The Last Wilderness: A Journey into Silence

by Neil Ansell

  The taxonomy of the wildcat has proved to be a complicated business. If the population of a species becomes geographically isolated, it will gradually change over many, many generations as evolution slowly reflects the particular demands of that habitat. Eventually the animal will diverge into subspecies, and finally separate into new species. The threshold for a new species having formed is generally that enough genetic divergence has taken place for interbreeding to no longer be possible, or at least interbreeding that will produce fertile young. There are several very distinctive forms of wildcat. The European wildcat is big and bushy-tailed and tiger-striped, while the Asiatic wildcat is leaner and spotted. The African wildcats are thin-tailed and short-coated. Yet in spite of their diversity of appearance, they have not yet become separate species. They are all subspecies of the one original wildcat, in all their varied forms and habits. In fact, it seems as though every isolated population is distinct in both habits and appearance, so it was once held that there were over twenty separate subspecies. The advent of genetic testing has brought this down to a more manageable five. Of course, where you draw the line is ultimately somewhat arbitrary; change occurs as a gradient rather than as a succession of jumps.

  The European wildcat was once widespread across the Continent, but its population has fragmented in response to human pressures. The changing environments and persecution that we bring have pushed the wildcat into isolated pockets of wild country. It was once thought that the long-isolated Scottish wildcat formed a subspecies of its own, though this is now held to be invalid. What is not in question is that the few remaining wildcats of Scotland are critically endangered. The domestic cat originated from the wildcat found in North Africa and the Middle East, and unlike the domestic dog, where thousands of years of selective breeding have generated a new species quite distinct from its wolf origins, the free-ranging nature of cats has left them much closer to their source material. They are a subspecies only, and this of course means that they can still interbreed with their wild relatives.

  This is the real challenge for the Scottish wildcat; not habitat destruction or hunting pressure. The biggest threat to a creature that seems to almost epitomise the wilds of the Highlands is the tabby cat curled on the sofa. For wherever there are domestic cats, there are cats gone wild, strays that have turned feral; the number of wildcats that remain isolated enough to have stayed genetically uncontaminated is tiny, and the distinctive appearances and behaviours that make them what they are have been progressively watered down. It is now believed that there are more snow leopards left in the world than there are genetically pure Scottish wildcats. Does it matter that most of our surviving wildcats show some degree of hybridisation? I would think that it does, for when hybrids vastly outnumber any remaining pure wildcats then the chances of two pure-bred animals meeting become vanishingly small, and the qualities that give this iconic animal its uniqueness will gradually fade away. A last-ditch effort is being made to save the animal; wildcat havens have been set up that cover the whole of the Ardnamurchan and Morvern peninsulas. Domestic cats, feral cats, and presumably wildcat/domestic cat hybrids are being rounded up and sterilised. But what extent of hybridisation is acceptable? Five per cent of genetic material? One per cent? And who gets to decide? Conservation is a complicated business, for you cannot turn back time.

  I had the pleasure of watching a wildcat in Africa. Going on safari had been an ambition of mine from early childhood. It is, of course, notoriously expensive; the hiring of four-wheel drives and possibly guides, the expensive lodges. This was not really for me, so I did what I usually do and just travelled there with no advance planning. I wild-camped without a tent, quickly learning that I would need to keep a small fire burning through the night if I was to avoid being eaten, and where travel without a vehicle was prohibited I would hang around the entrance to a game reserve with my thumb out. I found that most visitors came with a checklist of big game: lion and leopard, elephant, giraffe and zebra, hippo and rhino. But I found myself equally taken by the smaller game that people made little effort to seek out: cheetah and hunting dog, bat-eared fox and mongoose.

  I had camped out for the night just outside the boundaries of the Moremi Game Reserve, at the edge of the Okavango Delta in Botswana, and I had risen at very first light. I set off walking through the long grass and scrubland and began to warm myself in the rays of the rising sun. The Kalahari nights could be cold and I had even endured frosts; another reason to keep a fire. A ratel, a honey badger, loped through the grass ahead of me. It had broad shoulders and a head like a shovel, but its movements were sinuous and graceful. And then I spotted the wildcat, sandy-coloured and long-tailed. It stalked through the grasses, then leapt and bounded as if it was playing. It seemed completely oblivious to my presence; it was perhaps unused to people and saw me as no threat. It seemed in one way out of place, such a small graceful little predator in a land of giants, but in another way it felt utterly familiar and at home; a cat just being itself in a place where it belonged. It struck me as something of a curious encounter, for there I was, on the African savannah, in the place where mankind first belonged, while the original wildcat, the ur-cat from which all other wildcats evolved, is believed to have arisen in Europe and then spread around the world from there. We were both the product of millennia-long journeys, in opposite directions.

  I doubt that a wildcat here near Loch Morar would be quite so careless about being watched. I found myself in a broad valley of grass and heather moor that sloped gently down from the hills above. To either side the ridges were steeper, and craggy with bare grey rock. Down the middle of the valley floor a burn looped and wound, fringed by a lush growth of grass. There were large dense thickets of birch here and there, and small copses of Scots pine studded all around, mostly in small stands of perhaps ten or twenty trees, clustered close together to form little islands of deep green. The effect was strangely reminiscent of the savannah, in spite of the relentless rain that swept down the valley in gust after gust, like waves. The pines looked randomly placed, but I wondered whether these were really relics of a former forest, or if they had been planted like this; the effect was so decorative, so park-like, that although it looked completely natural, it was so pleasing to the eye that it was hard to credit that it had not been designed this way, that it had been created, and was a simulacrum, an improvement upon nature. I took shelter beneath the nearest stand of pines and looked over the burn and to the hills beyond. Not that there was really much in the way of shelter; the wind was so strong that it blew the rain in horizontally between the tree trunks and found ways to penetrate my rain gear. I was already soaked through, and would only get wetter, but I was enraptured. I would like to come back here with a tent, I thought; this would be the most perfect place to wake.

  In this weather I had not expected to see much sign of life, but an eagle suddenly appeared, cruising low and slow down the valley, following the burn – a golden eagle, with a distinctive ragged and rain-soaked look about it. It had a missing primary feather, like a missing tooth in a comb. I would have marvelled at its size had I not seen the even larger sea eagle just a day or two before, but it was still a bird of astonishing power and grace in spite of the elements. It checked itself, drew lower, and circled, and I saw a movement beneath it. There was a small herd of six red deer hinds grazing in the long grass just over the burn. They all looked up at once. They seemed unconcerned by the eagle, but had noticed me, and were all looking intently in my direction. They were close; I could scarcely believe that I hadn’t seen them until now, and they hadn’t noticed me, but the rain was thick like mist, and it cast a veil, softened the edges of everything. A golden eagle circling low over a herd of red deer by a burn-side, copses of Scots pine all around, and a backdrop of heather moor leading up to pale grey crags above. It was an almost archetypical image of the Highlands, like something that belonged on the lid of a tin of shortbread.

  The eagle veered away and the deer s
talked sedately through the grass. There was no panic there; they were just exercising a little caution, increasing the distance between us by a few more yards. The eagle turned its attention to a ridge of the crag across the valley, and dropped low, until it was just a couple of feet above the ground. It drifted slowly along the ridge, without a single wing-beat, as if weightless, clinging to the contours of the hillside in search of small prey.

  Once it was out of sight, I stepped out from among the trees and proceeded to climb the valley, following the course of the burn. The number of copses of trees gradually fell as I climbed. Eventually I reached the point where the burn met the first lochan, and the view opened out. Around the outflow, the burn was flanked by one last cluster of pines, about twenty or thirty together. Apart from at that one point, the shores of the loch were bare; I had reached the treeline. In the shelter of the trees was a pair of redwings. The redwings are our smallest thrush, with distinctive eye-stripes and a bloody gash, not on the wing, but on their flank just beneath the wing. They arrive every winter from Scandinavia in vast numbers, and then leave again in the spring. In recent years, just a very few pairs, perhaps fewer than ten, have stayed on in northern Scotland to breed. I supposed that these two birds still had time to leave, but it was nice to imagine that they might have chosen to remain, and had decided that this magical place could be a home to them. It would be a rare pleasure to hear one sing, if I still could; like most of the thrushes they have a beautiful song, which I can still recall from my years in the far north.

  From beneath the trees I looked out over the lochan. Gusts of wind blew across it, stirring up the surface so that sudden shimmers of light raced across the waters towards me. There was an unexpected flash of brilliant white among the heather, and then another. A pair of wheatears – white-arses as they were originally called – bounding from rock to rock. My first of the year; in fact, my first summer migrants of the year, and here they were in the company of redwings, winter migrants. I found myself trying to recall if I had ever seen summer and winter visitors in the same place, at the same time. They must seldom meet; they come from opposite directions, at opposite ends of the year. I cannot imagine that their migration routes ever intersect. I wondered if they even noticed one another, if a bird gives any mind to another if it is not predator or prey or competitor, if it is just an irrelevance or if it is a cause of curiosity.

  It was not a great surprise to see the wheatears; more of a surprise that these were the first I had seen. They are one of our very earliest migrant birds, even though they are a bird of the remote, craggy northern uplands. You might expect our first migrants to be the birds of milder southern climes, but here are the wheatears already, right on the brink of the receding snows. It must, I suppose, be something to do with the availability of their food supply; migration is always about food and survival. A few of our migrants, chiffchaffs and blackcaps among them, have begun to overwinter on the south coast as our winters have grown milder. They only leave if they have to.

  It had been my intention to turn back after I had reached this point and seen the mountain lochs, but I was already soaked through – I could not really get any wetter – so I thought I might just as well surrender myself to the elements. It is often the way; if the weather is middling, you make an effort to protect yourself, seeking a little shelter from wind and rain, but there is a point of no return, where it no longer matters any more, and you just embrace the chaos. I decided to climb; I would take on the nearest low summit, where I should get a view across this whole chain of small lochs, and then I could continue, cross the peninsula and follow the shore to Mallaig.

  I began to climb, sometimes following sheep trails, sometimes striking out across fields of scree, head down into the wind. Jumping a gully, I flushed a snipe from right beneath my feet. Normally they will rocket away, jinking off into the distance in a panic, but this one seemed slow and measured, perhaps needing to find its bearings against the wind. It did a fly-by, close to me, and looked calmly into my eyes. The snipe and the woodcock, with their huge black night-eyes and their steep foreheads, have a strange, inscrutable look about them, as if they are bearers of some ancient, impenetrable wisdom.

  As I climbed higher, the view expanded. The little copse of pines at the first lochan looked tiny now. The middle lochan was completely bare all around, while the third and largest had a fringe of stunted birch woods around its northern shore, and an island capped with pines. I reached the low top that I had been aiming for. As I mounted the summit I stepped into the full force of the gale, and I staggered to stay on my feet. I leaned into the wind to keep my place, and the rain stung against my face like a slap. From my hilltop I could see no trace of human life, and the ferocity of the weather made this landscape seem more untamed than ever. I turned my head and sheltered my face from the elements, then struck out downhill and into the wilds.

  MAY

  Silent Spring

  My next journey back to the Rough Bounds, as always, took me around fifteen hours on the train. It would have been quicker, and possibly cheaper, to fly partway. But I like overland travel; it gives a sense of where I am in the world, while flying feels more like teleportation. I step into a box, and when I emerge a few hours later I am somewhere utterly different, having gained nothing but a little time, and perhaps a feeling of guilt for having flown at all. No sense of progressive change in landscape and climate.

  The West Highland Line is highly regarded as a train journey, and rightly so; it travels through some of Britain’s wildest landscapes, and incorporates its highest railway halt, and its westernmost. From Glasgow, it first follows the shore of the Firth of Clyde, before skirting Loch Lomond and climbing into the true Highlands. For a while it follows the route of the West Highland Way, then passes through the edge of Rannoch Forest, and across the vast bleak expanses of Rannoch Moor. It wraps around the snowcaps of the Grampians to reach the coast at Fort William, at the foot of Ben Nevis, and then it crosses the foot of the Caledonian Canal. This leads down to the sea from the Great Glen, a geological rift which crosses the entire country, and marks the southern limit of the North-West Highlands, which take up around a third of the country. Then the route heads off towards the Rough Bounds and the line’s terminus at the fishing port of Mallaig. The Rough Bounds proper begin at Loch Shiel, and it is true that from the moment you cross the iconic viaduct at Glenfinnan, that curves its way around the valley at the head of the loch, the landscape suddenly steps up a gear, as if crossing the threshold to another realm, the ‘Highlands of the Highlands’ as it is sometimes called. From here it is all densely packed rocky crags, wildwoods of oak and birch and pine, sudden lochs, and glimpses of empty bays that look out to the islands. Most noticeably of all, there are barely any houses, just a few tiny settlements and isolated halts, at least until Mallaig is reached. After wandering in the Rough Bounds, coming to Mallaig feels like visiting the fleshpots of a big city. There are fishing boats, ferries heading off to Skye and the Small Isles of Rum and Eigg, Muck and Canna. There are shops and cafés, banks and bars. There are day-trippers, come on the daily steam train that runs in the summer months. Yet the population is only in the hundreds; anywhere else it would be a small village rather than the metropolis it seems.

  With a portion of the journey taking place overnight, I had arrived back in North Morar in the early afternoon, in spectacular hot sunshine. It was the latter half of May and the birches were in full leaf; the twisted oaks also had small leaves, pale and lemony green and fresh-looking. Everywhere the bracken was starting to emerge. Its fronds were as yet unfurled, still curled up into tight fists, and looked like a vast buried army punching its way out of the ground. On my two earlier visits there had been dry days and wet days, but not now. This time the Highlands were about to bake for a week in an almost unprecedented early summer hot spell, while the rain and clouds stayed elsewhere.

  I set off along the shore of Loch Morar with my pack. I had no more
excuse to resort to hotels; it would be all outdoors from here on. The birds were singing, and the woods were a haze of blue, for this was the peak of the bluebell season. Their scent lingered on the air, the characteristic drug-like scent of a sunny spring day in Britain. There is something soporific about that odour, in combination with the soft-edged blur of the massed ranks of hanging flowers. It is the very essence of blue, a blue that will send me into a daze, a reverie, almost taking me out of time. Britain’s nature may not be especially diverse compared with many places, but it does have its highlights, and this is one of our great specialities; the bluebell is restricted to the eastern seaboard of the northern Atlantic, and the vast bulk of the world’s population grows on these islands; the blue islands of spring.

  Common sandpipers flushed from the shore alongside and flew in arcs away from me, keeping their distance. Their flight is utterly distinctive; they fly low to the water, their wings hooded, almost umbrella-like, so that their wingtips dip almost to the surface. And they call their piercing, insistent call, which to me has always been emblematic of summer in the uplands. But not any more. For me they are no longer sandpipers, for me they are just sand––. I can scarcely believe that I have now lost such a shrill, loud call. It starts to feel as though my world is being dismantled around me, piece by piece. It cannot help but turn my thoughts to loss in a wider sense. For every bird I hear I cannot help but think, is this the last time I will hear this song? It makes me feel a sense of nostalgia even for things that are not yet gone; it makes me pay close attention, and appreciate the full worth of everything that I still have. Perhaps it makes me value the moment more, and forces me to reflect on everything that is already lost and gone; all the things that I shall never hear, and never see. And when I see something extraordinary, an eagle or an otter, perhaps, there is a little part of me that cannot help but think, is this my last eagle? Is this my last otter? For in reality it is not the world that is leaving me, it is me that is leaving the world. It is my own absence that I am having to come to terms with. The sandpipers, I trust, will continue to call at the water’s edge, just not to me, and the sun will still shine. It is reassuring to remember that the world will go on without me.