Seeing the wood and the trees

A few days before Christmas, an email pinged into my inbox:

“Not sure if you’ll manage this John, REALLY last minute stuff with a tight deadline, 26th January in fact, but could you photograph a piece of remote West highland woodland for us, the images are for use in a fund-raising campaign to obtain the woods in collaboration with a local community group…”

Before I could even sort out dates and opportunities another email arrived:

“Deadline changed, sorry, even tighter! 11th January is the latest give or take a day or so. Really sorry!”

I found a gap, only a few days, but enough. But the weather….in January…in the west…with the country flooding and winter lurking somewhere in the background? The weather was the problem.

 

 

 

 

I fixed the dates, arranged to collect a key from the local Estate to gain access to their stalking track with my Land Rover so I could get right into the site and save me precious time on the short winter days by not having to walk in and out from the main road. Then went off to visit family for Christmas, and watched the weather forecast, very carefully.

 

 

I was very very lucky. It turned out to be fairly cold, and of course it was a wee bit wet, but it cleared sufficiently from time to time for me to be able to get a variety of shots, and on one reasonably dry day with a few good breaks in the cloud I was able to go high on the mountainside and get expansive views across the east block of woodland.

 

 

 

 

 

But the woodland… what a place. Wild, rarely visited and visually stunning. It’s in two blocks, one to the east, the other to the west, on the south side of a remote loch, each block at least 10km long and 1.5km wide, extending up to 350m above sea level, covering in total 2,500 acres, supporting red deer, eagles, buzzards, wildcats, pine martens, and more. Its a really special place – dramatic in its location and suffused with history. There are few places like this left in Scotland and its all the more precious for that.

 

 

 

 

It’s located not far from where I was born, and I’ve been in part of the wood many times over the years, so I know it quite well, but the last time was about 20 years ago. (I wrote recently about a brief visit to Arkaig here.) It was a privilege to revisit the site, but a challenge to have to take a ‘commercial’ view of the place. It’s an interesting switch of mindset to consider “what would be useful for a fundraising campaign?” rather than “what intrigues me?”. Of course there are areas of overlap, but I had limited time and rare gaps in the weather so client needs came first.

 

 

 

The night I arrived I tried some ‘light painting’ with a small LED torch, a thing the size of a Cuban cigar tube but with sufficient light output to illuminate trees 100m away. I underestimated its output! My first attempt overexposed by a significant amount. But when I got a sense of the output/distance/exposure it became a real joy. The couple of celebratory ‘arrival’ drams I’d had helped immensely. It was on the verge of snowing and the wind had a vicious edge to it but it was a good start – I always like to get some work under my belt when I arrive in a place.

My task was to capture some sense of the atmosphere of the woodlands, the character of the trees, particularly the older ‘granny pines’ and also evidence of use of the area by the Commandos who had trained here during WW2 and had set ablaze large swathes of the forest. The bleached skeletons of the dead pines remain, stark in the landscape, glowing eerily in the gloaming as the light faded.

 

 

Community management of woodland like this can have huge benefits for the surrounding population. Vibrant ‘working’ woodlands are not really just about trees – they’re really about people. Creation of paths can create building and ongoing maintenance jobs, and the recreational opportunities will bring in visitors, who stay locally and support b&b’s and other small business operators. Development of woodland classrooms and other interpretation facilities can enable local schools and other groups to become involved too. The actual management of the woodland and process of regeneration will involve the labour of many people, all making an investment in the social and environmental health of this valuable community asset. I’ve had the good luck to visit many areas of wild Caledonian pine woodland around the Highlands over the years, and there are very few that have the character and scale, and crucially the potential, of Arkaig.

 

 

The fundraising campaign has just been launched this week, all manner of printed material and a lovely short film to raise awareness (film is at the bottom of the page). The time frame to raise the required funds is tight and immediate response is needed. So if you love wild woodland and want to help save this very special piece of the Highlands, which is of international conservation importance, please give Woodland Trust and their partners the Arkaig Community Forest your support.

Here’s a few of my favourite images from the job. It’s a place worth a visit, and well worth saving!