Wanderings of a Naturalist 



The Garbh Choire is at such times a place of gloom and 

 the home of the storm spirit. When the squall is at its 

 fiercest the sky, maybe, is of a sudden lit up by a brilliant 

 flash of lightning, and there follows almost on the instant 

 the thunder which reverberates across the corrie, flung back 

 from one precipice to another. But these quickly moving 

 storms are of short duration, and soon the sky clears to a 

 steely blue, while Braeriach and Cairn Toul lose their mist- 

 cap, and eastwards across the Lairig Ben MacDhui stands 

 out once more, now powdered with snow as a result of the 

 short-lived storm. 



There are days, in summer, as in autumn, when not a 

 breath of air stirs in Garbh Choire Mhor. At times such as 

 these the great corrie is filled with a wonderful silence — the 

 silence of the hills. From afar, maybe, comes the murmur 

 of a distant waterfall, a sound in keeping with the grandeur 

 of the corrie. 



As winter lingers long here so is she early in setting her 

 mark on the corrie. For days the snow — that in tlie glens 

 beneath comes as rain, or perhaps sleet — falls softly, and with 

 the clearing of the skies the frost binds the ground. Slowly 

 but inexorably the burns are imprisoned — the ice grips them 

 even where they are most rushing and turbulent — and on 

 Lochan Uaine the young ice creeps out from the shallow 

 water at the loch's edge. 



Thus it is that, when in the valley of the Dee autumn still 

 lingers, and the larches are as yet golden with autumn tints, 

 Garbh Choire Mhor is altogether a country of ice and snow 

 —of polar grandeur and Arctic sternness. 



So it will remain through the long winter months — a 

 place wild and desolate, and lifeless save for the ptarmigan 

 that people it, and the eagle that at times visits it at his 

 hunting. 



i8o 



