When I slip out of the house just after six, the sky above is lightening to pale blue. Clouds fan across the wash in tiers of different shape and colour: the highest are like billowing silk, translucent and blushed with pink; the closest, a stippling of grey.
At the dark line of hills to the east, the clouds are thick and suffused with an amber glow. I head over one road and under the A9 – already rumbling with trucks – to cross the sheep paddocks that slope up towards my nearest hill. On one side, a very lived-in farm dwelling, on the other, a grand old house renovated for holiday lets, and further along, a crumbling bothy, gazing vacantly across the strath. The stand of giant Scots pines behind it are home to a vast rookery, but, for once, the birds are quiet.
The track heads up past drystone walls and disused sheep fanks, through birch forest and stands of spiky juniper. A buzzard lifts off and circles above me, no less beautiful for being so common. Higher up, the pheasants have breached the wire of their hatchery and run about skittishly, launching into low, gargling flight. Through the gate in the forestry fence, I break into open moorland just in time to greet the sun.
The sky has rolled out its richest carpets, the whole world applauding as the great star glides up the stairs and beams. A brisk wind from the west makes the grasses tremble and bow, their colours shining, the bracken a weaving of green and gold. Meadow pipits fire up from the undergrowth, bouncing across the air before veering away and vanishing into brightness.
From the cairn at the top of an suidhe – “the seat” in Gaelic – I watch the valley’s colours take form out of shadow. The Spey flows from grey to blue, the dark woods find their greens and the fields turn emerald. Up here on the hill, the three heathers grow cheek by jowl. Only a few magenta blooms of the bell heather remain and the occasional pink tuft of cross-leafed heath, while it is the ling that blankets the slopes. Its iconic amethyst blossoms are fading now, but in the light of the risen sun, its old woody growth is burnished bronze.
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