Autumn Birch, Craigellachie
A stunning autumn morning at Craigellachie lochan, one of my favourite places locally. The lochan is definitely a morning place – at this time of year the sun sets behind the crag by late morning throwing the wood into shade. There was just one morning recently when we had early sun, so I was glad to make my way there. I love the intense yellow-gold against the deep blue sky.
Birch are such graceful trees, full of light tresses hanging down. I’m thinking of her as the ‘Princess of trees’ – traditionally she was known as The White Goddess, The Lady of the Woods, The Silver Maiden, the latter name feeling very appropriate and bringing to mind those times I have walked in the birch wood in the moonlight, silvery light shining on the white bark while the tresses tremble in a breeze.
“Planting trees, I myself thought for a long time, was a feel-good thing, a nice but feeble response to our litany of modern-day environmental problems. In the last few years, though, as I have read many dozens of articles and books and interviewed scientists here and abroad, my thinking on the issue has changed. Planting trees may be the single most important ecotechnology that we have to put the broken pieces of our planet back together.”
– Jim Robbins, ‘The Man Who Planted Trees: Lost Groves, Champion Trees, and an Urgent Plan to Save the Planet’