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| Corrie Kander - pastel sketch on paper |
The dream of time-machines taking us back in time has regularly featured in science fiction stories but to step back in time is achievable in another sense by studying the landscape in the highlands. Sitting exposed to the elements in an eroded peat bog are the remnants of the ancient Caledonian forest. Bleached Scots Pine stumps and roots emerge from the black peat like ghosts from the past and ghosts they are too, some five thousand years old. A patch of pine bark clings to an old trunk as if it had been felled only a few hundred years ago, but the acid peat has pickled the wood to become an almost fossil like substance. A metre below the roots is older stuff still - fifteen thousand year old peat laid down in layers that signify the climatic changes since the last ice age. Grab a handful of peat from a buried layer and you are shaking hands with material formed thousands of years ago - squeeze it and it bleeds a captured history.
Corrie Kander is an isolated place in the southern Cairngorms at the head of Glen Callater, just south-east of Braemar. A fair sized mountain loch ripples with reflections below the grey crags necklaced with green terraces that rise in zig-zags to the plateau above. The corrie is a cauldron for the mixing of rock types and geological features, from schist to intrusions of granite and limestone. Glacial features like drumlins and moraines are found throughout the glen but two rising quartzite dykes delineate the positions of, at one time, volcanic vents on the western corrie walls.
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| Sketching today |
As I sit and sketch above the loch there is a feeling of symphony between various things around me, the tumbling screes and rushing burns, the alpine flora clinging for dear life to indifferent slippery rock and the sky banging a line against the boulder peppered buttresses. A shower floats down into the corrie and I have to use my sketch board to baffle the worst of it from the chalked up paper, but rather effectively the whole surface is polka-dotted with tiny spits of rain. The mountain landscape that I capture is not static, but trembling with erosion and growth, sound and fury. An all visible and all invisible conducted orchestration between nature and creation and in drawing it I abstract it, therefore am part of it and that is all that I can desire.
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| 5000 year old Pine root |
Red deer seem to be gathering into larger herds on the higher slopes around the corrie lip with maybe a sense of the impending rutting season in the air, that will come in a couple of months time. The dogs set up a young calf, probably only two months old, from its grassy lair and it darts directly uphill towards a grazing herd on the sky-line. The dogs, well trained, stand and watch as it bounds over the tussocks of flowering purple heather. Good coveys of young Red grouse are flying together now, instead of scattering in the wind as they did a month ago. A brace of grouse can be worth £150 to a reputable shooting estate.
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| Ancient Pine bark |
Alpine plants thrive in the corrie which is relatively sheltered and because of its many rock ledges that are out of the reach of grazing deer some rare alpines bloom here, including the elusive Alpine Sow-thistle that I have still to discover. The ledge where it grows looks dangerous to approach as most of the turf is slippery and easily sloughed from the wet, base rocks. Nevertheless, we find a few plants of interest including one that I have never seen before and that is Alpine Saw-wort, which is in the Burdock family.
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| Rock Sedge |
The rare Rock sedge is found under a seeping, rock overhang which is dressed with liver and purple coloured mosses, soaked like gory dripping sponges. Blue Harebells are profuse at this location and with their delicate bell shape have got to be one of the bonniest flowers in Scotland. Other plants found today include Grass of Parnassus, Yellow Rattle, Alpine Meadow-rue, Parsley Fern, Star Sedge, Mountain Sorrel, Roseroot, Yellow Saxifrage, Frog Orchid, Eyebright, Alpine Lady's-mantle, Alpine Bistort, Common Water Star-wort and Mountain Pansy.
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| Harebell ,Yellow Rattle and tiny Alpine Meadow-rue leaves |
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| Alpine Saw-wort |
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| Willow hybrid ?- myrsinites x reticulata |
In a rocky crevice I find a type of creeping willow that reminds me of the rare Net-leaved Willow but is more likely to be a Whortle-leaved Willow hybrid because of its shiny, bright green leaves that have slight reticulation and share the round shape of Net-leaved Willow but that is only a layman's speculation.
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| Star Sedge |
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| Grass of Parnassus and Yellow Saxifrage |
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| Alpine Saw-wort - photo MG |
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| Mountain sorrel - photo MG |
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| Frog Orchid - photo MG |
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| Loch Kander |
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| Rock squiggle |
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| Volcanic vents - paler thin dykes |
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| Parsley fern |
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| Loch of dogs |
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| 15,000 years of peat |
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| Glen Callater |
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| Glen Callater pine cemetery |
Notes;
Many thanks to Andy for his botanical expertise and Jackie for her smooth hill driving!
Thanks to Mike Groves for his superb photos.
All sketches and photos done on the day.
Please be aware that it is illegal to disturb nesting eagles or other raptors and you may do so inadvertently in your journeys into the highlands. I do not recommend searching for any of the species mentioned in this blog because this may cause undue disturbance to them. With my knowledge of the areas described in this blog I can locate and observe protected species at a respectful distance usually from about 1000 metres for short periods of time only.
Map of the area
