In 2014 a red box file stuffed full of the memoirs of Scottish explorer Isobel Wylie Hutchison found its way into the hands of writer Hazel Buchan Cameron. Looking through the photographic slides, essays, letters and even a postcard from St Kilda, Hazel was entranced and began the arduous task of bringing the voice of one of Scotland’s most remarkable figures back to life.
Born 30 May 1889, Isobel Wylie Hutchison was many things: A botanist, explorer, poet and artist, she travelled solo throughout the arctic collecting plant samples, wrote and published extensive volumes of essays and poetry, and was – in short – one of the most impressive Scottish figures of her time. In an early essay detailing a journey across the Hebrides, Iceland and Greenland, she encompasses this daring spirit:
“Why not indeed? ‘Why not?’ is a motto, by the way, to which I became attached at a very early age. Perhaps I should rather say, that at a very early age it became attached to me.”
While better known for her solo journeys across the Arctic, the essays in Hazel Buchan Cameron’s book detail Isobel’s Scottish journeys over a period of 50 years. Written with characteristic wit and a keen interest in science, myth and folklore, the essays serve as important cultural markers not just of Scotland as it was and has developed, but of Hutchison’s development as a person and writer, and a testament to the importance of cultural connection, exploration and communication.
In explaining why Isobel may have chosen such an adventurous life, Hazel Buchan Cameron writes, “I believe it was a strategy for survival. Over a period of fifteen years, from the age of eleven, she
lost first her father, then her two young brothers. Their deaths and circumstances contributed to her breakdown and then a spiritual revelation. Recovering from the breakdown on the Isle of Tiree she came to understand the need to let go, accepted all things will be lost and was thereby able to find joy and create an authentic life for herself.”
“She met difficulties with good humour and acceptance, an inner knowledge that she was where she was meant to be and when all else failed, ‘a guardian angel’ would come to her rescue.”
Isobel’s handwritten notes, often with many corrections and use of Gaelic and Scots, were the Walkhighlands walk reports of their day. The following extract from the book describes how Isobel tackled the Corrieyairack Pass, linking the Cairngorms to Loch Ness.
The Corrieyairack Pass lies through the heart of the Monadhliadh Mountains from the western parts of Speyside to Loch Ness, forming a connecting link between those districts in much the same way as the Learg Ghru joins Deeside to Badenoch; but although many visitors to this part of the Highlands have heard of, or even crossed, the gloomy Larig, probably comparatively few know of the existence of General Wade’s old military road over the Corrieyairack to Fort Augustus.
The way, from Speyside at least, lies somewhat off the beaten path of the ordinary visitor, the two nearest inns, Cameron’s Inn at Loch Laggan or the Drumgask Inn at Laggan Bridge, being both about twelve miles from where the track branches off over the hills.
The distance however, from either of these points to Fort Augustus, is not more than twenty-four or twenty-five miles, and can be accomplished by a good walker in a day without much difficulty.
As a wind-up to a delightful walking-tour through the Highlands from Blairgowrie to Fort Augustus by Braemar and the Larig Pass, we set off from Drumgask Inn about nine o’clock one beautiful morning in late August to cross the Corrie. We should certainly have left earlier in the morning, but the day before had been a strenuous one, after a night spent with a hospitable keeper in his lonely bothy at the foot of Cairn Toul, where we had been benighted on our way through the Larig. From Cairn Toul to Drumgask in a day, even although some miles of the journey are done by train, is a walk that leaves one inclined for a good night’s rest at the end.
Thus by the time we had, like the gauger, ‘buckled on our packs’, to make the last stage of our journey, the sun had been up for some time, and the mist, which we had watched the day before a good three hours earlier slowly dissolving from the cloud-wrapped head of beautiful Braeriach, was already swept from the summits of the hills as we followed the road up the banks of the Spey.
The river here has not yet assumed the stately proportions it takes a little lower down, though from the rapidity of the lovely tumbling brown waters it seems in a hurry to do so. The stream rapidly becomes narrower as the road advances up the valley beneath the splendid jagged peaks of the hills, where purple of heather shades gradually into duller plum-colour and dims at last into glorious blue, reminding us of Robert Louis Stevenson’s lines:
Then follow you, wherever hie
The travelling mountains of the sky.
Or let the streams in civil mode
Direct your choice upon a road:
For one and all, or high or low,
Will lead you where you wish to go,
And one and all go night and day
Over the hills and far away.
The traveller over the Corrieyairack sets his face hill-wards from the start. The mountains hem in his way closer and closer as he advances, and the road begins gradually to rise, past Glenshirra Lodge and the bright waters of the little Loch Crunachan, just visible from the road to Garva Bridge, where the Spey, on the right bank of which the way has hitherto lain for the most part, is crossed for the last time.
Shortly before reaching the bridge a magnificent view over the valley can be seen from a rise in the road, where the river runs down between the mountains through low-lying meadows which are often rapidly flooded when the waters come down in spate. Indeed, about Laggan Bridge, embankments have been built outside the river’s true banks to try and keep it within bounds in flood-time.
After crossing Garva Bridge the road curves away from the river for a time and mounts upwards to a height of over 1000 feet. On the right hand the mountains slope steeply away northwards, on the left the ground drops gradually to the river. At Meallgarbha, a group of one or two cottages at the end of the driving-road, and just before General Wade’s path begins, a last glimpse up the river can be obtained, where it comes brawling down between the hills from its source a few miles higher up near Loch Spey.
We had been told at Drumgask to enquire our way at the keeper’s house here, as it was possible to take a wrong turning and land westwards in Glenroy; a cautious native even suggested, after hearing of our adventure on the Larig, that we should spend the night with the keeper. “The Corrie will be dangerous if the mists are coming down,” we were told, but the road lay clear before us up over the brow of the hills, and we learned, in answer to our enquiries, that it was not more than fourteen or fifteen miles to Fort Augustus, and that we could not miss the track. Besides which, there are few things so fascinating as a half-obliterated mountain-path, leading no matter where, so long as it leads ‘over the hills and far away’ from the bustle of the world to the purple hill-recesses ‘where essential silence dwells’. Anyone who is familiar with the call of these lonely hill-tracks, untrodden save for an occasional solitary shepherd with his watchful-eyed collie at his heels, will know that the call is not one to be resisted.
The track wound round the side of the Corrieyairack Hill, and for a time we lost sight of human habitations and were alone with the silence. An occasional bee hummed in the heather, and once a grouse rose with a “Cruk-Curuck!” The bright blossoms of the yellow saxifrage starred the damp ground between the sphagnum-clothed bogs, and blueberries peeped up behind the boulders in places. The track crossed one of the old stone-arched bridges which always distinguish on old road of General Wade’s from the ordinary Highland drove-road, and from here wound right up the face of the hill to the summit. This is the part where it is most difficult to follow. There were formerly eight zig-zags to carry the road up the face of almost a precipice, the road no doubt being made as a means of connection between Fort Augustus and the barracks at Ruthven near Kingussie, but it has been disused since 1830, and these zig-zags are now nearly washed away by the mountain torrents which rush down the hill-sides in winter. Once at the top, however, the path is easily found again, and is perfectly clear all the rest of the way to Fort Augustus.
We reached the summit, a height of 2543 feet, about five o’clock in the afternoon, and here a most magnificent view is obtained. The hills of Speyside, right up to Ben Macdhui and Cairngorm, lie spread out behind; in front, beyond the Ness Valley, rise peak beyond peak of the great blue mountains of Ross-shire, Loch Garry lying beneath its wooded slopes in the foreground. The Monadhliadhs’ grandeur. The view from the Larig, though wilder, is not nearly so fine as this, as it is impossible to see both valleys at once from the head of the pass; even the view from the summit of Cairngorm can hardly rival the beauty of this view from the head of the Corrieyairack, for here one can see at once most of the principal heights of the Grampians, as well as over sixty peaks on the other side of the Monadhliadhs, from the heights around Ben Nevis, to the far mountains of Ross-shire, blue and dim in the distance. As we gradually descended towards Fort Augustus the light left the valleys and travelled up the sides of the mountains till at last only the peaks were golden. The road crossed another old bridge, wound along the side of a stream, and dipped down into a little ravine. Here the bridge, built so long ago, has succumbed at last to the repeated attacks of the elements, and only the props remain, so the stream has to be crossed on stepping-stones.
What, I wonder would General Wade say could he see his road now? The painful labour of years is today an almost obliterated track amidst the heather. Thus time wags on, and in a few centuries from now the roads we know may be gone too, and the air only be partitioned off into highways!
As we descended into Fort Augustus the twilight deepened, and when we turned for a last look at the Corrieyairack a bright moon had risen, and was riding above the hills looking down on us, as it looked down no doubt long ago on General Wade and his men in many a midnight foray when the road was new.
Peak Beyond Peak: The Unpublished Scottish Journeys of Isobel Wylie Hutchison is published by Taproot Press; it is available to buy on Bookshop.org (10% goes to Walkhighlands, and 10% to local indepedent bookshops).