(5) Slioch

where a fold of hillside

scoops sun and shelter

from a mountain wind

– Gael Turnbull, From the Language of the Heart: some imitations from the Gaelic of Sine Reisideach

Our Mt. Nikko is Slioch

Our Hotoke Gozaemon, hosteler is Nick, hotelier, warden, guide, chef, funeral overseer, and much else besides, Loch Maree Hotel

Our mean and muddled ground is the rain-soaked, bracken-burdened, peat-bogged wilds

5 Loch Maree Hotel
Alec Finlay, 2010

Call me Nick

Slioch hid in floccus until the second day. Our minds had been on this saddleback mountain for months: seen from Flodigarry, viewed on flickr, reviewed on walk guides, where it racks up ‘4.5 boots’. Slioch, brother peak to sister Schiehallion – one has Isle Maree in care, the other Loch Rannoch.

Punningly, Nick’s our host for Nikko, fitting Basho’s sketch: "They call me Hotoke Gozaemon. Honesty's a habit with me, which is why the name, so feel right to home," what he said. Impossible not to realize how Buddha appears upon this mean and muddled ground in just such guise to help shaman beggar pilgrims on seeing our host's simple sincere manner, frank and down-to-earth. Firm-grained and unassuming, the very image of the man of jen, worthy of all respect.

He came here from London, after being bombed out of my house by the IRA twice. We hope Nick makes a go of it, say the anglers who’ve been coming here for years. He did it all just right, did Nick, so says the woman who runs the Harbourfront café, Gairloch: for he’d boated her family out to Isle Maree, to scatter their father’s ashes – his 5^th funereal voyage. When she was a waitress here, c. 1985, under the regime of Ms Moody and Ms MacLeod, she recalls the post-Sunday lunch rite.

on Sunday there was always

a cold salmon salad

with the chef burying

the heads behind the hotel

then when we buried my father

there was a piper and dram

of talisker on the boat

the rest poured in the loch.

(AF)

5 Nick at the helm

Alec Finlay, 2010

Some of those scattered ashes belonging to army and navy who were stationed here for basic in the war and never forgot the place.

We hope Nick the Inn keeper – host, guide, warden, counsel, keeper, cook, funeral director, with skilled advice for the kayaker, hiker, naturalist, climber, birder, pilgrim, angler – makes a go of it.

(AF)

Slioch

5 Dragon tea

Ken Cockburn, 2010

The tea’s Curly Silver-winged Dragon and I feel I’ll need its strength today.

5 Slioch from A832
Ken Cockburn, 2010

This is the view from the road, looking across Loch Maree, but the starting point for Slioch’s a couple of miles further on. I’m tempted to go for Beinn Eighe instead, nearer, lower, better waymarked, but I decline car-park and visitor-centre invitations and head through Kinlochewe village.


5 Take Great Care on the Hills
Ken Cockburn, 2010

The estate was owned by Paul Fentener van Vlissingen from 1978 until his death in 2006, and in 1993 he and his partner, Caroline Tisdall (art critic, one time lover of Joseph Beuys) helped draw up the Letterewe Accord, giving extensive public access to the estate.

5 This way not that way

Ken Cockburn, 2010

5 Reflective alders

Ken Cockburn, 2010

The first geese pass overhead. I’m guided gently by these stones, and work my way through head-high bracken to reach midgy woods, paddling alders, hazel, birch and oaks, am granted a first view of the summit. Two fishermen stand with the patience of herons in the river.

5 Slioch seen through oak leaves

Ken Cockburn, 2010

The path, wet and muddy and uneven, winds down to Loch Maree, whose islands are hidden round the corner. One walker, then another, pass as I pause here. A fallen sign reading OUTFALL PIPE contains one instance of each vowel.

5 hokku-label
(‘the burn speaks / all five vowels / into the loch’, KC)

Ken Cockburn, 2010

The next landmark’s the wooden bridge over Abhainn an Fhasaigh, white and loud.

5 Abhainn an Fhasaigh

Ken Cockburn, 2010

5 Sgurr Dubh

Ken Cockburn, 2010

From here the path turns away from the loch, heading north between Sgurr Dubh and Meall Each, Black Rock and Horse Mound. Underfoot it’s harder, more clamber than ramble. Then a flatter area, which comes as a relief, but it’s bog.

5 Bog and sugarloaf

Ken Cockburn, 2010

I wander across it as best I can, meet a frog who hops from rock into water and then stays very still, hoping I can’t see him. For some reason I’m pleased and encouraged by our encounter.

5 Frog hiding

Ken Cockburn, 2010

A diagonal path leads up to a ridge, with two lochans just beyond of it. It’s here the day’s only rain falls, very briefly; thus far too there’s been next to no wind.

5 Towards the trig point

Ken Cockburn, 2010

A steep though dry scamble up over rocks brings me to a first, false summit, but it’s an easy walk over to the trig point; then another short hop to the summit proper, a metre higher. One of the other walkers who I’ve occasionally spotted up ahead of me is there, taking photos of bens to the north the sun’s catching. He carries a big SLR, says he regrets having brought only a wide-angle lens, but it’s too heavy to carry the zoom as well. He heads E along the narrow ridge to Sgurr an Tuill Bhàin, Rock of the White Flood.

5 Loch Maree seen from Slioch

Ken Cockburn, 2010

Isle Maree’s there on the loch, set a little apart from its siblings. I return to the trig’s low sheltering wall, hunker out the chill wind with the Dragon and a phial of Red.

5 hokku-label
(‘Nikka's part / of our michi no nikki / on Mt. Nikka’, KC)

Ken Cockburn, 2010

5 hokku-label
(‘silver-winged dragon / lands on the heights / of Slioch’, KC)

Ken Cockburn, 2010

And William Carlos Williams’ line from ‘The Descent’ comes to mind.


5 hokku-label
(‘the / descent / beckons / as / the / ascent / beckoned’, KC, after WCW)
Ken Cockburn, 2010

5 Loch Maree nr Kinlochewe

Ken Cockburn, 2010

Descending, to avoid the bog I return via Sgurr Dubh. The ridge walk is fine, and takes me past huge erratics, but beyond the summit there’s a steep heathery slope I lose my footing on several times.

5 Bracken

Ken Cockburn, 2010

5 Boulder & Sgurr Dubh

Ken Cockburn, 2010

Rejoining the path offers little relief. I relish the stops, because the walk’s become a slog, frankly. My eye’s caught by a small patch of bracken amid the heather, and I realise it’s growing in and around a small enclosure; and I poem an erratic that might be a scale model of the mount behind it. The bridge and the river’s roar take a long time to come, and then I’m back on the flat but it’s a slow, squelchy walk.

5 The best path

Ken Cockburn, 2010

And then I come to a short stretch, maybe 30m, that I remember from this morning, even and firm and dry and wide. I enjoy it voluptuously.

5 hokku-label
(‘if Isle Maree’s / ecumenical / here we’re secular’, KC)

Ken Cockburn, 2010

Among the alders I miss the isle’s polyphony.

5 Wild geese

Ken Cockburn, 2010

It’s dusk when I reach the car-park, eight and a quarter hours after I left. The weather’s been kind – dry, and clear, and other than at the top, windless. The geese of course fly above the summits, and are still out there, journeying.

(KC)

Coda: The Armchair Mountaineer

5 misty Slioch

Alec Finlay, 2010

Today I take out my membership card for the AMC, (Armchair Mountaineering Club), formed by Maris back in the 1980s. Starting with a bath in Laphroaig. And then taking to the sofa, to do as all AMC members should and work over some notes of climbs past or future, climbing deferred.

5 Bath
Alec Finlay, 2010

5 Sora’s Sofa
Alec Finlay, 2010

Later on Nick tells me there’s an old oakwood nearby. There I find a woodland hut which Nick rents out, right by River Talladale, perfect for a midgeproof hermit. I leave a wish, and label.

5 wish, oak

Alec Finlay, 2010

5 woodland hut
Alec Finlay, 2010

5 hokku-label, River Talladale

('clear water channels / through storm debris // a dissertation on the flux / of identity’, AF)

Alec Finlay, 2010

Watching the clock I wait for Ken, as Nick’s 4.5 hour estimate gradually winds on into a 9 hour trek.






5 skyline, Slioch
Alec Finlay, 2010


5 wordrawing (Slioch)
Alec Finlay 2010

intimations

Caroline Tisdall has achieved recognition for her organic gardens, her conservation work in Africa and her many books and films, which include the direction of Joseph Beuys and The Last Post Run for BBC2 and Channel 4 respectively. She has published 7 books on Joseph Beuys and worked with him to organise many of his major exhibitions. Witches' Point: Time in a Landscape is a collection of shared poems from Loch Ewe.