Allt Coire an t'sneachda stream

Dan Puplett

Volunteers planting a hazel tree in Glen Affric

• The Diary of a Work Week Focaliser
• Strangers and Spiders
• Imagination itself

 

The Diary of a Work Week Focaliser

Dan Puplett

This autumn, I had the privilege of being a seasonal focaliser for our work weeks at Glen Affric, taking out groups of volunteers on alternate weeks. To give a flavour of what it's like being on a work week, here's a condensed diary for one, which is based on actual events during several weeks I focalised in September and October.

Saturday
Picked up the volunteers from Inverness station. Drove to Glen Affric past a shimmering Loch Ness. Stopped by the side of Loch Beinn A' Mheadhoin for a picnic. Sandra Paul of Forest Enterprise gave us an interesting introduction to the history and management of Glen Affric. There were plenty of questions, through mouthfuls of sandwich, which Sandra cheerfully answered. Then on to our introductory walk, up through the Coille Ruigh exclosure, to talk about our work and the Caledonian Forest. Back to Plodda Lodge to settle in, relax and eat. Group seems like a friendly bunch. Some talented musicians already emerging.

Sunday
Everyone getting into the swing of removing old fencing. Good to know that birds such as the capercaillie will be able to fly through the forest more safely, without the risk of colliding with fences, and we'll leave the place a little wilder than when we arrived. The midges seemed to appreciate our efforts. Sobering insight into my place in the food chain: blaeberries - Dan - midges - spiders - birds - bigger birds - pine martens etc ...hmmm.

Monday
Took down a big stretch of stock fence from Allt Garbh, above Loch Affric. Glorious day, fantastic views down the glen towards the awesome Munros (mountains of 3,000 feet or higher) around the West Affric estate. The volunteers have now become an elite team of fence removers. Can see why Affric is known as one of Britain's dragonfly hotspots. Saw a huge, voracious, prehistoric-looking one which tried to steal my sandwich - well not quite, but I'm sure it had its eye on it! Some fine evening meals being cooked - tonight it's veggie curry, with flapjack and custard for pudding. Oh yes.

Tuesday
Helped Clare with her regeneration survey at Coille Ruigh. Everyone enjoyed measuring and counting the young trees (and doing Darth Vader impersonations with the survey poles!). Always inspiring to see how well the forest is regenerating there. A real contrast to the barren hill opposite. A couple of wildlife experts among the volunteers pointed out the hairy caterpillars of northern eggar moths, which look uncannily like joke moustaches.

Wednesday
Day off! Most of us chilled out around Plodda Lodge, or went for walks to the spectacular Plodda Falls nearby. Saw red squirrels along the way. Haunting sound of deer roaring on the hills. Chanterelle mushrooms for starters this evening - the meals just get better and better.

Thursday
Put up a small exclosure on the north shore of Loch Beinn A' Mheadhoin, to protect aspen stands, and did some supplementary planting of aspens which Clare had propagated at Plodda Lodge. The week seems to be flying by. Music round an outside fire this evening, and some Scottish dance lessons!

Friday
Scots pine planting up near Cougie, an old pine forest remnant a few miles beyond Plodda Lodge. Everyone in good spirits in spite of the rain. Some superb autumn colours setting in. Is it Friday already?!

Saturday
Cleared up around Plodda, and back off to Inverness. Sad to see everyone go - but I'm sure that some of them will be back for more...

Of course all weeks are different, with inevitable challenges and high points, though the ones I've been on have had some common elements: friendly and interesting people of all different ages and backgrounds, good food, good humour, and - one of my favourites - people giving back to the land, and coming away refreshed and healed by the forest itself. Many thanks to Paul and Sally Kendall, Dave Thomas and Feja Lesniewski (my co-focalisers), and to all the volunteers, for a great work week season.

First published in Caledonia Wild! Winter 2001-02

 

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Strangers and Spiders

Amy McClelland

It's funny, you think you know yourself, your limits, what makes you happy and what you can't stand. But sometimes a new experience shatters the boundaries and makes you realise that you are capable of much more than you thought.

Before I went on the work week to Glen Affric, I had an irrational fear of spiders, a fear of physical exertion and a general dislike of strangers. During the week I managed to combat these fears, not by being brave, not by being strong, but just by being among people who wanted the same things as me. People who, without trying, provided support and understanding.

Athnamulloch Bothy

The bothy at Athnamulloch

When I first saw the bothy I was devastated. I thought, "How can I live for a week in a room full of strangers and spiders?" I even considered not eating for the whole week to avoid visiting the make-shift toilet in a barn. I wondered how the others took it all in their stride - to them it was a break away from busy cities and every-day life, to me it was purgatory. The first night I couldn't sleep for worrying that a spider might find it's way into my sleeping bag, or that I might have to go to the toilet in the night.

The second night I slept soundly, exhausted from a strenuous day and relieved to crawl into my warm sleeping bag, spiders or no spiders. The strangers of yesterday were friends of today and I was eager to awake the next day, ready for something new.

 

Tree planting was great, it's everybody's favourite task. It gives you a real sense of doing something practical. Every time I sat down to have a break I found it hard to start again - the mountains look so beautiful that it's easy to get distracted.

On the day off, I set off with three others to climb Mam Sodhail, a nearby 'Munro' (Scottish peak over 3000 feet). I was unsure of whether I would manage, but a little 'gentle persuasion' from the others in the group kept me going. The last part was incredibly steep and the others seemed to bound up it effortlessly. I found myself clinging to rocks with white knuckles. I tried to call the name of a girl in the group but I was so scared that only a squeak escaped from my mouth. I looked up and saw a girl in the group, she held out her hand and I grabbed it. It was almost as if she saved my life, I felt that grateful. She pulled me up to the summit and I almost cried with joy. I felt as though I could go on and climb every Munro in Scotland.

From that moment on my attitude towards my capabilities changed. It is possible to achieve almost anything when you focus on the positive aspects and have a little encouragement from others.

The work week was one of the best weeks of my life. It taught me so much: I even lifted a spider on a bit of paper and put it out the window yesterday, which would have made me sleep in a different room a month ago. It wasn't just the people that made the week so great, it wasn't just the surroundings or the bothy. It was everything happening together to provide a unique and amazing experience.

 

First published in Caledonia Wild! Spring 2000

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Imagination itself

Guy Hand

Black throated diver

I collapse into a comfortable cushion of heather, exhausted. We've been removing fences all morning, cutting away wire, pulling up posts, and carrying it all in heavy bundles uphill to the road. Forest restoration is hard work. I feel it in my back, my arms, my shoulders. I close my eyes and let myself sink into the thick mat of heather until I all but disappear. While the others shuffle off to a well-earned cup of tea, I listen to the patter of rain through leaves and the bittersweet wail of a black-throated diver calling from out on the loch. The spicy scent of bog myrtle and damp earth drifts over me. I open my eyes and gaze straight into the spreading canopy of a 300 year old Scots pine. Its trunk is large and gray, as solid as a Doric column, yet its branches are bright orange, twisting like flame. Along the banks of the loch, other Scots pines spread horizontally, more like African acacias than pines, their needles gathered along outstretched limbs in chlorophyll-tinged clouds. Beautiful.

My weariness fades. I recall something Paul Kendall, one of our focalisers, said four days ago, during our group's introductory walk through a stunning grove of Glen Affric's ancient woodland. He pointed to a particularly handsome Scots pine and said that when pines are given space, unlike the trees crowded in tight timber plantations, "they can be imaginative in their growth." The thought stopped me in my tracks. Trees imaginative! As much as I love woods, even to the point of coming to the Highlands from California to plant them, I'd never thought of trees imagining their way into the sky.

A week from now I will feel different. I will walk into a glen north of here in the company of a private forester hired to plant Scots pine for an absentee landowner. On the desolate, treeless hills where he has begun his work, the forester will say nothing of imagination. He will talk strictly of soil types, planting regimes, projected costs, of nitrogen deficiencies and rainfall totals. He will show me pie charts and four-coloured graphs. And I will slowly come to realise that his plan is missing something inexplicable, something vital.

Adam Powell, our other focaliser and a keen naturalist, nearly stumbles over me on his way to tea. I sit up and he asks if I've seen the divers courting on the loch. He hands me his binoculars for a closer look. All week Adam has been quietly pointing out the intricate detail of life in a Caledonian Forest. He has shown us gleaming clumps of emerald moss, taught us the difference between a silver and a downy birch, explained the eerie nocturnal drumming of the snipe. His love for this place is palpable, shines in his eyes, and cannot be reduced to charts and graphs. His eyes reflect not only knowledge, but a deep, abiding sense of wonder. In the gentle presence of Paul and Adam, I've begun to question my own more pragmatic devotion to nature, my reluctance to admit imagination and wonder (at least in public). I believe a fine line is crossed when we assign human traits to trees, when we immerse ourselves in sentimentality rather than science. Often that line divides the thoughtful from the merely misinformed. And it can provide those looking for a way to discount the credibility of the whole environmental movement with easy targets. Yet in this Scottish forest I've begun to see that to include only the quantifiable, the chartable and graphable in my view of nature, is to miss the soul of the matter, or more accurately, the soul in matter.

That inability to see imagination and wonder in trees has made it far too easy to cut them down - whether the Scottish Highlands or, where I grew up, the pine forests of Idaho. Is there a single landscape in the world enriched by that view of nature, by that blind pragmatism, a single place more complex, more diverse, more anything than it was before?

Our tea break is over. I push myself to my feet, grateful to get back to work, grateful for another chance to make amends. A few weeks from now and missing this forest, I will walk into a used bookstore on a rainy Inverness afternoon, absent-mindedly thumb through the worn pages of an old book, and find this quotation by William Blake: "The tree which moves some to tears of joy is in the eyes of others only a green thing which stands in the way. Some see Nature all ridicule and deformity ...; and some scarce see Nature at all. But to the eyes of the man of imagination Nature is Imagination itself." Yes.

 

Guy Hand is a freelance environmental writer and photographer, and wrote this piece after taking part in a work week in spring 1999.
First published in Caledonia Wild! Winter 1999-2000