| A Herd Of Red Deer. - Frank Fraser Darling. |
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Some outdoor books are truly memorable. Frank Fraser Darling's A Herd Of Red Deer, first published in 1937, is such a one and has now been reissued.
He had the rare gift of being able to write scientifically in a popular and biographical fashion and that is one of the main reasons why this very satisfying book has endured and is not just for specialists.
Frank Fraser Darling died in 1979 and is remembered as one of the founding fathers of the green movement, an ecologist, lecturer, prophet and one of the first group of modern scientists to get out of the laboratory and the library and on to the hills, moors and islands. He had critics in the scientific establishment, but produced a series of highly- praised books.
A Herd Of Red Deer was his first substantial publication and was the product of two years of organised wandering and observations in Wester Ross, particularly in the deer forests of Dundonnell.
As you would expect, there are lengthy accounts of deer movement, habits, territory, population, the deer social system, diet, weather, breeding, other wildlife and pages of notes, charts, maps and diagrams.
Editor Walter Stephen contributes an introduction and other helpful material, including the fact that 28 per cent of Europe's red deer are found in Scotland and that deer stalking is currently worth an estimated £105 million to rural communities.
Fraser Darling's writings often tell much of the author: "The burns fall to the waters of the Fionn Loch, gleaming as white as its name in the June sun, and there are traces of the dwellings of men. I have heard the singing of women's voices and the laughter of little children in this place. Perhaps the play of wind and falling water made these sounds - I neither know nor care - I was content to listen to the beauty of the moment."
He wrote of the near-fey sense of "place" that modern hillwalkers and stalkers sometimes experience in the hills, on the surface a strange thing (many might say) for a scientist to record. ". . . at the head of Uisage Toll a' Mhadaidh (the ter-of-the-wolf's-hole) the scene has changed. The cliffs fall steep to the loch and the ground about is as rough as it could be with fallen rocks, deep peat hags and heaped moraines. I have found it a strange place, and the same thought has been murmured to me by some of the few men of the country who have been there.
"These sensations may be caused through the eye by the dispositions of masses and planes and their relation to the course of the sun, as well as by the huge rock surfaces devoid of vegetation. There are many such places in the Scottish Highlands where seasoned men - myself too - have to move out at nightfall. The sensation is not fear, for intimate knowledge of the place disposes of that; but there is a discomfort sufficient to make a man move. These problems of the character of individual places must remain."
He also notes such details as "modern" outdoor clothing making slithering noises when the wearer is stalking deer.
He walked, climbed and slept out in all weathers, a scientist with a heart and a soul. Of the wild area whose red deer inhabitants he analysed so well, he wrote: "The country as a whole has a joyful quality, and the constant change of lights and shades to which I have referred are stimulating to the seeing eye. I have not fought the country these two years, but have let it be my foster-mother. Her discipline has been stern, but her smile is never far away."
Yes, this is a treatise, but with a difference.
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