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.
But it was the trees that I would have shown them. Passing Whitewell croft – where Shepherd so often stayed – we walked through a rich forest of mature Scots pine, birch, juniper and blaeberry that stretches for miles. This part has been here for a lot longer than me, and its recovery is an older story, so what really struck me was the landscape higher up, which is changing before my eyes.
As the trail curves south to face the long cleft of Glen Einich, the forest rapidly thins and gives way to banks of spiky gorse with just a few old pines, ever more isolated and exposed to the harsh weather from the Cairngorms above. Very soon, there is nothing. Just a great expanse of heath, marked by muirburn and strips of scree, a track and streams. The central stream is the Am Benaidh, once dammed at its exit from Loch Einich to create a surge downstream for logging on the Spey.
But pause here between forest and moorland, and you will see a quiet revolution rising from the earth. Here and there, pine saplings are breaking through. Some are little more than twigs, others rearing up to the knee, waist, head height and beyond. Now land management and a reduction in deer numbers are giving the forest breathing space to regenerate. The more you look, the more you see. A peacetime army is on the march; if only Shepherd and Darling could feast their eyes.
• Under the Changing Skies: The Best of the Guardian’s Country Diary, 2018-2024 is published by Guardian Faber; order at guardianbookshop.com and get a 15% discount
