Linda Cracknell is an-award winning Highlands-based writer known for her creative approach to exploring wild places and man’s interaction with them. Her Walkhighlands’ essays cover the cultural aspects of the Scottish landscape on a quarterly basis. In May this year I climbed Quinag for the first time. I had saved its magnificence for such a day; recently raucous south-westerlies had stilled and cloud flurried high above the summits. Threading through its towers and buttresses, gaping clefts and chutes of long, vertical scree, I felt I was touring the walls of an ancient castle. Its giant proportions invited a very different…

SEVERAL nights ago when the temperature dropped to unusually low levels even for this poor summer I put some logs on the wood burning stove, poured myself a large dram and settled down to read. But it wasn’t a book I was reading – it was the brand new Harveys map of Assynt. This new 1:40,000 scale map had dropped through my letterbox a few days earlier and it covers what many would regard as one of the finest areas of wild land in Scotland. The poet Norman MacCaig was passionate in his love for this area – he claimed…

an unofficial anti-guide to Irresponsible Parenting (part 1) If there’s one thing more tedious than a childfree friend extolling the virtues of their carbon neutral fun-and-money-filled lifestyle, it’s a self-satisfied parent extolling the worthiness of their child fulfilled life. There seems to be a whole lot of navel gazing surrounding the weird, wonderful world of sprogs, with both ‘sides’ convinced of how much better their life is with/without. Therefore, as a new-ish dad, and someone who considered himself least likely to ever spawn an ankle biter of his own, rest assured I’m going to avoid a ‘how to’ guide on…

Spending time outdoors in natural places is universally recognised as being good for both our physical health and our mental well-being. Getting children outdoors and exploring the natural world is in their best interest, but it is also in society’s best interest for a healthy, well-informed, environmentally-aware population. The onus is on parents and educators to try to ‘interpret’ the natural world for our kids, so that they can understand their place within it and recognise how vital its protection is. That can be as cheap and easy as making daisy chains, collecting conkers or blowing on dandelion clocks. Encourage…

THE hills of Scotland have a long tradition of the supernatural, which is hardly surprising since the indigenous highlander, even to-day, tends to superstition, and the history of Gaeldom is splattered with tales of the second sight, the little people, and tales from beyond the grave. My one and only encounter with anything remotely resembling spectral things occurred in Glen Banchor near my home in Newtonmore. I had taken my dogs for a walk on a local hill on a day of mist and rain, and as we returned along a well-trodden hill path we could see the glen road…