitish haze greeted me when I came to consciousness again,
however this time my skin began to tingle and the odour I remembered
was still there. I could move and nothing seemed to hurt so I did not
think I was injured. The strong animal smell seemed to be focussing my
consciousness and moving my head a little, I became aware of fur or
skins and also that to my surprise I was naked and wrapped in the skins.
My thoughts now began to clear rapidly and I loosened a hand from
my wrapping so that I could rub my eyes, touch something or reach out
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illustration 3
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and as I did so I could see that I was covered in a fatty greasy substance
with small pieces of plant material in it. With the quickening of thoughts
and functions came realisation but before I could act something gripped
my loosened arm and thrust it back inside the skins. An enamelled cup
was put to my lips and a hand firmly supported the back of my head.
The hand holding the cup was brown and leathery with dirty nails but I
drank the sweet liquid struggling to form questions and wake fully from
whatever state of consciousness I had fallen into. I began to feel drowsy
and fell almost immediately to sleep.
¶ The sleep was not without dreams but those dreams were some of the
strangest and most vivid of all my dreams. I dreamt of a dark place, of
the sound of steel, beating and ringing rhythmically, of fear and flight,
cold and blood. There was a forest of Caledonian Pines and a glen full of
bird-song. The forest became full of men. Trees fell and were made into
rafts on the river. And yet fear and loneliness returned with ice and rock
and mist and in that mist a figure. I awoke.
s
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II
Daylight permeated through the two layers of my MSR Fury
tent and I knew it was late in the morning. I felt refreshed,
ready to climb to the plateaux and wander in the crisp, cold
air. And yet my dream troubled me, not least because of its lucidity. Was
I confused, dehydrated perhaps? I did not know. My memory was not
ready to serve me properly because all I could remember clearly was
pitching my tent at its present location. But, was I still encamped at the
same location. Scrambling for clothing, I dressed and stuck my feet into
frozen, unwelcoming boots. Powder snow had accumulated on the south
side of the tent and the morning was bright. The pool was dark, still and
unfrozen. I was in the same place. I fired up the stove. A breakfast of
coffee and toasted pittas with marmite would help. Slowly a mixture of
realisation and dread came over me. I had seen the creature, chased it
and fallen. Snow was blowing savagely from the north. The wind chill
factor was dangerously high. I had lost consciousness some way down the
glen, felt warm, happy, delirious but had made it back to the tent. With
a shudder I at once recognised the symptoms of hypothermia. What day
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was this? My watch confirmed my fears. I had lost two whole days. I had
been frantically searching for something and I must have gone to bed.
And yet there were gaps because I remember leaving the tent to relieve
myself in the night or was it to check the guy-lines? I did not know. And
the dreams - what strange dreams.
¶ The morning was wearing on. It was 1008hrs by my cheery Suunto
watch with its big friendly face. Time for my morning bath. I smelt. I
smelt of sweat and fear and something else, strong, animal. Near the
tent, a bank of snow would provide me with the ideal outdoor ablution
- the snow bath. The secret is to have your towel and clothes ready so
you can dry off and dress as quickly as you can afterwards. I stripped off
my top layers, laughing and breathing heavily but this feverish carefree
disrobing was curtailed as I looked at myself, my chest, arms, stomach
and the rest of me. How many horrors awoke in my head? How many
questions? How many fears and paranoias? With one hand I clawed
the top of my other arm. Whatever my body was covered in, the greasy,
fatty substance, the fragments of what seemed to be reindeer moss and
small plants, collected under my nails. I threw myself at the snow drift.
The curious thing about the snow bath is that after the initial shock,
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illustration 4
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the abrasive qualities of the snow make your skin warm so after about
five minutes I was satisfied. I had removed as much of the disgusting
substance as I could and dressed. So it was not a dream. I did encounter
a creature and it had covered me in animal fat for some bizarre and as
yet unknown reason. I shuddered. Despite this, I felt sure I would never
see it again but knew the story would be a laugh over a dram of Speyside
malt when I returned home.
¶ The route I had chosen to the summit of Beinn Mac Duibh involved
climbing the ice of the frozen March Burn. It cascaded down the
side of the Lairig Ghru from the col between Mac Duibh and Cairn
Lochan disappearing underground to permeate into the infant River
Dee. Recently the burn had been frozen making an easy free-climb to
the plateau. The climb went well, crampons and axes biting into clear
verglass ice all the way up. Two RAF Lynx helicopters passed through
Lairig Ghru south to north a hundred metres below me. In places the
burn could be seen and heard gushing and boiling underneath its icy
mantle. Here and there the ice dinner-plated and fell away. Once a part
of the ice fell inwards, rattling down the inside of the crust. A moment to
take a little more care with axe and crampon placement but on the whole
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the climb was exhilarating and uncomplicated.
¶ Spindrift scoured the plateau and the walk to the summit was pleasant
in the afternoon sun. At the top some other climbers talked excitedly
- perfect conditions. We exchanged stories but I kept quiet about my
recent episode. They told me about the time they were crossing Brae
Rhiabach and the American jets crashed near to our position on Beinn
Mac Duibh.
“It was Monday 26th March 2001, one recounted thoughtfully. We were
heading home because the weather was getting worse. We were going
down via Srõn na Lairige and we just saw smoke coming from near the
summit. This was about four-ish. There was no noise either. You’d
have thought we would have heard a crash or something but nothing.
It must have been the weather. When we got back to the hotel it was all
over the news that the jets were overdue and had probably crashed in
the Cairngorms. USAF F15Cs they were; from Lakenheath in Suffolk.
Expensive bits of kit. Matt,” he pointed to his mate, “Matt phoned the
Mountain Rescue to report the position of the smoke we had seen. Hope
it did some good. The weather was so bad they couldn’t search properly
- avalanche risk 5 all that week. They found one pilot quite quickly but
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the other one wasn’t found until the Thursday - still in his ejector seat. He
could have been alive and died from hypothermia. Poor bastard.”
¶ The lads gave me a sip of their whiskey. It was 1500hrs. A mist began
to creep its way up the mountain side from the direction of Alt Clach nan
Tailear and we looked at our maps and took bearings in preparation for
a fog bound descent. I intended to drop down missing the craggy western
slopes to Alt Choire Mhor and to the Pools of Dee from there. By 1530
the clag was down and the gentle wind had dropped. All was quiet and
becoming gloomier by the second. Suddenly, one of the other climbers
shouted.
“Look! Look there!”
To our astonishment the Big Grey Man of Beinn Mac Duibh had
appeared and we rejoiced and whooped shaking hands at our good
fortune and to mark the occasion of seeing this rarest of mountain
apparitions.
¶ I do not know why I ran. When I am on my own in the mountains, I
listen to my head, the seemingly random neural firings of noise, songs,
words, emotions but that afternoon on Mac Duibh I simply ran as if
overtaken by the primal urge to flight. The other climbers shouted
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illustration 5
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“Hey!” and “Slow down,” but I ran in my crampons down the slope
towards the apparition. I did not run very far. The mist was thick and
opaque. After only twenty metres or so, I stopped running, breath
gasping, confused and the creature stepped out of the mist towards me. I
stopped breathing. He spoke:
“Wait.”
A curiously pitched, delicate sound.
“Wait.” again but this time an open hand stretched out towards me. I
breathed once.
“Who are you?” I screamed at him and lunged angrily forwards but he
evaded me and disappeared into the clag.
“Who are you?” Then all was silent again except my breathing.
The voices of the other climbers seemed quite close and through the
pounding in my ears and the noise of confusion in my head I heard, “Are
you alright mate?”
I said nothing, did nothing.
“Hello?” the voice said. I could see no one.
“Hello-o!”
“I’m okay,” I shouted in reply.
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“I’m heading down now.”
And then “I’m camped at the Pools.”
But I cannot remember saying this. In my confused state I probably did
but I had the chilling feeling that the creature was mimicking me. Late
afternoon was turning into evening and soon the Cairngorm night would
engulf me again. This time I was a long way from my tent. The weather
had turned and the fog softened to a suffocating opaque grey. Without
warning I was thrown to the ground and a hand was clamped over my
mouth. I was alone with the creature on the inhospitable slopes of Beinn
Mac Duibh.
¶ The creature kept his left hand clamped over my mouth and his knee
pushed into my chest. I tried in vain to struggle against this iron constraint
but the creature motioned again for me to remain silent. He was straining
to see into the fog. I could hear him sniffing, scenting and holding his
breath to listen. Whether the pressure on my chest, exhaustion or some
other environmental factor was affecting me I do not know but I started
to see pictures in my head, visions, hallucinations call them what you will
but I am compelled to recount what I saw.
s
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III
I saw ice. I saw a striped crevassed glacier carving a valley and feeding a
lake. I saw the distinctive shape of the ice field in An Garbh Choire.
Next, all was dark save for flickering, shadowy faces, the creature’s,
those of men and the sounds of metal on stone. Mining. Then I saw the
high Cairngorms in summer, patches of snow, mountain hare, their coats
turning grey brown from white, ptarmigan, a burn, eagles and ravens
wheeling high up. The burn dropped down to a low lying land of lochans
and marshes edged by tall trees of a type I recognised immediately -
Caledonian Pine. The forest was filled with bird song. It was in a great
wide glen and another creature the same lived in the glen. The over
whelming joy I felt as I saw pictures of an unspoilt and pristine Scottish
landscape ceased suddenly as a sorrow filled the spaces where joy had
drained away. The creature was staring into my face, his dark brown eyes
searching mine, a concerned frown across his brow.
“Who are you?” I choked.
¶ He stood up and beckoned me to follow, leading me down towards
the Alt Clach nan Taileaur now in flood as the thaw released the snows
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illustration 6Map
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illustration 7Map
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of Mac Duibh. Mist swirled and thinned as we descended. He moved
quickly and confidently over snow, ice, rocks and heather making it
difficult for me to keep up. I looked at his feet clad in those deer-skin
boots with wonder and awe. He headed up hill again following the burn
and stopped on the threshold of the mist.
¶ I had stopped perhaps three metres from him. He turned towards me
and I approached. Something happened then, something incredible but
at the same time so common place that I now wonder how I could not
have considered it sooner. Firstly, it occurred to me that the creature
had little in the way of facial hair. Surely, if he was a wild man of some
ancient race or a modern man in hiding, ‘gone feral’ so to speak he
probably would not be bothered with shaving. Was I wrong? Second,
I gasped. Why was I surprised? I had not even contemplated any
other possibilities. The creature approached me and the evidence was
unequivocal; he, the wild man, the Grey Man of Beinn Mac Duibh was
female. Perhaps it was her gait. Perhaps there was something inherently
female about her movements. There was her voice. Its curious pitch,
so unmasculine. Her clothing, the skins which at a distance seemed so
crude and cumbersome, at close range were shaped to a female form.
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Now that she stood before me I was in no doubt. The head covering of
her garment was thrown back. Her hair was a mass of ringlets and curls, a
mixture of white and dark brown, shoulder length. She seemed old, her
face lined and worried but her tan skin was stretched taughtly over her
cheek bones as if she was in her youth. She stood at my height but for a
centimetre or two. Her nose was broad with wide nostrils. I remember
thinking she was like a Australian Aboriginal but somehow adapted to
the northern climate. She looked at my face and into my eyes and raised
her hand.
I jumped back and this time whispered “Who are you?”
With the first two fingers of her left hand she touched the centre of my
forehead. I began to feel light headed and again images formed before
my eyes. Then I saw her removing her hand from my face and frowning,
her dark eyes fixed on mine. She replaced her hand.
¶ I feel aching, painful, heart wrenching sorrow. I see the creature
younger, or, perhaps, another creature asleep or, even dead. Despite this
feeling of dread and sadness that forces tears from my eyes, I notice that
we appear to be in the wide glen, breathtaking, beautiful and filled with
bird song. This gives way to the increasing sounds of men, horses, sawing
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and dragging. The river is full of felled birch and pine trunks. Even up
to the high passes men fell trees. I recognise Lairig Ghru and at Loch
Eannich, men work sluice gates to control the burns. I see desolation.
Men bring their cattle and sheep to graze and the forest is prevented
from regrowing. On the slopes of the mountains, grow dwarf birch and
willows, net leaved, mountain and downy.
¶Autumn in the forests brings fungi. I see the Blue Tooth and Pine
Tooth.
With the flooding of the burns and flushes I am shown Bryophyte
coated rocks - damp and spongy. At the Pools of Dee I recognise the
rare Alpine Thyme Moss. I remember thinking I have never seen the
Pools in summer.
¶ With the melting of the snows I see Purple Saxifrage, each flower’s five
crumpled petals showing off its stand of stamen, Blue Heath braving the
sugary snow lingering in the corries until June and the very rare, deep
lilac blue, Alpine Blue-Sow-Thistle without sharp spines thriving where
it cannot be grazed. Snow bunting search the drifts for a meagre snack.
She seems to hate the deer but relies on it to survive. She is linked to it
somehow.
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illustration 8
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¶ I see a mire or bog in a forest clearing. She is showing me her
environment, deliberately taking me round her world. In the clearing
there is open water but on the fringes grow the beautiful Bog Asphodel,
yellowy green like a webbed hand with Horse Tails, Worts Rushes, a
parade, a procession of rare and incredible plants. Some I had seen before
but others were not known to me and I had little idea of where they grew
or whether they were still to be found in the Cairngorm regions. In the
trees I am shown the crested tit, a crossbill extracting seeds from a larch
cone and on the lochan, golden eye, a type of crested grebe and water
vole patrolling the banks. In the spring sunshine, two wild cat kittens
play, explore and climb all over their mother but I remember seeing no
pine martens in this strange tour of the places she knew and loved. Only
once did I see another similar creature. It was shown to me running up a
slope through heather and late snow, mountain hare scattering as it ran.
I thought I heard laughing.
¶ I see ice, ice sheets and in what I take to be Lairig Ghru in its infancy,
freshly gouged, a great melt-water pool blocked by more ice at one end
and high ground at the other. I see the corries full of ice and the burns
rushing from them.
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¶ It is Autumn. I seem to be walking in a forest of birch with their yellow
leaves but then it is winter and the trunks glow against the snow. Juniper
and Rowan reach high up onto the mountain slopes and I am being
drawn quickly up out of the forest into a scrub of willows which gives way
to the high Cairngorms. Then down the slopes. I can feel my legs shaking
and weakening under me but at last I am stationary before the scattered
pines, mires and bogs of the Caledonian forest.
¶ Some parts of the vision I could put into historical context, the
seventeenth century woodmen or the post Great War de-forestation and
regeneration efforts. Other parts were less easy to make sense of. They
could have been post-glacial or nearer to our own time. There seemed
to be no evidence of Clansmen or early farmers in her evocation of her
habitat in my head. But, what was I saying? What was I thinking? Did
something, somewhere in this madness, this weird waking dream mean
the she was at least as old as the Loch Lomond Re-advance - the brief
respite in the thawing of the last ice age which formed its namesake?
What rubbish! But I cannot account for much of this odyssey in the
Monadh Ruadh which started so ordinarily.
¶ Again the snow field in Garbh Choire Mhor appears before me. It
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pulses, swells and decreases but each time it shrinks, it is smaller. This
image seemed of great importance to the creature and appeared to go
on for some time. I hear her voice. It says “Innis Geal” - the White
Meadow.
s
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ptarmigan
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IV
She sank to her knees and fell sideways. My senses were not fully
alert and I watched numbly as she seemed to resign herself to
exhaustion or something more serious I knew not what. Rousing
myself and straining to banish the fog of ideas and cascade of thoughts in
my head I knelt beside her. Her eyes were open but she did not look at
me. She breathed steadily. I noticed that round her neck, strung crudely
but securely with a twisted cord of leather was a large piece of rock
crystal. At once I knew it was the smoky quartz that is known simply as
‘Cairngorm’ since it was here that the finest specimens were first found.
She saw me looking at the stone and grasped my arm. I helped her stand.
She said, “Follow.”
¶ Her strength seemed to return and she set off downhill following the
Alt Clach nan Taileur - the burn of the Tailor’s Stone - at a pace I found
hard to match. I remember being astonished again at the ease with which
she moved over the ground, like a deer, I thought. Where the slope
started to fall more steeply we moved out of the gully and we followed
a strip of ground between Alt Clach nan Taileur and another unnamed
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burn. I could see the Dee in the Glen and ... now I hesitate in my account
because for some time I have been unable to refer to her as ‘the creature’
yet I do not know how or what to call her ... however, she suddenly
turned left and leapt the burn. I followed falling on the far bank.
¶ We had reached the Lairig Ghru path and she paused briefly, crouching,
cautious, looking north and south. I stopped perhaps ten metres from
her and crouched likewise. She tilted her head back a little and I saw her
scent the air as I had before. She looked back at me. Satisfied that no
one was near enough to see her she crossed the path and headed towards
the river. At a wide shallower section she waded straight across without
hesitating and I clumsily, noisily followed. We turned a little right and
made our way up the western side of Lairig Ghru, then left again to head
more north west, contouring round the base of Sgor an Lochain Uaine.
She was leading me into An Garbh Choire.
¶ I was tired, near exhausted. I could no longer keep up with her and
I gasped “Wait,” and thought she would carry on, leaving me and my
pathetic plea behind but she stopped and retraced her steps to me. She
stood in front of me and grabbed my jaw with one hand looking at my face
and into my eyes. The fog had lifted and it was clear but not cold. The
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illustration 9
37
spring thaw had begun. A thin moon had risen and in its dim light I could
see her eyes. She made me crouch and she did the same a metre or so to
my left, allowing me to rest. I pressed a button on my watch. It read 2117.
A few minutes later we were moving again at a steady jogging run. As
we were contouring round I tried to keep pace but inevitably I dropped
behind some distance. We crossed three small burns and begun to turn
west into the great corrie. Soon we would pass the mountain refuge.
¶ As soon as we were out of sight of the refuge, she stopped and waited
for me to catch up. Breathlessly I stood beside her but she turned towards
me removing the hood of her garment. She looked into my eyes and
slowly put one hand in the centre of my chest and with the other pointed
back in the direction of the An Garbh Choire refuge. Her meaning was
plain but I shook my head and tried to speak. She put a hand over my
mouth and spoke now and yet I do not remember hearing her voice
or seeing her mouth the words. I only heard her strange, broken voice,
melodic and haunting.
“You cannot follow now. Go to the refuge.”
“I can keep up,” I said meaninglessly.
“No. I must go alone. I cannot stay longer.”
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“What! Stay? What do you mean?”
“Go to the refuge. You are tired. Where I go you cannot follow.”
And she ran on into the corrie. She was right. I felt weak and dizzy so I
made my way back to the refuge, my head burning with the pain of thirst,
hunger, exhaustion and a hundred questions.
¶ The pile of stones which constituted the mountain shelter was deserted.
If I had had food with me I would not have had the energy to eat it. I left
my rucksack and drank from the burn. The sickle moon was low over
Macdui. At the western end of the corrie the boundary of the deep blue
night sky and the silver grey and black shadowed mountains reminded
me how much I loved this land. And with only that feeling to sustain me
I curled up in the corner of the refuge and slept. But my dream woke me.
I seemed to be outside again by the burn. This time there was no moon.
Macdui was silver and above were the shimmering spears of the Aurora
red and green, first slow then whipping and thrashing. To my left were
the dark recesses of the great corrie and with a surge of emotion, heat in
my head and howling rising to whistling in my ears, there, glowing in the
light of the Aurora, the snowfield, the great snowfield of Garbh Choire
Mhor, until recently a place of permanent ice, the place she called ‘Innis
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Geal’. I woke, the howling still in my head.
¶ Outside it was early morning, pale blue sky, cumulus, mild. I drank from
the flooding burn, relieved myself and started towards the snowfield. My
rucksack was left in the shelter. I realised I still had my crampons on and
I picked up one of my ice axes from the place on the bank of the burn
where I had left it the night before. I had no clear purpose, I doubted
my sanity and I had not eaten for twenty four hours. Was this all in my
head or some extraordinary happening, some omen, portent or just plain
madness? There was little snow left in the main part of the corrie but the
peaks were pale and blue in the weak morning light, still clinging to their
icy shrouds. Leaving the refuge I made my way along the southern bank
of Alt a Garbh Choire. Unable to move quickly, feeling light headed
and weak I kept to a steady pace, trying not exert myself in case I passed
out. Strangely I did not feel hungry or cold. My route was taking me
gently uphill but to what end I knew not. I knew only that I must make
for the snowfield. Soon I crossed the tributary which rushes down from
the slopes of Sgor an Lochaine Uaine. Here I stopped to drink. I knew
I must be dehydrated. My head swam as I stood to move off again.
Nothing mattered apart from reaching the snowfield. The ground was
40
illustration 10
41
becoming steeper and I moved away from the burn to the south so as to
be out of the gully it now ran in.
¶ I climbed to Garbh Choire Mhor and came within sight of Pinnacles
Buttress. To my right I could look across to Garbh Choire Dhaid and
the top of Braigh Rhiabach just catching the morning sun. It was going
to be another warm day and the brindled hills would release more
of their winter cloak. The going was slower over the floor of the high
corrie. There was some snow here and there, surviving in the hollows,
striping the landscape, an effect I knew so well. I stopped and gazed at
the snowfield. I was breathless and dizzy. The ground steepened quite
abruptly here and slowly the White Meadow grew nearer. At my feet the
nature of the snow had changed. The old, sugary, partially thawed snow
had given way to a compacted, hard, icy, grimy, pock-marked variety,
covered in seeds, fragments of heather and heavily ridged. I climbed
higher into the snowfield, into Innis Geal. My crampons bit and the spike
of my ice axe pierced the surface. Even though I moved across the ice
carefully and with practiced movements, I felt barely conscious of my
surroundings. I could hear nothing except the rhythmic metal crunching
of crampons and axe.
42
¶ Then I saw her. She was about twenty metres away up the slope, a little
to my left. To my horror she was lying on the ice, on her side. She did not
seem to be moving. The snowfield grew increasingly steeper with height,
so I moved as quickly as I could without tempting a fall. When I knelt
beside her and rolled her onto her back she opened her eyes.
“I thought you were dead,” my voice a hoarse whisper.
“Who are you?” The question had become an obsession.
“Who are you?” More desperate this time. She did not answer.
¶ The noise in my head grew and an icy wind swept Innis Geal. I stared
at her. Life was ebbing away from her. I would never know. I would
never understand. The noise increased. With a last laboured movement
she gripped my hand in both hers. Her eyes seemed to implore and
say “Remember.” As when she had touched me before, I felt dizzy and
saw a vision. These last images were of ice, ancient, blue and green but
before my eyes it melted and collapsed, crumbling and crashing down.
Something gripped my shoulders and I was torn away from her. The
noise and wind swirled, all was chaos. I was in the air, then inside. A door
slid side ways shutting out the wind. A man was leaning over me. I saw
his insignia, a wing, stripes on his shoulder... I remember nothing more.
43
illustration 11
44
V
I watched, weak and helpless, as they dragged her down the slope,
harnessed and winched her up to the hovering Sea King helicopter.
When the Mountain Rescue team on the ground waved off the
helicopter and began to make their way out of the corrie it felt perfectly
natural to be left alone on the ice field. But now, all was silent again
and the sun was rising over Beinn Mac Duibh. I opened my hand and
looked at the Cairngorm stone, its twisted leather cord passing round
and under it. I began to put it round my neck but stopped, changing my
mind and placing it carefully inside my orange Paramo anorak. Hunger
and exhaustion seemed to have left me so I stood up and walked back,
diagonally across Innis Geal, to the refuge, my rucksack, then on to the
Pools of Dee and home.
s
45
illustratration 12
46
s
Bibliography
Gordon, Seton, (1925) The Cairngorm Hills of Scotland, Cassell and Company Ltd., London
Harveys (2000) Cairngorm, 1:25,000. Doune, Perthshire: Harvey Map Services Ltd., (Superwalker series).
MacLennan, Malcolm, (1979) Gaelic Dictionary: A pronouncing and etymological dictionary of the Gaelic language, originally published by John Grant in 1925,this edition: Acair Ltd., Stornaway, & Mercat Press, Edinburgh, .
Ordnance Survey (1997) The Cairngorms: Aviemore and Glen Avon, no.3, 1:25,000. Southampton: Ordnance Survey (Outdoor Leisure series).
Shaw, Philip, & Thompson, Des, Eds. (2006) The Nature of The Cairngorm: Diversity in a changing environment, The Stationary Office Ltd., Edinburgh
Tod, Andrew, ed., (1992) Memoirs of a Highland Lady: Elizabeth Grant of Rothiemurchus, Revised Complete edition originally published by John Murray in 1898, this edition: Cannongate, Edinburgh
Watson, Adam, (1928) The Cairngorms: Scottish Mountaineering Club Districy Guide,
The Scottish Mountaineering Trust.
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ilustration 13
s
Designed, written, illustrated and printed
by Stuart Harvey. Copyright June 2012.
www.lycanthropedesign.co.uk
LycanthropeDesign and Education by Stuart Harvey