When I get back to the car safely after a long and tiring walk in the hills I remove my shoes, pour myself tea from my flask, and then I sit down in the open car boot. This is my quiet meditative moment before driving home when I reflect on the walk I’ve just had, breathe deeply and soak up the atmosphere one last time. And that’s when it appears. Sometimes it does so from the extremes of my peripheral vision, other times it seems to materialise from nowhere right in front of me. But wherever it comes from it…

As I sit here at home I can hear the surging roar of approaching gusts of wind. They’re whooshing through the tree branches and clunking at the wheelie bins. They’re whistling through tiny gaps in the double glazing, prompting a couple of the interior doors to creak ever so slightly. And between the gusts I can hear a constant low hum as though someone has left a diesel engine running outside. These are the sounds of a Scottish gale and, strange as it may seem I think I’ve actually missed them. A bit. Not because I carry any particular torch…

It was hard not to feel impossibly smug as I propped my bike up against the ruined house at Gortenbuie. It was absolutely calm, not a breath of wind, and as I peered through the empty windows the only sound I could hear was the rigid dried-up leaves falling from the adjacent sycamore tree. As expected, I’d seen no-one. “How many people ever access the hill from this direction?” I wondered. I stepped out of the ruin’s shadow and looked to the south. The undulating skyline of Mull’s interior burned rusty red in the rising sun, the high hills scattering…

I get very excited on 1st September because this is when weather presenters announce the end of summer. Doubtless many of you in Scotland will wryly smile and say “Ha! That happened months ago!”….but despite appearances to the contrary 31st August is widely taken as the last day of summer and 1st September the first day of autumn. But can seasons run to such rigid timetables? If not, what DO they run to? Given the contentious nature of the topic I opened it up to completely unscientific debate by asking Twitter and Facebook the following: ‘For you, when does autumn…

Last week I found myself accompanying fellow lifelong snow enthusiast Iain Cameron to Creag Meagaidh for a second time. Our first visit (and indeed our first meeting) had been back in October 2014 when we headed to Raeburn’s Gully, high up in Coire Ardair in search of an unusually long-lasting patch of snow. That encounter inspired me to write an article…

One of my earliest memories of interacting with the natural world involves those gaudy cheap fishing nets you used to be able to buy at seaside resorts. They were essentially just a length of bamboo cane with a brightly coloured bag-like net on the end – perfect for scooping up fish and whatever else took our fancy in those Cornish rockpools. But I didn’t use them for fish. I didn’t even use them on the coast. My brother and I would use them in our garden, 70 miles from the sea, to catch butterflies. I never actually wanted to keep…

The badger It’s dim. Though the days are getting longer the spring light is fading fast and I will soon be staring into darkness. I need to look to my right but I daren’t move my head, so I move only my eyes as I peer into the forest. I can feel two or three midges crawling across my forehead – hardly a plague but their insistent marching across my skin feels like an army. Normally I’d rub the midges away with an unconscious reflex swipe of the hand, but I can’t do that. All I can do is sit…

A couple of weeks ago I found myself sat in the Lochmaddy Hotel on North Uist, rain streaming down the windows, killing time before catching the ferry back to Skye. It was the final day of a four week jaunt around Scotland and, as inevitably happens when a journey comes to an end, I found myself reflecting on the highlights of the previous 28 days. I’d seen so much. Too much to recall in just one sitting but some notable experiences nonetheless stood out: exploring the cavernous space of Smoo Cave; standing below some of the tallest trees in the…