Following in the Footsteps
Amidst painting, blogging and going on adventures this month, I have been reading January’s edition of The National Geographic. This issue caught my eye in particular because of its cover story, ‘The First Artists: How creativity made us human’. I opened it up and was entranced by photographs of cave paintings nearly 40,000 years old and hand-carved artifacts said to be 265,000 years old. It is almost too much for my mind to fathom. Humans have been on Earth that long, but not only that, they have been creating ‘art’ for that long too. What I do now, and have chosen to pursue as a means of supporting myself, has been man’s natural desire since perhaps the beginning. This suggests to me that creativity is innate, even essential.
One of the joys of living in Caithness is that we are surrounded by historical remains of times past. As yet most of these are free to roam and explore. For the sake of this article, I decided to follow, not just in historical footsteps but in creative ones too. Where-else to go but Dunbeath and to re-tread Neil Gunn’s footsteps along the Strath?
I love the Strath; it is one of my favourite places to visit. Every time I go, I try to envisage how Neil Gunn experienced it in his childhood, growing up in Dunbeath from 1891 onwards. I doubt anything has changed at all once you step away from civilization and follow the path to the source of the river. Surely, the essence of a river will always remain no matter how much the surrounding landscape alters.
I have read both of Neil Gunn’s books, The Silver Darlings and The Highland River and completely comprehend how the river captivated Gunn so much as to feature pre-eminently in both of these novels. Gunn sums it up in The Highland River, ‘But if Kenn’s early life began where the river was lost in the sea, his individuality came upon him as he turned his back on this teeming harbour life and started to explore the river upwards to its source.’
This time, instead of following the path of the river, I chose to stop and reflect in some of the other historical sites that Gunn mentions in his novels. I climbed the small hill to the broch, a structure that has stood for over 2,000 years, that has a ‘beehive room’ as Gunn describes it, similar to the chambered Cairns at Camster.
‘When Kenn and Beel crept in through the little door and stood in the gloom, they were vaguely disturbed as if the little door telescoped backwards into a remoteness that any moment might come up at their elbow.’ Neil Gunn, The Highland River.
I certainly got that, as I do at any historical site I visit; a feeling of timelessness. Chip Walter, describes in The National Geographic, when visiting the caves with the ancient paintings, ‘Their beauty whip-saws your sense of time. One moment you are anchored in the present, observing coolly. The next you are seeing the painting as if all other art – all civilization – has yet to exist’.
Back out in daylight, and back in reality, scrambling down the hill, I glanced across to another landmark that Gunn writes about in The Highland River, ‘Opposite the Broch, across the tributary, a high knoll rises abruptly from the meadowland. This must from very early times have been a religious centre of importance. A story is told of a cemetery between the knoll and the pool being swept away by a tremendous flood which hollowed out the graves and carried away the dead. Kenn once heard old James Dallas call it Chapel Hill, though no religious ceremonies have taken place on it within traditional memory’.
Gunn also includes the knoll in The Silver Darlings as a place where the main character, Finn, finds rest and solace. How many times did Gunn himself rest on this mound in peaceful slumber, hidden and pensive?
My final place to visit was the old Inn further up the river, across the small footbridge. Again, mentioned several times in The Silver Darlings and featured in several Myths and Legends books of the local area. This one I never want to read too much about, choosing instead to bring my own interpretation to the building. It has already featured in a painting on mine and I have a feeling it may feature in a story when I finally get around to start writing my books! So, for now, this one will fire my imagination, and rest assured it does!
I leave you with a poem of my own, inspired by a burn deep within Rumster Forest – another of my favourite places to visit.
The Burn
Alone on the land,
Hours spent, but never lost.
Always following someone else’s footsteps.
Who sat here? Whose thirst was quenched?
Who followed your bubbling ways?
Who stopped for recompense?
Who thought, but never stopped?
The burn.
Thank you for reading my blog…I hope you enjoyed reading it and get a sense of this beautiful landscape I now call home.
As promised, here is a picture of the Aviemore inspired forest painting I finished last week. You can now purchase it direct on my website…https://havenhousehealing.comlarge-paintings/ Have a good week xx
