Below the Cairngorms - Fo na Mhonadh Ruadl

One Christmas holiday when I was twelve years old, my family took me on a skiing holiday in the Cairngorms. The memory of trying to dodge the multi coloured crowds on the slopes with my newly acquired skiing ‘skills’ still remains at the back of my mind. There was one particularly terrifying experience, when, having left my sticks on the chairlift I found myself charging down hill out of control to a rapidly approaching cliff edge! After this I took to walking and exploring the place by foot! The strongest memory of the place that remains is the lie of the land – the mountains, valleys with their streams, rivers, the vegetation, and of course the beasties that were to be seen. There was an excitement about the chance of seeing eagles, wild cat and capercaillie; being in an area inhabited by red deer, ptarmigans and mountain hare. This excitement was what I wanted to re-visit.

In the spring of 2007 we arrived in a sunny Scotland to stay at Inchdryne croft beneath a huge ancient Granny Scots Pine. Using this as a base we traced the shoreline of lochs, got lost in the Caledonian Forest, followed the Spey and went a little way up the hillsides. Everything was there. The ospreys were fishing in the Spey and having their domestics at Loch Garten; every small loch had a pair of goldeneye flirting on it; the birches and pines were swaying with the red squirrels; the deer were glimpsed between the trunks of the trees; and I tried to paint it all – recapturing that delight I had as a twelve year old.

A VIEW FROM THE CROFT

Marina Dennis, 1990

So Inchdryne was built in 1856. One hundred and thirty years later I built a new house, a croft house, for the place was registered as a croft with the Crofters’ Commission in 1955. But I had two arms to build it with as well as a husband and three strong ‘adult’ children. James MacPherson’s house still stands and my view remains the same view he would have looked at, contentedly, I hope, most of the time, but I expect at other times, anxious and despondent. What would he have felt in 1863 when on St Swithin’s day there was a most intense frost? No doubt his potato shaws would have been in black ruin that morning.

April has gone now and good riddance to it for it can be a desperate month in upland places. The splendid weather enabled my cows and calves to be out all winter but the fields need resting after five months of hard grazing and very little growth. The hay has lasted well though and I still open the occasional bale which smells sweetly of summer vetches and clover. But on warm sunny days when I think spring has arrived, and the cows know it has, they gather belligerently by the gate, champing, roaring, butting – this low level rioting leads to a stampede when I open the gate to the forest and they devour a fresh pick as if they had been byre-bound all winter. Before long they are knee deep in cool bog water, munching moss-crop or bog cotton, the early shoots green and glossy.

During that spell our jackdaws announced to one and all they were setting up home. One pair chose the tall chimney of the old Tulloch schoolhouse, the only house I can see in the view from my croft; the other pair built in James MacPherson’s middle chimney. The frenetic behaviour of these argumentative, strutting, black-capped, grey-suited gentlemen reminds me of the dapper characters in a Chaplin movie. They flew to and fro, like whirling dervishes, with twigs and sheep wool and finally spent two days plucking hair from the cows’ backs while they nonchalantly chewed the cud.

I watched as the jackdaws took samples from the beasts, finally settling the interior decoration of their nest by choosing the silver grey hair from Angie, the young heifer. As one scolded and goaded, the other plucked, and strangely, when a beakful was gathered, the arrogant, I assume male, grabbed the hair and flew off triumphantly.