| Seton Gordon’s Cairngorms: An Anthology - Compiled by Hamish Brown. |
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Some books are ideal for browsing, dipping into and re-reading and this is particularly true of Hamish Brown’s anthology of Seton Gordon writings Seton Gordon’s Cairngorms.
There is no better person than Hamish to digest and present Seton Gordon’s sensitive and perceptive thoughts and observations. Hamish, too, is intimately acquainted with the Cairngorms including visiting all the Munros at least seven times, walking all the passes and immersing himself in the life of this great range, its geology, social history, plants and trees, bird and animal life.
Seton Gordon was an ecologist before the word was coined, the Cairngorms were his first love and it was appropriate that when he died in 1977, just short of his 91st birthday, that his ashes were scattered in his beloved hills.
He wrote 27 books and hundreds of articles whose themes were nature lore and folk history in its many forms. He loved golden eagles and sometimes enlisted the help of gamekeepers to carry old-fashioned and cumbersome camera gear to photograph eyries. He was both a scientist and a hill gangrel, wore a tattered kilt in all weathers, and was an outstanding piper. His writings captivated wide audiences.
Seton was a teenager when his first article was published and for the first three decades of the 20th century he was the only full-time practising naturalist in Britain. His works included The Cairngorm Hills Of Scotland, published in 1925, and this new anthology should be seen as a companion volume to Seton Gordon’s Scotland: An Anthology, published in 2005, and also compiled by Hamish Brown.
The main text of the book is divided into 13 sections with detailed themes within each. For example, “A Varied Wildlife” covers red deer, the Scottish wildcat, the last wolf in Scotland and Cairngorm stories. There is a good collection of archive photography.
Seton first explored the Cairngorms when stravaigers were few and far between. The new breed of skiers, hill trampers, ranger naturalists, tourists and countryside planners should read this book. Most of the Cairngorm area is now a national nature reserve and part of a national park. More than 1000 people live in the area and there are 1.4 million visitors. Seton’s vision and knowledge should be near-mandatory material for many of them.
Hamish contributes a helpful preface and naturalist Dick Balharry a foreword. James Macdonald Lockhart, Seton’s grandson and literary executor, provides an evocative afterword in which he says that Seton found that he could reproduce the song of the greenshank on his bagpipe chanter.
Seton was that kind of man and his own song still rings out for those who have ears to hear. |
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