Scotland May 2026

We arrived in the foothills of the Cairngorm mountains with the newly emerged leaves of the copper beeches in their translucent glory and the birches in their lovely fresh green. There were snow patches on the hills and golden daffodils welcomed us as we passed the mysteriously named Blacklunans hamlet and reached our Norwegian log cabin, ideally built to withstand the hard winters and massive snowfalls.

 In the first week we recovered from the long drive with magic walks down by the river, its banks starred with primroses and abundant birdsong - cuckoos in every direction - and at least six swallows hurtling gloriously round the house. 

Scattered in the grass 

down steeply to the river, 

they glow with the elemental fire ,

sweet drops of gold amidst the cold 

above the gently flowing river, 

lined now with banked white stones,

lit by the fast flying dipper, 

his white belly dashing across the sky, 

and livened by the sandpipers whistling call.

Alas no curlew haunts the summer 

with his long bubbling cry.

But still they glow 

among the deep green grass,

 under Birch and Alder, 

glowing in the shade .

Pools of light to warm the heart, 

reminding  us 

that we are not alone 

in this dark World.

After a day or so I struggled up the hill which is gently rewilding, Not having been grazed for several years, there is now dense willow scrub full of small birds and elegant alder and birch trees. It is very steep,  boggy and  treacherous in the heather with hidden deep holes in the peat. I struggled to reach my favorite place, the site of a long vanished sheiling,  where families would come up with their sheep and cattle for a few months of summer grazing. It is still quite visible as a level patch between the rocks with no heather and a square water hole cut through the peat, all covered now with blae (wild blueberries) and cranberry bushes.  Everywhere there were piles of hare droppings in neat heaps and the  blae bushes were covered with delicate bell like flowers, while the lichen on the rocks were throwing up their minute conical towers with delicate bright red flowers in profusion. After a very wet winter the mosses were in incredibly good form, throwing up great banks of deep green shoots.

Up the hill the world's alive,

mid-May and the willows are still bare,

but on a great stone, a thriving grove, 

of lichen towers opening up grey mouths 

while others scatter flowers, vermilion 

on the stone 

rising above the heaving blae, 

and piles of fumet

dropped in neat heaps 

under every gleaming blaebush. 

Overhead the new green larch 

trembles in the wind 

while far below the giants graveyard, 

ancient spruce and pine 

felled in a savage gale, 

water oozes from the ground, 

feeding a forest of eagerly striving 

mosses, reaching skyward 

like marching  green-clad Pikemen. 

All this teeming life on a high cold hill, 

despite our feeble attempts to control it, 

bursting out as it did a billion of years ago, 

a life beyond our own despair and struggle, 

helping us to reach out beyond this world ,

to sense the presence of God 

in all things 

to reach out beyond the beautiful, 

to look into the heart of life, 

to see the sublime 

living on 

despite us.

After a week of quiet we set off, going further north to visit a farm in Aberdeenshire and  old friends north of Inverness. The road north from Glenshee is very dramatic, up past the ski center through mountain sides covered now in dormant heather,  home to huge herds of red deer - I once came over a ridge to see a thousand animals in a valley below me. Then down to Braemar and the lovely valley of the River  Dee, so special as it has retained much of its ancient Caledonian forest of Scotch pine, huge old trees, so beautiful compared to the horrible bleakness of commercial forestry. 

Descending along the tumbling river rising from the highest part of the Cairngorms, the first notable sight is the huge house  of a grandee always known simply as Invercauld. His rather grim house makes Downton Abbey look suburban.  We turn off at Crathie, opposite Balmoral Casrle, Royalty's favorite hideaway. Climbing up, the country gets bleaker again, with endless heather burnt in patches for grouse shooting, right up to the peaks. Then  down through wonderful spring foliage into the next river  valley, that of the River Don, where we had a rather Scottish picnic hiding from the drizzling rain and cold, looking at an enormous 60 foot high ‘ Mott’, the site  of an ancient pictish fort and  a War Memorial to the 42 men who died in the world wars. It is the site of the largest Scottish highland gathering where local men parade dressed in kilts and bearskins carrying medieval pikes every July.

Then down to Aberdeenshire proper, rich in deep fertile soil, famous black cattle and the tallest trees in Europe. Fortunately it was a sunny day wonderfully reflected in the  new green and copper leaves. .. and so to the farm where  all the buildings were made of huge rough cut granite blocks and  surrounded by enormous trees, birdsong and flowers.

After a warm family reunion in front of a huge Aga stove,  surrounded by large dogs and with plenty of strong white wine,  we slept soundly in the grand master bedroom, our host sadly not able to get upstairs anymore. The next morning, fortified by a hearty oatmeal and oat-bread breakfast with strong coffee we walked around the farm under towering trees and immensely high  granite walls.

Then on further north to the Black Isle, so-called for its rich black soil, the haunt of tens of thousands of wild geese at certain times of year, to a wonderfully eccentric bed and breakfast which had once been  a Lacanian commune  (Jacques Lacan, the  French psychoanalyst has always fascinated me. He is famous for sometimes sending patients away unheard, telling them to go and do some living - but still collecting his fee of course!) The B&B still keeps its eccentric atmosphere.  After a hefty Scottish breakfast complete with porridge and haggis we went to see our friends, both distinguished scholars, still in wonderful form in their 90s but now sadly in care homes. 

Setting off back to the log cabin we drove first to the ancient town of Cromarty, seemingly frozen in time since the 18th century. It is very picturesque, but slightly sinister - very remote, it feels like a hideout for unsavoury characters. Its most famous son is the geologist Hughie Miller; raised in poverty, his father lost at sea, he was apprenticed as a stone mason aged ten. The cliffs there are of very ancient red sandstone from which he collected important fossils, 400 million years old, of fishes which were of great interest to Darwin. He was also a very successful journalist in Edinburgh and a strictly fundamentalist Christian. His attempts to reconcile his fossils with the story of Noah's Ark are a marvel of eloquence and mind splitting argument. Perhaps fortunately, he died before the theory of evolution was published. His memorial, proudly elected by the townspeople, stands, a towering column above the village. Sadly his eloquence led to a great schism in the Church of Scotland and the creation of the fiercely Calvinistic Wee Free church, still the dominant church in the far north.  

Driving back along the Moray firth, we stopped to look at the ruins of the medieval cathedral at Fortrose, once the most important church building in the top of third of Scotland. Sadly most of it was demolished in 1560 after the Reformation. In England we fortunately kept our cathedrals, but Scotland has always been known for fierce disagreements. 

Back in the log cabin, reading, writing and listening to music is blissful - last night we heard Puccini's Turandot from the Met in New York.  I'm reading Bonhoeffer's Letters from Prison, one of the most moving documents I've ever read. This priest, teacher and man of letters was imprisoned in solitary confinement for two years and finally hanged shortly before the end of the war. He writes with such blessed calm and spiritual dignity. He was officially not allowed to write or publish but he so won over the prison warders that they happily smuggled his letters out of prison and brought him uncensored letters from outside. Never knowing, but always suspecting, his inevitable fate, he writes with such calm.

He has great  sympathy for fellow prisoners most of whom were young soldiers straight from the front, having committed some misdemeanor. He was allowed half an hour a day exercise with one of these,  a cleric, a former member of the the Nazi aligned 'German Church'; this former propagandist for the regime has completely fallen apart now he himself is imprisoned and could be transferred to a concentration camp. At first   Bonhoeffer distanced himself from this poor creature, but soon relented and tried to help him in his misery. 

 One Christmas  he writes to his friend, a pastor, now an army chaplain on the front line, writing most profoundly about separation and loss, on dealing with happy memories now gone forever.  At my age (85 now) I have many joyous and painful memories which flood in unexpectedly - both can be painful. Three times my life was turned upside down, friends, lovers, wives, career all lost - the most painfully so when it was my own fault. His advice about how to treasure the good memories but at the same time distance yourself from them with God's help, reaching them through God, I find most helpful. 

I find I cannot read fiction at the moment. I want first hand sources. I recently read the memoirs and letters of a Dutch Jewish woman who voluntarily went to the gas chambers with her parents - truly incredible sacrifice and bravery. I'm sickened by the fact that there are Holocaust-denying 'influencers' in the USA who have a million followers.

I feel sometimes like Jeremiah who was doomed to prophesy disaster and for no one to listen to him. I've written poems about climate change but I find no one wants to hear about it. One of the most disturbing aspect of our times is the widespread distrust of science and scientists - exhibited spectacularly by the anti-vaxxers and disbelievers in climate change. I was in love with Science and philosophy in my youth and was honored to study under and indeed work with some very distinguished Scientists  and this distrust of Science seems like a blasphemy.

Coming up to the wilds of the Cairngorm mountains highlights the horrors of pollution down South, mostly I suspect due to modern agriculture. Here we have cuckoos and swallows in abundance, while down south they are rare or getting rarer. It must be the clean air and water, and absence of insecticides. There are no crops up  here, just grazing and moorland.