It's spring

It's now, officially, spring on Braighlinne. The first flower to open is a primrose, as always. And as always it is under the slowest trees to come into leaf, aspens, down close to the shore of Loch Roe in the cove we call Kelvin Grove, because of the Kelvin engine from a long abandoned fishing boat which squats there, below the high tide mark.

Some legendary boat, nesting

behind this old shore dyke,

sheltered by this aspen grove,

left behind, like a golden egg,

this Kelvin engine, rusting.

As if they have seen the primroses too, blackbirds have begun to sing their glorious improvisatory songs. Late in the afternoon, I stand transfixed by a high-wire performance: the bird sits in beak-lifted sillhouette, its back to the sunset, facing the moon in the eastern sky, and pours out one witty trickle of tune after another. Its tone is to a flute as primrose yellow is to gold. I wonder if its dowdy partner, hiding in the birches, is as impressed by its song as I am?

Earth Wondering

Since about November 2008 I've developed a habit of writing a daily 'wondering'. These are short bits of text, usually about something on the croft, if I'm here, or the natural world elsewhere, if I'm not. Some of the wonderings are variants on the theme of 'wow, look at that, isn't that incredible/great/beautiful/splendid/perplexing'. Many are questions, blurts about something that makes me scratch my head and furrow my brows, or mysteries I wish I understood.

For example, here's one of the former variety, from Summer: 'A cormorant surfaces with a fish in its beak, and the mirror-calm loch rolls into a spiral of ripples, widening until the water is a huge vinyl disc, ready to play cormorant waltzes. A tern dips like the diamond-tipped needle – let the music begin.'

From winter, one of the questioning ones: 'A woodcock, invisible until almost trodden on, batters away through a thicket of hazel. How does it not smash into the trees?'

I scratch them down in a notebook, and gradually the pages have mounted up. Last year I took a selection of wonderings I wanted to share, organised them into four sets, one for each season, and created four booklets illustrated with some of Bill Ritchie's wonderful close-up photographs. I gave them as gifts to a few people, who seemed to enjoy them. They are handmade, printed on 100% recycled paper and bound with string.

Now they're for sale, on my website, for £5.50 each or £19.50 for the set. Or you can get them for rather less than that direct from me.

Re-hibernating

It is not spring. Not yet. The lack of primroses and the hail and snow force this conclusion, not to mention cold nose, cold fingers, cold toes.

At the weekend, we moved down to the shore of Loch Roe, but we've been forced to admit we were premature, and now we're back in the woods again.

Those of you who've been reading this blog for a while, or who have read 'Wildlife on Braighlinne' in the wonderful Wilder Vein anthology, will know that my partner Bill and I life a nomadic life within the 11 hectares of our home. It's a kind of transhumance, similar in spirit to that of herders, hunter-gatherers and other peoples who still live close to nature. We spend the winter in a cabin in the woods, sheltered from the worst storms. In spring we move down to our little caravan on the shore of the sea loch. In summer, when the midgies make cooking inside a steamy caravan unpleasant we take to cooking and eating in another caravan up on the breezy heights of the croft, then wend our way back down to the shore to sleep. In autumn we revert to our spring quarters, until the path down the crag to the shore becomes too icy to navigate by torchlight as the nights draw in, when we retreat to the woods.

The seasons don't obey calendars. Spring on Braighlinne is defined by the opening of the first primrose. Summer comes with the first midgies, or the arrival of the terns from Antartica, whichever come first. When the terns leave, that's autumn. And winter announces itself by the first hard frost.

So what were we doing heading for the shore before the first primrose, you may well ask. Bill had one of those significant birthdays, and his chosen venue was the shore. Over the past 10 years, five of his birthdays have been after the first primrose, and five before. This year, once again, his birthday came early.

Last night we were back in the cosy cabin, fire glowing in the stove, a warming lentil stew on, and snow on the ground outside. It's the seasonal equivalent of having got up, thought better of it and snuggled back into bed for another snooze.

Wake me when the primroses are open.

The language of the land

This landscape is written all over in Gaelic. Every stream, slope and hollow is named in the language, and many of those names are rich descriptions, with hints about the trees that grew here, the animals that frequented the spot or the uses that people made of the land. Some of these are still pertinent: our croft Braighlinne, the slope above the pool, will always be aptly named, and Baddidarach still has lots of oak trees. But the wolves have gone from Gleannan a' Mhadaidh, and Creag Dharaich was devoid of trees until oaks were planted as part of a reforestation project in the 1990s.

Yet the names can guide us in how to restore the land to ecological health, they can inspire us about what the landscape might be like for future generations and they can help us to connect to this place as a lived-in ecosystem, one with cultural as well as natural heritage. The tragedy is that not only have the woods and wildlife been decimated over past generations, so too the very language that spoke about them has been almost completely lost.

I am proud to be part of a movement to try to prevent the total collapse of the Gaelic language here in Assynt, and thanks to the Ulpan teaching system, I'm one of a group of people determined to help bring about its revival. In December I took part in a teacher-training programme that means we now have three fully trained tutors in the parish, and another one just north in Scourie. My part was to be a 'guinea-pig student' for the tutors to practice on, and I learned more Gaelic in the process than I have by struggling with self-study for I don't know how long. There were eleven of us and seven of us are now continuing with twice-weekly Gaelic language classes. Ulpan is a brilliant system, and I'll write more about it here in future. For now, you can read my piece about it in the Bratach, here.

Another crucial part of sustaining Gaelic is all the associated culture. The language is fuel, but the heat and light are what matter: stories, songs and poetry; tunes, dances and games. The Feis and Mod movements are keeping these alive, and it was inspiring to see the tiny village of Scourie run their first Feis last month.

In Assynt, the song tradition has remained strong and many people were taught songs by family members who did not otherwise speak Gaelic to them. One of these is James Graham, who has become one of the country's most lauded Gaelic singers, and who put years of study into becoming a fluent Gaelic speaker. There's an interview I did with him a while back on the Northings website. He is now one of our trained Gaelic tutors and an excellent teacher, when his job with the Mod doesn't take him away from us. For the wider cause, I suppose I should be glad that someone with his talents is involved in the Mod, but we'd rather we had him here, helping to get Gaelic back onto our lips.

Why am I, an incomer, bothered about Gaelic? As well as wanting to understand the names on the maps, it's the poetry. All the song lyrics and all the poems of this place, prior to Norman MacCaig's visiting eye, were in Gaelic. Just across and down the Minch, people are still writing in Gaelic. I want to be able to read it in the original, not with all the music and nuance washed out of it in translation. I live in the woods, and the trees here formed the original alphabet, called Ogham, when the Gaelic language was first written down. There's a depth of association with this place that I am sure can only be best expressed in Gaelic.

In my mission to deepen my connection to the nature of this land, I can but try to speak its native tongue.

An island retreat

For the past five years I have run writing and creative retreats at Glencanisp Lodge. This is the big house the community of Assynt bought in the massive buyout of 44,000 acres of land, including the mountains of Suilven, Canisp, Cul Mor and Cul Beg, back in 2005. It has been an act of delicious subversion to book the house that was for so many years the private summer hunting lodge of the Vestey family, and fill it with creative people - writers, artists, photographers, musicians. We have had some fantastic weeks there, 12 of them altogether.

Unfortunately the Lodge is now so expensive to rent that it is no longer feasible to book it out for this purpose and sadly it is once again the preserve of the rich to holiday there. One day I hope a different situation will develop, but for now, I have had to look elsewhere for a retreat venue.

The good news is that I have found one, and it may turn out to be even more magical than the house up the glen in Assynt. In September (3-9 September, to be exact) I'll be running a retreat on Tanera Mor in the Summer Isles. Lizzie on Tanera is now taking bookings - to find out more see here. I look forward to welcoming you to the island!

Seaweed season

In the last few days, the winter has started to seem to be on the wane. It must be the growing daylength: the extra light in the morning kick-starting the day with a bit more energy, the loitering dusk allowing me to let a little bit more get done each afternoon. The garden beckons.

Yesterday was seaweed day: fifteen loads of it onto the vegetable and soft fruit beds. The big tides at new moon combined with gales have meant that vast amounts of wrack have been thrown high up on the shore of Loch Roe. Since then we've had plenty of rain so I'm pretty confident the salt will have washed out. And yesterday was sunny and when you're working hard it doesn't matter that it isn't warm. So, the mucky sacks were unearthed from their hiding place, the creel was emptied and hooped around my forehead, and off I set down to the shore to get mucky.

I like getting mucky. I love the smell of seaweed. I adore watching ripples and the curious faces of seals. I sing back when birds twitter at me. I stuffed the sacks and my basket, experiencing a profound connection to this place and to all the generations of women since ages past who have done this job at this time of year. By the time the wrack-sacks had all performed that pleasing slither and slump as they emptied onto soil, I was ready for my tea. What a satisfying way to spend an afternoon.

Forests for sale?

I have four articles in the current issue of Bratach, one of which concerns the hullaballoo that has broken out in England concerning the proposals by the government to divest itself of the state forests. Having read the consultation document, which is here, and thought about the proposals within it, I conclude that folks in England could learn a lot from the Scottish experience of land reform. As most people who may be interested probably can't get hold of Bratach, here's the article, in a slightly fuller form than Bratach had space for.

The UK government is planning to rid itself of the state forests in England and its consultation on the idea shows every sign that its plans are modelled on experiences from Scotland.

Campaigners in England have reacted with horror to the suggestion that ancient woodlands like the New Forest may be privatised. Hundreds of thousands of people have signed a petition raised by 38 Degrees, with the strapline ‘Save our forests - don't sell them off to the highest bidder’. A public letter signed by a hundred famous people, including the Poet Laureate Carol Ann Duffy, the Archbishop of Canterbury Rowan Williams, Judy Dench, Annie Lennox, Tony Juniper and Ranulph Fiennes, made front page headlines in the national newspapers, decrying the plan as ‘unconscionable’.

In fact the Forestry Commission’s consultation document does not propose a wholesale sell-off of all its English forests to the highest bidder. The method it outlines for shedding its forests has three parts.

Firstly, heritage forests, which are those with high levels of biodiversity or other social value, like the New Forest, are to be offered to charitable organisations for either full ownership or management arrangements, to secure their public benefits into the future. This could include existing bodies such as the Woodland Trust or National Trust, or new charities set up for the purpose of taking over woods.

Secondly, local communities will be given a first option to buy or lease any state forest that is put up for lease. This is similar to the current arrangement in Scotland under the National Forest Land Scheme. Communities in England will also be able to register an interest in any forest that is important to them and if that forest comes on the market they will have a first option to buy, rather like the Scottish Land Reform Act community right to buy.

Thirdly, commercial forestry operators will be invited to take long-term leases on productive forests, such as the huge Kielder forest in Northumberland, the largest in the country.

These three measures contain a mixture of threats and opportunities. The main threat is the third part. Although the privatisation of commercial forests would not transfer ownership titles to private companies, the leases are likely to be as long as 150 years, locking the land away for many generations.

A similar suggestion was made by the government in Scotland when Mike Russell was Environment Minister. His proposal was to transfer a quarter of Scotland’s forests to private companies on a 99 year lease, in order to generate revenue for climate change protection measures. The idea was met by huge opposition and in March 2009, the proposal was dropped. A similar outcry is now being heard in England.

Scottish land reform commentator Andy Wightman has responded by asking ‘Is the outcry focused on the right target?’ His view is that if people in England are really concerned to secure the future of ‘their’ forests, they need to be worried about the current situation of ownership by the government ministers and seek to transfer ownership to bodies that have more local and community accountability. The second measure in the proposal will enable this to happen.

However, experience in Scotland shows that unless a right in law for communities to take ownership (or to lease for long periods) is coupled with funding, nothing will change. While the Scottish Land Fund existed, a series of significant community land buyouts, like those in Assynt and on the Hebrides, were possible.

When the National Forest Land Scheme began, several communities, such as Mull and Kilfinnan in Argyll, bought forests to pursue important housing and rural development projects, thanks to available funding. However, since the Heritage Lottery decided not to make any grants towards the purchase of state land, the National Forest Land Scheme has ground to a halt, and now a number of communities who have been granted permission to buy state land have failed to do so because of lack of money. The closest of these to us is Embo, in East Sutherland. The community had ambitious plans to buy the Fourpenny Plantation in order to reverse the clearances there and create woodland crofts for local people to live on. Their application for the land was approved by the Forestry Commission in July 2009, but when the Lottery turned down the grant application for £370,000, the purchase was scuppered.

Community and environmental campaigners in England should learn from Scottish experience of what works, and what blocks progress, in responding to the government’s proposals.