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The following is an account of a trip to the Cairngorm Hills of

Scotland. Some of the details are a little sketchy and the reader

will understand why as the story unfolds. Almost from the

beginning I lost track of the days. It was winter 2006 and I had travelled

by train to An Aghaidh Mhòr from Leeds looking for the kind of intense

experience wild camping in the High Cairngorms at the turn of February

and March can offer. Since my first visit to the Red Hills as I prefer to call

them or more properly Am Monadh Ruadh, I had become fascinated

and mildly obsessed with the forests, hills, gullies, stories and myths

which constitute a very special landscape.

¶ I started to write down what had happened to me in the Cairngorms as

soon as I could after the dramatic culmination of events. What became

obvious as I wrote was that the sequence of events seemed a little

disjointed. To this day I am uncertain as to what really happened to me.

Anyway, I believe I have left nothing out.

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illustration 1

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I

It was evening at the Pools of Dee, not quite dark and the snow

reflected a meagre light that fell from a cold, clear sky. Something

was standing at the edge of the first pool just over the southern side

of the Pass of Lairig Ghru and I naturally took it to be a red deer. I had

walked out from Drochaid na Cuing’leum intending to camp at the Pools

that night. Why it did not hear me approach I do not know. I had just

passed over the ridge at the summit of Lairig Ghru and was within sight

of the first, small, pool which stands higher than the others and it was

from this pool the deer appeared to be drinking. I crouched and slipped

off my rucksack quietly. The shape moved and to my utter horror and

surprise stood upright, listening and sniffing the air. It was covered in

deer skin and I could hear its breath and see the tiny movements of its

head as it scented for me. It bent to drink once more and I realised then

that I was down wind of it, so I approached cautiously and quietly. When

I was perhaps three or four metres away it started and ran diagonally up

the slopes of Beinn Mac Duibh splashing as it left the pool and moving

with such agility that I thought my eyes were truly deceiving me and it was

indeed a deer.

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¶ I walked over to the place from where the creature was drinking and

it at once became evident that there was still something beside pool.

When I looked, my heart pounded into my mouth because the objects

appeared to be primitive deer-skin boots or moccasins. They were sewn

in the foot part with thin gut or strips of leather but the upper part was

cut to wrap around the calf of the legs and tie. The fur was on the inside.

I collapsed into the bank of snow on the south side of the pool because

the most terrible, perplexing and horrific fact about this strange event was

that as the creature started, it put out a hand, a palm, a human hand to

me and I swear, although I did not believe it a few minutes later, that it

uttered the word “No”.

¶ The evening events did not fit easily into my plans for the week. I

pitched the tent and fired up the stove to make hot chocolate. While the

water was heating I looked again at the creature’s footwear. They were

uncomplicated but robustly made kamiks or high moccasins like the

Apache wear, broad over the toe with an overlapping flap that extended

from the instep up the calf, making them knee high. I placed them next

to my feet and legs so as to judge the size of the creatures feet and its

stature. They were a little smaller than my size eleven mountaineering

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boots and broader. On my legs the top of the creatures boot would be a

few centimetres short of my knee. Underneath the flap were ties made

from thin strips of hide with the fur still attached. At last I put them aside

and cooked some pasta and vegetables. I followed this with more hot

chocolate accompanied by biscuits and then wriggled into my sleeping

bag to read. At about 2040hrs I went outside to urinate and on returning

took off my outer clothes and settled down to sleep in my base-layer. It

was a clear cold night. A light breeze whispered northward in the Lairig

Ghru and my tent glistened with frost inside and out.

¶ In the early hours of the following morning, the light southerly breeze

swung north and it started to snow. The wind smashed into the tent and

snow blew in to the porch under the door. It quickly filled my boots, the

creatures footwear and completely covered the stove and cooking gear.

As I had done on other, sleepless, memorable, stormy nights, I decided

to dress, go out and check the pitch of the tent, guy-lines and tension

of the flysheet. I had half an idea to shovel snow into a defensive wall

against the northerly blizzard. After dressing, putting on my head-torch

and emptying the snow from my boots, I unzipped the tent door and

struggled out into the chaos of the storm. The head-torch beam scanned

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illustration 2

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around and suddenly caught the creature in its beam. He turned quickly

and disappeared to the south again. I ran wildly in the direction he had

gone but the powder snow was soft and I fell on my face.

¶ Struggling to my feet, I realised why he had returned. It was not that

he was curious. There are plenty of mountaineers in the Cairngorms.

No. Before me in the beam of my head-torch, with the northerly storm

nudging me, urging me to run before it, the snowflakes rushing obliquely

forward, in that shaft of white turbulence were his footprints, his bare

footprints. The poor creatures feet were unprotected and I had stolen

his footwear. He was trying to retrieve his deer skin boots. I waded back

to the tent through deepening snow maddened with ideas. I would follow

him. There were no footprints round the tent just some disturbed snow

on the bank to the northwest. I grabbed energy bars, map compass and

the creatures footwear. I could drink from the burn. Before long his

footprints would be covered so, zipping up the tent I hurried south down

the Lairig Ghru, stumbling and tripping. At least the wind was with me

but it would mean he could scent or hear me following. I stopped. He

would be well ahead of me now. By the time I arrived at the confluence

of the Alt a’Garbh Choire and the Dee at the vast opening of An Garbh

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Choire, I would not be able to tell where he had gone.

¶ However my heart seemed to pound suddenly and I determined to

keep going. It was 0109hrs. My Petzl head-torch would die after about two

hours on its halogen bulb but I would not be able to make out the rocky

broken, snow covered terrain with the standard but more economical

bulb. Hours of slipping, ankle twisting, tripping, falling, sinking into snow

filled hollows, ensued. I had lost his trail completely but blundered on.

At last, with great reassuring relief I came to the confluence of the two

great burns and decided to give up my search and make for the refuge in

An Garbh Choire. It was now 0240hrs and the combination of the snow

storm, the dark and the difficulties of making headway on the uneven,

boulder strewn ground were beginning to tire me. Another kilometre

would bring me to the refuge where I planned to rest and sleep if I could

before setting off back to my tent at the upper most Pool of Dee. Now,

I turned right, keeping to the northern bank of the Alt a’ Garbh Choire.

The beam of my head-torch, comforting, reassuring, lit up the burn and

the going was easier but I feared and knew that the head-torch batteries

would soon fail.

¶ At 0304hrs I had paused and my headtorch began its inevitable demise.

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I stumbled on now and eventually the friendly beam of light left me to

the mercy of the Cairngorm night. The burn could be heard but it was so

dark I could see practically nothing. I knew I must move however, and

proceeded carefully straining to make out the terrain. What happened

next remains to me a mystery. Whether I tripped, fell or passed out I

do not know but a pain like that of an electric shock combined with an

explosive spasm in my head took hold of me and I fell forward.

¶ When I awoke, my eyes would not focus. I was disoriented and all

was a bluish white. I could smell something strong, pungent, animal but

I did not know what it was. A shadow or shape, dark brownish passed

in front of my eyes and a noise reached my ears but I fell asleep again.

The same whitish haze greeted me when I came to consciousness again,

however this time my skin began to tingle and the odour I remembered

was still there. I could move and nothing seemed to hurt so I did not

think I was injured. The strong animal smell seemed to be focussing my

consciousness and moving my head a little, I became aware of fur or

skins and also that to my surprise I was naked and wrapped in the skins.

My thoughts now began to clear rapidly and I loosened a hand from

my wrapping so that I could rub my eyes, touch something or reach out

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illustration 3

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and as I did so I could see that I was covered in a fatty greasy substance

with small pieces of plant material in it. With the quickening of thoughts

and functions came realisation but before I could act something gripped

my loosened arm and thrust it back inside the skins. An enamelled cup

was put to my lips and a hand firmly supported the back of my head.

The hand holding the cup was brown and leathery with dirty nails but I

drank the sweet liquid struggling to form questions and wake fully from

whatever state of consciousness I had fallen into. I began to feel drowsy

and fell almost immediately to sleep.

¶ The sleep was not without dreams but those dreams were some of the

strangest and most vivid of all my dreams. I dreamt of a dark place, of

the sound of steel, beating and ringing rhythmically, of fear and flight,

cold and blood. There was a forest of Caledonian Pines and a glen full of

bird-song. The forest became full of men. Trees fell and were made into

rafts on the river. And yet fear and loneliness returned with ice and rock

and mist and in that mist a figure. I awoke.

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II

Daylight permeated through the two layers of my MSR Fury

tent and I knew it was late in the morning. I felt refreshed,

ready to climb to the plateaux and wander in the crisp, cold

air. And yet my dream troubled me, not least because of its lucidity. Was

I confused, dehydrated perhaps? I did not know. My memory was not

ready to serve me properly because all I could remember clearly was

pitching my tent at its present location. But, was I still encamped at the

same location. Scrambling for clothing, I dressed and stuck my feet into

frozen, unwelcoming boots. Powder snow had accumulated on the south

side of the tent and the morning was bright. The pool was dark, still and

unfrozen. I was in the same place. I fired up the stove. A breakfast of

coffee and toasted pittas with marmite would help. Slowly a mixture of

realisation and dread came over me. I had seen the creature, chased it

and fallen. Snow was blowing savagely from the north. The wind chill

factor was dangerously high. I had lost consciousness some way down the

glen, felt warm, happy, delirious but had made it back to the tent. With

a shudder I at once recognised the symptoms of hypothermia. What day

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was this? My watch confirmed my fears. I had lost two whole days. I had

been frantically searching for something and I must have gone to bed.

And yet there were gaps because I remember leaving the tent to relieve

myself in the night or was it to check the guy-lines? I did not know. And

the dreams - what strange dreams.

¶ The morning was wearing on. It was 1008hrs by my cheery Suunto

watch with its big friendly face. Time for my morning bath. I smelt. I

smelt of sweat and fear and something else, strong, animal. Near the

tent, a bank of snow would provide me with the ideal outdoor ablution

- the snow bath. The secret is to have your towel and clothes ready so

you can dry off and dress as quickly as you can afterwards. I stripped off

my top layers, laughing and breathing heavily but this feverish carefree

disrobing was curtailed as I looked at myself, my chest, arms, stomach

and the rest of me. How many horrors awoke in my head? How many

questions? How many fears and paranoias? With one hand I clawed

the top of my other arm. Whatever my body was covered in, the greasy,

fatty substance, the fragments of what seemed to be reindeer moss and

small plants, collected under my nails. I threw myself at the snow drift.

The curious thing about the snow bath is that after the initial shock,

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illustration 4

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the abrasive qualities of the snow make your skin warm so after about

five minutes I was satisfied. I had removed as much of the disgusting

substance as I could and dressed. So it was not a dream. I did encounter

a creature and it had covered me in animal fat for some bizarre and as

yet unknown reason. I shuddered. Despite this, I felt sure I would never

see it again but knew the story would be a laugh over a dram of Speyside

malt when I returned home.

¶ The route I had chosen to the summit of Beinn Mac Duibh involved

climbing the ice of the frozen March Burn. It cascaded down the

side of the Lairig Ghru from the col between Mac Duibh and Cairn

Lochan disappearing underground to permeate into the infant River

Dee. Recently the burn had been frozen making an easy free-climb to

the plateau. The climb went well, crampons and axes biting into clear

verglass ice all the way up. Two RAF Lynx helicopters passed through

Lairig Ghru south to north a hundred metres below me. In places the

burn could be seen and heard gushing and boiling underneath its icy

mantle. Here and there the ice dinner-plated and fell away. Once a part

of the ice fell inwards, rattling down the inside of the crust. A moment to

take a little more care with axe and crampon placement but on the whole

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the climb was exhilarating and uncomplicated.

¶ Spindrift scoured the plateau and the walk to the summit was pleasant

in the afternoon sun. At the top some other climbers talked excitedly

- perfect conditions. We exchanged stories but I kept quiet about my

recent episode. They told me about the time they were crossing Brae

Rhiabach and the American jets crashed near to our position on Beinn

Mac Duibh.

“It was Monday 26th March 2001, one recounted thoughtfully. We were

heading home because the weather was getting worse. We were going

down via Srõn na Lairige and we just saw smoke coming from near the

summit. This was about four-ish. There was no noise either. You’d

have thought we would have heard a crash or something but nothing.

It must have been the weather. When we got back to the hotel it was all

over the news that the jets were overdue and had probably crashed in

the Cairngorms. USAF F15Cs they were; from Lakenheath in Suffolk.

Expensive bits of kit. Matt,” he pointed to his mate, “Matt phoned the

Mountain Rescue to report the position of the smoke we had seen. Hope

it did some good. The weather was so bad they couldn’t search properly

- avalanche risk 5 all that week. They found one pilot quite quickly but

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the other one wasn’t found until the Thursday - still in his ejector seat. He

could have been alive and died from hypothermia. Poor bastard.”

¶ The lads gave me a sip of their whiskey. It was 1500hrs. A mist began

to creep its way up the mountain side from the direction of Alt Clach nan

Tailear and we looked at our maps and took bearings in preparation for

a fog bound descent. I intended to drop down missing the craggy western

slopes to Alt Choire Mhor and to the Pools of Dee from there. By 1530

the clag was down and the gentle wind had dropped. All was quiet and

becoming gloomier by the second. Suddenly, one of the other climbers

shouted.

“Look! Look there!”

To our astonishment the Big Grey Man of Beinn Mac Duibh had

appeared and we rejoiced and whooped shaking hands at our good

fortune and to mark the occasion of seeing this rarest of mountain

apparitions.

¶ I do not know why I ran. When I am on my own in the mountains, I

listen to my head, the seemingly random neural firings of noise, songs,

words, emotions but that afternoon on Mac Duibh I simply ran as if

overtaken by the primal urge to flight. The other climbers shouted

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“Hey!” and “Slow down,” but I ran in my crampons down the slope

towards the apparition. I did not run very far. The mist was thick and

opaque. After only twenty metres or so, I stopped running, breath

gasping, confused and the creature stepped out of the mist towards me. I

stopped breathing. He spoke:

“Wait.”

A curiously pitched, delicate sound.

“Wait.” again but this time an open hand stretched out towards me. I

breathed once.

“Who are you?” I screamed at him and lunged angrily forwards but he

evaded me and disappeared into the clag.

“Who are you?” Then all was silent again except my breathing.

The voices of the other climbers seemed quite close and through the

pounding in my ears and the noise of confusion in my head I heard, “Are

you alright mate?”

I said nothing, did nothing.

“Hello?” the voice said. I could see no one.

“Hello-o!”

“I’m okay,” I shouted in reply.

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“I’m heading down now.”

And then “I’m camped at the Pools.”

But I cannot remember saying this. In my confused state I probably did

but I had the chilling feeling that the creature was mimicking me. Late

afternoon was turning into evening and soon the Cairngorm night would

engulf me again. This time I was a long way from my tent. The weather

had turned and the fog softened to a suffocating opaque grey. Without

warning I was thrown to the ground and a hand was clamped over my

mouth. I was alone with the creature on the inhospitable slopes of Beinn

Mac Duibh.

¶ The creature kept his left hand clamped over my mouth and his knee

pushed into my chest. I tried in vain to struggle against this iron constraint

but the creature motioned again for me to remain silent. He was straining

to see into the fog. I could hear him sniffing, scenting and holding his

breath to listen. Whether the pressure on my chest, exhaustion or some

other environmental factor was affecting me I do not know but I started

to see pictures in my head, visions, hallucinations call them what you will

but I am compelled to recount what I saw.

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III

I saw ice. I saw a striped crevassed glacier carving a valley and feeding a

lake. I saw the distinctive shape of the ice field in An Garbh Choire.

Next, all was dark save for flickering, shadowy faces, the creature’s,

those of men and the sounds of metal on stone. Mining. Then I saw the

high Cairngorms in summer, patches of snow, mountain hare, their coats

turning grey brown from white, ptarmigan, a burn, eagles and ravens

wheeling high up. The burn dropped down to a low lying land of lochans

and marshes edged by tall trees of a type I recognised immediately -

Caledonian Pine. The forest was filled with bird song. It was in a great

wide glen and another creature the same lived in the glen. The over

whelming joy I felt as I saw pictures of an unspoilt and pristine Scottish

landscape ceased suddenly as a sorrow filled the spaces where joy had

drained away. The creature was staring into my face, his dark brown eyes

searching mine, a concerned frown across his brow.

“Who are you?” I choked.

¶ He stood up and beckoned me to follow, leading me down towards

the Alt Clach nan Taileaur now in flood as the thaw released the snows

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illustration 6Map

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of Mac Duibh. Mist swirled and thinned as we descended. He moved

quickly and confidently over snow, ice, rocks and heather making it

difficult for me to keep up. I looked at his feet clad in those deer-skin

boots with wonder and awe. He headed up hill again following the burn

and stopped on the threshold of the mist.

¶ I had stopped perhaps three metres from him. He turned towards me

and I approached. Something happened then, something incredible but

at the same time so common place that I now wonder how I could not

have considered it sooner. Firstly, it occurred to me that the creature

had little in the way of facial hair. Surely, if he was a wild man of some

ancient race or a modern man in hiding, ‘gone feral’ so to speak he

probably would not be bothered with shaving. Was I wrong? Second,

I gasped. Why was I surprised? I had not even contemplated any

other possibilities. The creature approached me and the evidence was

unequivocal; he, the wild man, the Grey Man of Beinn Mac Duibh was

female. Perhaps it was her gait. Perhaps there was something inherently

female about her movements. There was her voice. Its curious pitch,

so unmasculine. Her clothing, the skins which at a distance seemed so

crude and cumbersome, at close range were shaped to a female form.

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Now that she stood before me I was in no doubt. The head covering of

her garment was thrown back. Her hair was a mass of ringlets and curls, a

mixture of white and dark brown, shoulder length. She seemed old, her

face lined and worried but her tan skin was stretched taughtly over her

cheek bones as if she was in her youth. She stood at my height but for a

centimetre or two. Her nose was broad with wide nostrils. I remember

thinking she was like a Australian Aboriginal but somehow adapted to

the northern climate. She looked at my face and into my eyes and raised

her hand.

I jumped back and this time whispered “Who are you?”

With the first two fingers of her left hand she touched the centre of my

forehead. I began to feel light headed and again images formed before

my eyes. Then I saw her removing her hand from my face and frowning,

her dark eyes fixed on mine. She replaced her hand.

¶ I feel aching, painful, heart wrenching sorrow. I see the creature

younger, or, perhaps, another creature asleep or, even dead. Despite this

feeling of dread and sadness that forces tears from my eyes, I notice that

we appear to be in the wide glen, breathtaking, beautiful and filled with

bird song. This gives way to the increasing sounds of men, horses, sawing

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and dragging. The river is full of felled birch and pine trunks. Even up

to the high passes men fell trees. I recognise Lairig Ghru and at Loch

Eannich, men work sluice gates to control the burns. I see desolation.

Men bring their cattle and sheep to graze and the forest is prevented

from regrowing. On the slopes of the mountains, grow dwarf birch and

willows, net leaved, mountain and downy.

¶Autumn in the forests brings fungi. I see the Blue Tooth and Pine

Tooth.

With the flooding of the burns and flushes I am shown Bryophyte

coated rocks - damp and spongy. At the Pools of Dee I recognise the

rare Alpine Thyme Moss. I remember thinking I have never seen the

Pools in summer.

¶ With the melting of the snows I see Purple Saxifrage, each flower’s five

crumpled petals showing off its stand of stamen, Blue Heath braving the

sugary snow lingering in the corries until June and the very rare, deep

lilac blue, Alpine Blue-Sow-Thistle without sharp spines thriving where

it cannot be grazed. Snow bunting search the drifts for a meagre snack.

She seems to hate the deer but relies on it to survive. She is linked to it

somehow.

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¶ I see a mire or bog in a forest clearing. She is showing me her

environment, deliberately taking me round her world. In the clearing

there is open water but on the fringes grow the beautiful Bog Asphodel,

yellowy green like a webbed hand with Horse Tails, Worts Rushes, a

parade, a procession of rare and incredible plants. Some I had seen before

but others were not known to me and I had little idea of where they grew

or whether they were still to be found in the Cairngorm regions. In the

trees I am shown the crested tit, a crossbill extracting seeds from a larch

cone and on the lochan, golden eye, a type of crested grebe and water

vole patrolling the banks. In the spring sunshine, two wild cat kittens

play, explore and climb all over their mother but I remember seeing no

pine martens in this strange tour of the places she knew and loved. Only

once did I see another similar creature. It was shown to me running up a

slope through heather and late snow, mountain hare scattering as it ran.

I thought I heard laughing.

¶ I see ice, ice sheets and in what I take to be Lairig Ghru in its infancy,

freshly gouged, a great melt-water pool blocked by more ice at one end

and high ground at the other. I see the corries full of ice and the burns

rushing from them.

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¶ It is Autumn. I seem to be walking in a forest of birch with their yellow

leaves but then it is winter and the trunks glow against the snow. Juniper

and Rowan reach high up onto the mountain slopes and I am being

drawn quickly up out of the forest into a scrub of willows which gives way

to the high Cairngorms. Then down the slopes. I can feel my legs shaking

and weakening under me but at last I am stationary before the scattered

pines, mires and bogs of the Caledonian forest.

¶ Some parts of the vision I could put into historical context, the

seventeenth century woodmen or the post Great War de-forestation and

regeneration efforts. Other parts were less easy to make sense of. They

could have been post-glacial or nearer to our own time. There seemed

to be no evidence of Clansmen or early farmers in her evocation of her

habitat in my head. But, what was I saying? What was I thinking? Did

something, somewhere in this madness, this weird waking dream mean

the she was at least as old as the Loch Lomond Re-advance - the brief

respite in the thawing of the last ice age which formed its namesake?

What rubbish! But I cannot account for much of this odyssey in the

Monadh Ruadh which started so ordinarily.

¶ Again the snow field in Garbh Choire Mhor appears before me. It

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pulses, swells and decreases but each time it shrinks, it is smaller. This

image seemed of great importance to the creature and appeared to go

on for some time. I hear her voice. It says “Innis Geal” - the White

Meadow.

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ptarmigan

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IV

She sank to her knees and fell sideways. My senses were not fully

alert and I watched numbly as she seemed to resign herself to

exhaustion or something more serious I knew not what. Rousing

myself and straining to banish the fog of ideas and cascade of thoughts in

my head I knelt beside her. Her eyes were open but she did not look at

me. She breathed steadily. I noticed that round her neck, strung crudely

but securely with a twisted cord of leather was a large piece of rock

crystal. At once I knew it was the smoky quartz that is known simply as

‘Cairngorm’ since it was here that the finest specimens were first found.

She saw me looking at the stone and grasped my arm. I helped her stand.

She said, “Follow.”

¶ Her strength seemed to return and she set off downhill following the

Alt Clach nan Taileur - the burn of the Tailor’s Stone - at a pace I found

hard to match. I remember being astonished again at the ease with which

she moved over the ground, like a deer, I thought. Where the slope

started to fall more steeply we moved out of the gully and we followed

a strip of ground between Alt Clach nan Taileur and another unnamed

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burn. I could see the Dee in the Glen and ... now I hesitate in my account

because for some time I have been unable to refer to her as ‘the creature’

yet I do not know how or what to call her ... however, she suddenly

turned left and leapt the burn. I followed falling on the far bank.

¶ We had reached the Lairig Ghru path and she paused briefly, crouching,

cautious, looking north and south. I stopped perhaps ten metres from

her and crouched likewise. She tilted her head back a little and I saw her

scent the air as I had before. She looked back at me. Satisfied that no

one was near enough to see her she crossed the path and headed towards

the river. At a wide shallower section she waded straight across without

hesitating and I clumsily, noisily followed. We turned a little right and

made our way up the western side of Lairig Ghru, then left again to head

more north west, contouring round the base of Sgor an Lochain Uaine.

She was leading me into An Garbh Choire.

¶ I was tired, near exhausted. I could no longer keep up with her and

I gasped “Wait,” and thought she would carry on, leaving me and my

pathetic plea behind but she stopped and retraced her steps to me. She

stood in front of me and grabbed my jaw with one hand looking at my face

and into my eyes. The fog had lifted and it was clear but not cold. The

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spring thaw had begun. A thin moon had risen and in its dim light I could

see her eyes. She made me crouch and she did the same a metre or so to

my left, allowing me to rest. I pressed a button on my watch. It read 2117.

A few minutes later we were moving again at a steady jogging run. As

we were contouring round I tried to keep pace but inevitably I dropped

behind some distance. We crossed three small burns and begun to turn

west into the great corrie. Soon we would pass the mountain refuge.

¶ As soon as we were out of sight of the refuge, she stopped and waited

for me to catch up. Breathlessly I stood beside her but she turned towards

me removing the hood of her garment. She looked into my eyes and

slowly put one hand in the centre of my chest and with the other pointed

back in the direction of the An Garbh Choire refuge. Her meaning was

plain but I shook my head and tried to speak. She put a hand over my

mouth and spoke now and yet I do not remember hearing her voice

or seeing her mouth the words. I only heard her strange, broken voice,

melodic and haunting.

“You cannot follow now. Go to the refuge.”

“I can keep up,” I said meaninglessly.

“No. I must go alone. I cannot stay longer.”

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“What! Stay? What do you mean?”

“Go to the refuge. You are tired. Where I go you cannot follow.”

And she ran on into the corrie. She was right. I felt weak and dizzy so I

made my way back to the refuge, my head burning with the pain of thirst,

hunger, exhaustion and a hundred questions.

¶ The pile of stones which constituted the mountain shelter was deserted.

If I had had food with me I would not have had the energy to eat it. I left

my rucksack and drank from the burn. The sickle moon was low over

Macdui. At the western end of the corrie the boundary of the deep blue

night sky and the silver grey and black shadowed mountains reminded

me how much I loved this land. And with only that feeling to sustain me

I curled up in the corner of the refuge and slept. But my dream woke me.

I seemed to be outside again by the burn. This time there was no moon.

Macdui was silver and above were the shimmering spears of the Aurora

red and green, first slow then whipping and thrashing. To my left were

the dark recesses of the great corrie and with a surge of emotion, heat in

my head and howling rising to whistling in my ears, there, glowing in the

light of the Aurora, the snowfield, the great snowfield of Garbh Choire

Mhor, until recently a place of permanent ice, the place she called ‘Innis

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Geal’. I woke, the howling still in my head.

¶ Outside it was early morning, pale blue sky, cumulus, mild. I drank from

the flooding burn, relieved myself and started towards the snowfield. My

rucksack was left in the shelter. I realised I still had my crampons on and

I picked up one of my ice axes from the place on the bank of the burn

where I had left it the night before. I had no clear purpose, I doubted

my sanity and I had not eaten for twenty four hours. Was this all in my

head or some extraordinary happening, some omen, portent or just plain

madness? There was little snow left in the main part of the corrie but the

peaks were pale and blue in the weak morning light, still clinging to their

icy shrouds. Leaving the refuge I made my way along the southern bank

of Alt a Garbh Choire. Unable to move quickly, feeling light headed

and weak I kept to a steady pace, trying not exert myself in case I passed

out. Strangely I did not feel hungry or cold. My route was taking me

gently uphill but to what end I knew not. I knew only that I must make

for the snowfield. Soon I crossed the tributary which rushes down from

the slopes of Sgor an Lochaine Uaine. Here I stopped to drink. I knew

I must be dehydrated. My head swam as I stood to move off again.

Nothing mattered apart from reaching the snowfield. The ground was

40

illustration 10

41

becoming steeper and I moved away from the burn to the south so as to

be out of the gully it now ran in.

¶ I climbed to Garbh Choire Mhor and came within sight of Pinnacles

Buttress. To my right I could look across to Garbh Choire Dhaid and

the top of Braigh Rhiabach just catching the morning sun. It was going

to be another warm day and the brindled hills would release more

of their winter cloak. The going was slower over the floor of the high

corrie. There was some snow here and there, surviving in the hollows,

striping the landscape, an effect I knew so well. I stopped and gazed at

the snowfield. I was breathless and dizzy. The ground steepened quite

abruptly here and slowly the White Meadow grew nearer. At my feet the

nature of the snow had changed. The old, sugary, partially thawed snow

had given way to a compacted, hard, icy, grimy, pock-marked variety,

covered in seeds, fragments of heather and heavily ridged. I climbed

higher into the snowfield, into Innis Geal. My crampons bit and the spike

of my ice axe pierced the surface. Even though I moved across the ice

carefully and with practiced movements, I felt barely conscious of my

surroundings. I could hear nothing except the rhythmic metal crunching

of crampons and axe.

42

¶ Then I saw her. She was about twenty metres away up the slope, a little

to my left. To my horror she was lying on the ice, on her side. She did not

seem to be moving. The snowfield grew increasingly steeper with height,

so I moved as quickly as I could without tempting a fall. When I knelt

beside her and rolled her onto her back she opened her eyes.

“I thought you were dead,” my voice a hoarse whisper.

“Who are you?” The question had become an obsession.

“Who are you?” More desperate this time. She did not answer.

¶ The noise in my head grew and an icy wind swept Innis Geal. I stared

at her. Life was ebbing away from her. I would never know. I would

never understand. The noise increased. With a last laboured movement

she gripped my hand in both hers. Her eyes seemed to implore and

say “Remember.” As when she had touched me before, I felt dizzy and

saw a vision. These last images were of ice, ancient, blue and green but

before my eyes it melted and collapsed, crumbling and crashing down.

Something gripped my shoulders and I was torn away from her. The

noise and wind swirled, all was chaos. I was in the air, then inside. A door

slid side ways shutting out the wind. A man was leaning over me. I saw

his insignia, a wing, stripes on his shoulder... I remember nothing more.

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illustration 11

44

V

I watched, weak and helpless, as they dragged her down the slope,

harnessed and winched her up to the hovering Sea King helicopter.

When the Mountain Rescue team on the ground waved off the

helicopter and began to make their way out of the corrie it felt perfectly

natural to be left alone on the ice field. But now, all was silent again

and the sun was rising over Beinn Mac Duibh. I opened my hand and

looked at the Cairngorm stone, its twisted leather cord passing round

and under it. I began to put it round my neck but stopped, changing my

mind and placing it carefully inside my orange Paramo anorak. Hunger

and exhaustion seemed to have left me so I stood up and walked back,

diagonally across Innis Geal, to the refuge, my rucksack, then on to the

Pools of Dee and home.

s

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illustratration 12

46

s

Bibliography

Gordon, Seton, (1925) The Cairngorm Hills of Scotland, Cassell and Company Ltd., London

Harveys (2000) Cairngorm, 1:25,000. Doune, Perthshire: Harvey Map Services Ltd., (Superwalker series).

MacLennan, Malcolm, (1979) Gaelic Dictionary: A pronouncing and etymological dictionary of the Gaelic language, originally published by John Grant in 1925,this edition: Acair Ltd., Stornaway, & Mercat Press, Edinburgh, .

Ordnance Survey (1997) The Cairngorms: Aviemore and Glen Avon, no.3, 1:25,000. Southampton: Ordnance Survey (Outdoor Leisure series).

Shaw, Philip, & Thompson, Des, Eds. (2006) The Nature of The Cairngorm: Diversity in a changing environment, The Stationary Office Ltd., Edinburgh

Tod, Andrew, ed., (1992) Memoirs of a Highland Lady: Elizabeth Grant of Rothiemurchus, Revised Complete edition originally published by John Murray in 1898, this edition: Cannongate, Edinburgh

Watson, Adam, (1928) The Cairngorms: Scottish Mountaineering Club Districy Guide,

The Scottish Mountaineering Trust.

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ilustration 13

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Designed, written, illustrated and printed

by Stuart Harvey. Copyright June 2012.

www.lycanthropedesign.co.uk

stuart_harvey_art@btinternet.com

LycanthropeDesign and Education by Stuart Harvey