Beside the River Farrar

In early April I made my first visit of the year to Glen Strathfarrar, one of my favourite native pinewood areas, and a glen which rivals Affric for its wildness and beauty. The road into the glen has a gate across it, which is closed to the public in the winter, only opening again at the beginning of April, so this was my first day out in the glen since last October, when I’d spent a day there photographing aspen trees (Populus tremula) at the peak of their autumn colours.

Driving up into the glen, I left my car near where there is a small footbridge across the river. The road in the glen goes along to the north of the river, and while there is some good native woodland on that half of the glen, the bulk of the native pinewoods are on the south side, where they face north. This is a similar situation to both Glen Cannich and Glen Affric, the next two glens south, where the main pinewood areas are also north facing.

One of the theories for this phenomenon is that those north-facing slopes receive less sun and therefore stay wetter for more of the year, which makes them less susceptible to burning. Fires, either naturally occurring or ones started by people, undoubtedly played some role in the destruction of the Caledonian Forest, and in Glen Cannich today there are numerous fire-scarred pine snags (standing dead trees) that date from a human-caused fire in the 1950s.

Whatever the reason, it’s great that these remnant pinewoods have survived on the south sides of glens such as Strathfarrar, and my intention for the day was to explore the area south of the footbridge. Reaching the bridge, I stopped to take some photographs of the tranquil section of the river immediately downstream from it, and of some of the Scots pines (Pinus sylvestris) growing by the bridge itself.

One of the pines in particular drew my attention, with an aesthetically pleasing pattern of branches growing out from its main trunk. As with all Scots pines, the bark on the branches was an orange-red colour and was papery in its texture. This contrasts with the older bark, which thickens up, is grey in colour and forms patterns of interlocking plates on the trunks of mature trees.

Over time, the bark in old Scots pines can be several inches thick, with deep fissures in between different sections, and these provide the habitat for a range of small invertebrates. This older bark is composed of layers, each of them comprised of uniquely-shaped pieces, and which fit together like the interlocking pieces of a natural jigsaw puzzle. The outermost layers of the bark are grey, but where the inner layers are exposed, they are more reddish-brown in colour.

The bark of each pine is like a natural work of art, and I never tire of admiring the beauty and diversity of the shapes and patterns in them. Another of the pines also had an interesting pattern of branches radiating out from its trunk, indicating that it must have had an unusual history at some point, which caused some of the branches to grow in a descending formation. Each of these old pines has a story to tell I’m sure, but it’s not always the case that I can understand what that is …

While I was looking at the pines, I noticed that some of them were reflected in a still section of the river. There were some interesting rock formations there as well, and I spent a little while watching the slow eddies of foam circling in this backwater, overlaid on the mirror image backdrop of the reflected pines.

 

 

 

 

 

 

There were also some perfect reflections in this section of the river of the rock formations on the other side, and as I paid more attention to the water, I saw more and more of visual interest to me there.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The river at this point flows in a large bend around the area where I was standing, so I walked through some of the pines to get to the downstream section, as there is a small cascading waterfall there.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

After the tranquility of the still water and the pine reflections in it, the cascading water of the falls downstream provided an alternative subject for contemplation of the fluid motion of the river.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

It had been many years since I’d spent any time at this cascading waterfall, and on that previous occasion, possibly 20 years or so ago, I’d watched some Atlantic salmon (Salmo salar) circling in the pool, gathering their strength for the leap up the falls, to reach their spawning grounds further upstream. There were no salmon there this day though, as it was too early in the year for them to be migrating back to their birth area to lay their eggs.

Descending to the water’s edge just downstream of the falls, there were some more interesting rock formations with white water rushing between them. I took a series of still photographs there, as I knew the movement of the foam would create softly-blurred motion in the images. The combination of that with the solidity of the rocks creates a very visually appealing contrast for me…

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

I ended up spending so much time by this section of the river that I never made it further into the pinewoods on the south side of the glen that day. The beauty of the river, both in the still section, and by the falls, captured my attention, and provided a very satisfying experience for me, without having to walk a long distance at all. I did take a few more photographs of the pines beside the river there, but my explorations of the larger pinewood area further south in the glen would have to wait for another day …

 

In addition to providing the subject for the still photographs I’d taken, the flow of the river had proved irresistible to me for my growing interest in shooting some video footage out in the forest. So, during the day I’d also been doing some filming, which expresses the movement of the water in a different way, and here’s a short edited compilation of that:

[jwplayer config=”alan29may” file=”http://www.alansblog.org.uk/alan10apr13b.mp4″ html5_file=”http://www.alansblog.org.uk/alan10apr13b.mp4″ image=”http://www.alansblog.org.uk/alan10apr13b.jpg”]