Free Season in Strathglass by John; Fowler Page A

that I've abdicated from the climb, I can wander over to the burnwith a clear conscience and watch how it tumbles from one still pool to the next, finding more to attract me in its secret hollows than in the broad brushstrokes of the glowering hills. Ambling downwards beside the burn, I stop to inspect the solitary tree we passed on the ascent when we were pushing on with no time to glance aside. Trees always attract me – I wrote a book about them once. Twin trunks rise from the root then split to form four slender stems. Smooth pale bark and an early flush of leaves opening penny-bright tell me it's an aspen – not exactly a rarity in these parts but not as common as other species native to the Highlands – birch, pine and alder, to name three. Aspen is the shaking tree, the trembling one, Populus tremula to give it its official name, because of the way its foliage shivers and shimmers in a breeze.
    I love aspens. I like their disc leaves peppered on thread-like stalks, uncurling in spring, as now, like little flames on bare branches, and, in the autumn, making a golden glory. This tree is reclusive, a lone specimen in a seemingly treeless desert, hidden for half its height in a gully, rooted at the water's edge where the burn runs over lichen-spotted rock. The bank is steep, almost vertical, and I view it from above.
    â€˜Aspen seldom forms a tall tree; it is most often seen as a thicket of sucker shoots in some marshy spot.’ I quote the forest writer Herbert Edlin, one who knows. Seldom tall? In this case, well, tallish. On the elevated bank high above its roots I now discover a host of suckers unnoticed before. At my boot, on the narrow track itself, springs one little twig carrying a single infant leaf tinged dark green shading to bronze and red and then I find another and another and yet more. They spread over a surprisingly wide radius, little torches on spindly stems, bristling through the vegetation, none more than a foot high. The root system must extend cup-like from the gully bottom to the top of the bank. A small shoot, bearing twin-fretted leaves, pokes up defiantly from a knobble of root exposed on the narrow track and polished by many passing feet. Elsewhere, it might hope to make a tree. But this dwarf growth expends its energy in vain. Each shoot shows the telltale signs of having been bitten off by deer. They'll never flourish.
    At length a diminutive figure crests the skyline – Alastair returning. He says the last section to the summit was a little steep and there was a flurry of snow as he stopped to eat a sandwich at the top. At my level, there was only rain. One more Munro has fallen to him – only nine more to go. By summer, he expects to tick off his last peak. There'll be a small celebration at the top for a few family and friends, hopefully on a more elegant hill than this. Back at the dam wall, we part and ahead of me the yellow coupé streaks down the glen in serpentine flight.

28
    Caravan park, Sunday morning, 8 a.m. Catherine is here for the weekend in search of dragon- and damselflies – her latest thing. Glen Affric is a hotspot on the dragonfly map.
    Across the road at Marydale, Sister Petra Clare rings the bell – we're up late. Crispy bacon rolls for breakfast, an indulgence. Hail cholesterol.
    So, a leisurely start. At the Coire Loch, we splodge around in the mossy, reedy margins and find a black darter and then a common hawker which C tries to photograph but it's too quick for her – a tantalising gleam of blue on diaphanous wings, never settling. Here, there, gone.
    We progress up the glen, still on the lookout. Small Loch Salach a’ Ghiubhais would be promising, she says, if only the sun would shine, which it doesn't. Still, there's a common hawker to record and one butterfly, a meadow brown. Not a lot, but she's satisfied.

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    There's snow on the hills and menacing clouds. ‘It's a thin wind still,’ says Donny, who looks after