The Exhibition (2)

                           Of maps and Munro's Tables

Nowadays we take maps for granted but the mapping of the Highlands and islands of Scotland wasn't completed by the Ordnance Survey until 1855. Roads were poor and the railways connecting Inverness and Fort William to the south still to be constructed.

In 1889 the Scottish Mountaineering Club was formed, mainly to promote the cause of Alpinism. The members were inevitably drawn from the landed and professional class, men who had the wealth and leisure to pursue such an unusual activity. The Scottish Hills were not much thought of, seen mostly as training for the Alps. The general consensus was that there was only between thirty and forty tops over 3000 feet.

To dispel their ignorance and settle the question once and for all, one of their first and keenest members was asked to look into the matter. Sir Hugh Munro, an estate owner from Kirriemuir, published his findings in the Scottish Mountaineering Club Journal of 1891. His tables must have come as a surprise, for he listed 538 tops over 3000 feet and 283 considered as separate mountains. This gave a huge boost to the exploration of the Scottish hills as enthusiasts pushed into the remote areas attracted by the tops listed in Munro's Tables.

Sadly, many of these areas had been depopulated. Even the sheep runs that had replaced the people had gone and the mountainous areas transformed into large sporting estates, some of which jealously guarded their privacy.

Munro managed all but two of these tops, but others went on to complete the full round. In recent times, with improved communications and almost universal car ownership, most communities have a few people who have completed the Munros. After that, if they still have the energy, they can tackle the lower Corbetts and Donalds. These hills are also listed in Munros Tables.




Munro's Tables
Oil on canvas bonded to board.

Of course, all this scurrying around the country climbing hills was impossible without maps. I have come to believe there are two types of people in the world, those who love maps and the rest, who are indifferent to them. This second group seems to live in a cloud of environmental vagueness, verging on the permanently lost. Maps are knowledge and as the old saying has it, knowledge can be power.

I'm sure there are still people in remote areas who resent having their photographs taken. They believe that someone making an image of them is stealing their vital powers, soul or spirit. Maps are much the same. Mapping a country is an essential precursor to invasion and many maps are state secrets. Having a collection of maps of mountain areas stuffed in a drawer gives us a sense of ownership. We can follow the watercourses, work out routes and poke our fingers in the most inaccessible recesses without stirring from our home. They are an aid to action, things of beauty and a perfect blend of science and art. However, I sometimes wish that Scotland still had some unmapped land.



Walkers discover a disturbing anomaly in their map
Oil on canvas, 61cms x 81 cms 

 Sometimes, Chance takes part in the production of a painting. One day, on my daily walk along the beach I came upon a worn, white board, washed up on the tideline. It was plywood coated with Formica but badly worn with a hole right through it. I reckoned it must have been the table off a creel boat, worn by the creels. What attracted me to it was that each layer of plywood looked like the contours of a map. I walked on, but decided if it was still there the next day I would take it home.

It lay in the studio for some months while I thought about it. Eventually I patched the hole and started to use the plywood contours as a start of a painting. Of course, it had to be a map.

The Living Mountain
Oil on driftwood panel, 160 x 60 cms

 

I peopled it with a host of hill walkers such as you find nowadays on a good weekend. The colouring was based on the old Bartholomew's maps which I found very attractive. The mountain is called Ben Dinnaeken. A friend actually asked me where Ben Dinnaeken was, so I told him I didnae ken.

 

 The title, The Living Mountain, is a book by Nan Shepherd which has recently become very popular. The book is unusual and well worth reading, especially by anyone who loves the Cairngorms. There are some beautiful description but it leaves me feeling slightly uneasy.The essays are an attempt to distill the "essence" of the hills, which seems to me an impossible task. As a poet, author and teacher she was obviously aware of contemporary trends and her writing seems a bit self consciously literary. This, of course is my personal view and I would encourage anyone who is interested in the Scottish hills to read it for themselves.

 

 

Hill Fever - The Exhibition (1)

 

In the spring of 2018 I put together many of my paintings on a Scottish hill theme for a one man show at the Kinghorn Station Gallery. I intended to post the paintings in time for the exhibition, but I was too busy. So, only a year late, I'm doing this now. I could not afford a catalogue but I did put together a loose leaf folder which I called 'The Exhibition Viewers Manual' containing photo's of the paintings and text relating to them. The manual forms a basis for this and subsequent blogs, with a few extra comments and additions. I hope this makes sense. 

 




On Ben Macdui

0il on canvas, 61cms x 71.5cms.

 On an April morning I left Bob Scott's bothy and walked up Gleann Laoigh Bheag. I intended to climb Derry Cairngorm up the side of a burn on it's south western slope, but I was in a complete dream and walked past my turn off. Soon I was climbing Sron Riach and could see Derry Cairngorm across the glen. It was too late now to turn back, so headed, quite happily, up Ben Macdui. It was one of these dark, gloomy days, but with cloud just above the four thousand foot mark. The steep slope soared skywards, partially covered by snow fields. I now looked down on the summits of Carn a' Mhaim and Devils Point and into the gloom of the Lairig Ghru. The true immensity of Macdui is revealed on this slope. The term 'awsome' is greatly overused, but I did feel awe, along with a little trepidation.

By the time I'd reached the ruin of the sappers bothy black cloud covered the top, blowing stinging, horizontal snow. At the summit I turned my back on this and marched on a bearing till the mist cleared. Then I had the pleasure of loping over big snowfields all the way down to a frozen Loch Etchacan. All the way I kept my eyes peeled for the Big Grey Man, but he was not there.

A Mountaineer Fleeing.
Oil on canvas, 46cms x 66cms
 

The Big Grey Man of Ben Macdui

 

In the past, when people had to make their own entertainment, the Highlands were rich in stories and legends. Many of these tales were of fairies, witches, monsters and the supernatural, created to make the listener uneasy or give them a fright. Most have now been forgotten, but one or too, like the legend of the Loch Ness Monster, have grown arms and legs and attract tourists from all over the world.
 

The Big Grey Man of Ben Macdui would have been forgotten, or not even born, had not a senior member of the Cairngorm Club, at an annual dinner, told a strange tale. The speaker was Professor Norman Collie, an Aberdonian by birth and now first Professor of Organic Chemistry at London University. He was also one of the great mountaineers of his era and had climbed extensively from the Rocky Mountains to the Himalayas. The year was 1925, but the event he related occurred much earlier, in 1891.

He had just left  the summit of Ben Macdhui and the mist was thick. He couldn't see much and his only sensation was the crunch of his boots. Then he began to hear another crunch, as if someone was following him, but taking a longer stride than him. It happened again and again and he could make no sense of this. He stopped and peered back into the mist but could see nothing. When he started walking again the crunches followed him. He was a rational man and told himself that  this was nonsense. However, his nerve broke and he fled in panic all the way down to Rothiemurchus forest. He said "Whatever you make of it I do not know, but there is something very queer about the top of Ben Macdhui and I will not go back there again by myself, I know."

His account was published and all sorts of speculation and nonsense swirled about it. Collie hade only heard a noise, but eventually he received a letter from a very reputable source that claimed to have actually seen the Big Grey Man. The writer was Dr. A.M. Kellas, who became a Himalayan mountaineer and a pioneer in the study of high altitude physiology. One day he and his brother were just below Ben Macdhui summit, hammering on rocks and trying to find crystals. Suddenly they saw a giant figure come down towards them from the summit. It disappeared in a hollow but while waiting for it to reappear they were overcome with terror and fled down to Loch Etchacan and off the mountain. They were absolutely convinced this was a physical entity and not a shadow or optical illusion.

Since then the Big Grey Man has been mixed up with all sorts of nonsense, including flying saucers. Others, on the outer boundaries of religions such as Buddhism, claim he was one of the five 'perfected men' who control the destinies of the world and have even conversed with him in the Lairig Ghru. My own view is that people do get frights, especially when they're tired and suffering the sensory deprivation of thick mist when there's very little tangible to relate to. The human mind abhors a vacuum. Also, too much is made of Collies and Kellas's scientific rationality. They wouldn't be the first or the last scientist to find an outlet in practical joking. However, if such a creature does exist he must be lonely. For companionship, the cause of sexual equality and the propagation of the species I have invented a Big Grey Woman. May they be happy!

The Big Grey Woman
Offset drawing and watercolour, 29cms x 31cms.