Sunshine and Stone

Guess the glen...

The boulderer's idyll... seems like a while since we've had it...a sustained high pressure has dried out some of this extended autumn wetness (winter?) and I found myself on the flank of a glen, arm up against the sun ricocheting off a pylon, boulder mat throwing me a wobbler as I balanced over a barb-wire fence, following the sheep trails again... absorbed in that out-of-breathness as I toiled through steep heather to a spied shadow of steepness. Distant ribbons of vanishing snow on the Tarmachans like a sketched-out caricature of mountains, everything back in its place and the climbing simple and coming easily with renewed motivation, the body twisting eagerly and the hands hungry for the emery-rub of garneted rock. My eyes are always close to my hands when bouldering and I notice the little blood-nicks on my knuckles that the schist steals off me... you clock these little things and welcome them back...it's what makes bouldering special and personal, throwing shapes and finding the locks, chalking up holds and doing the dot-to-dot, like some over-cosseted and earnest kid pointing out all the capitals of the world on a map... we really do take it all too seriously sometimes, but bouldering is only properly done when it is child-like -no real thinking, just instinctive and impetuous movement and the delusion that the rock is taking you seriously... being spat off makes me laugh and I shake my head at my arrogance ... but what I pleasingly don't notice is the sun has passed over the hill and the shadows begin to swim up my legs like an ink-stain...

Beinn Dòrain

Viaduct and Beinn Dorain Once you cross the bealach under Beinn Odhar north of Tyndrum, the shapely peak of Beinn Dòrain is a visual fanfare to the Highlands. The mountain and its environs are richly detailed in the poet Duncan Ban MacIntyre’s poem Moladh Beinn Dòbhrain (‘In Praise of Beinn Dòrain’). [i] Its symmetrical convexity, deeply gullied flanks like pencil sketch-marks, and stern domed summit, make this a moment to instinctively reach for the camera. It is a steep but invigorating mountain to walk, which is more leisurely explored from its eastern corries, though the traditional ascent from Bridge of Orchy, up to the toothed ‘Am Fiachlach’ ridge quickly brings fine views from the heart of the Central Highlands, encompassing Cruachan in the west to Lawers in the east and the Mamores to the north. If you were set the task to name the features and character of this mountain, before a Gaelic toponymy, you may have come up with a similar voc...

The Metadata of Being Human

Shamanistic zoomorphs, lithic graffiti, hallucinogenic tableaux, territory markings, knife-sharpeners … rock art – l'art rupestre – is so far beyond our traditional 'linguistic' history, it does not have an interpretative alphabet or a single line of confirmed meaning. There are many interpretations of the 'gravures' (carvings) and 'abris ornés' (decorated caves) in the hidden bivouacs throughout the forest of Fontainebleau. The sandstone marks easily under the nib of a hard flint from the deeper calcareous geology and this soft stone canvas has allowed our European ancestors to carve the stylised and modernistic strokes we might note as remarkable in a Picasso painting. Most of the carvings involve complex hash-marks and grids, overlaying each other, occasionally with mandala-like boxes. Sometimes there have been carved astonishingly beautiful anthropomorphs, (stylised human-like figures), or zoomorphs, (deities or humans manifesting in animal form) or argu...

Scotland's Iconic Mountains #Broad Law

BROAD LAW The rolling hills east of the modern motorway of the M74 hold much more character and history than they appear from the west, where they are now flanked by forestries of spruce and wind-farms. In medieval times this was a Scottish royal hunting ground – the ‘Ettrick Forest’. Further east towards the Tweed valley, there are echoes of a deeper Scottish history in the border towns of Hawick, Selkirk, Galashiels, Peebles and Kelso, all on the banks of the historic River Tweed and famous for their medieval forts and abbeys. Looking west from Broad Law to the monoculture forestry and wind-farms of 21st C Scotland This range of hills, along with the northern flanks of the Cheviot hills, marks the geographical transition to the once-contested border with Northumberland, with its high pass over Carter Bar on the A68. The more useful sense of boundaries are suggested not by the roads but by the watersheds: to the north the waters drain into the River Cly...

Stone Country – Landscapes and Lifescapes

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