In The Living Mountain, Nan Shepherd writes wistfully of the ancient Caledonian woods of Rothiemurchus: “Not much is left now of this great pine forest.” She had witnessed the vast fellings of both world wars to meet the need for homegrown timber; it was enough to prompt Frank Fraser Darling to say in 1949: “Our land is so devastated that we might as well have been in a battlefield … see the wreck of … Rothiemurchus that is no more.”
How I wish they could have walked with me there the other day. It was the fading of a cold snap, with snow still mottling the hills above and lying under heather clumps at our feet. In the fresh morning air, beauty lay at every turn; puddles were frozen into intricate patterns, a small lochan was a sheet of ice.
