Wee Fella

With his hands in his pockets and cap askew the wee fella wanders up the village street. If street it could be called. A single thread of narrow potholed tar stretches from crossroads to arched bridge, passing two wee shops and the green hut of Annabel the post mistress. A walk only to peer over the old humpbacked bridge to see if a Salmon had made it over the falls this tide to rest under the big rock where a worm could be dangled before its neb. Nothing resting there today.

Life was free, simple and uncomplicated, and all that was on the wee fellas mind was these leapers of waterfalls and figuring out how he might catch one. If not the silver traveller Salmon, then the elusive ancient trout in the lake of the old Strathcona estate. Big Loch Leven trout and Rainbows from a stocking seventy years past. Peaty black and huge, these monsters were hard to tempt. If an Islay malt gets its flavour from peaty phenols then these trout were marinated in them. Lay them on a bed of grass and the darkness came away from their skin and beautiful silver trout revealed underneath, with the pink slash along the side of the rainbows seeming exotic. They say there is only one lake in Scotland. There was one here too, until the locals passed away or left, and incomers called it a lochan.

He walked up to the old boat shed, a voyager canoe decaying in its midst, the paths around the lake covered by thick rhododendron almost impassable. A lake where he imagined the young Métis Isabella, paddled away her unhappiness with the Scottish weather. No matter that Donald her husband had tried so hard to bring Canada to her with his creation.

He wandered back by Invercoe and onto the loch shore common grazing. Looking out onto the sea loch and its Islands feeling belonging, and sense of wonder to life. A life of potential outcomes and what he might become when released from the torpor of a classroom. Not knowing then that childhood was mostly all gains, and to come adulthood and loss.

He picked up a pebble

and threw it into the sea.

And another, and another.

He couldn’t stop.

He wasn’t trying to fill the sea.

He wasn’t trying to empty the beach.

He was just throwing away,

nothing else but.

Like a kitten playing

he was practicing for the future

when there’ll be so many things

he’ll want to throw away

if only his fingers will unclench

and let them go.

“Small Boy” by Norman MacCaig

New Book "Between a Loch and a Hard Place

Book £12.95

Postage £3.30 1st Class Royal Mail

email davygunn@gmail.com with your address if you would like a copy. I will reply with payment details

The author was born in Oban and brought up in the village of Carnoch, better known nowadays as Glencoe village. A Highland upbringing rich in community. Glencoe is an area steeped in bloody history, surrounded by mountains and cut through by the River Coe. Known for its infamous 1692 massacre, Glencoe is also famed for its mountaineering, with people coming from all over the world to climb its majestic peaks and test themselves on its rock and ice climbs. Glencoe Mountain Rescue Team has a long history of saving lives and of rescue from the West Highlands and has had a few of Scotland’s best mountaineers as members. Not least was one of the rescue team founders, Hamish MacInnes.

This book gives some local history and insight into how a Highland boy lived beside a river that gave quietude and wonder as its silver leapers, the Atlantic salmon, forged up through its foamy waters into the mountains. And where the boy, me, was to meet mountain folk who opened his eyes to a broader world and possibilities. This book is about my upbringing, and the community of Glencoe that formed me. The reader may find the climbing and rescue tales a bit technical as I have used the terms and technicalities of the sport. The same is true for skiing. Forgive me as it’s hard to convey some of these ascents and descents without these technical details. Skip past bits if necessary and just enjoy the book as a collection of impressions and short tales.

The River is the thread

Running stitches through time

Gathering mountains, forests and sea

And binding me to this land

Lucy Morrice

The Dash. The Span of our Life

This last two years has had some moments, not least getting back fit after a new hip. It was harder than expected, especially as I had a setback from trying to climb the ski mountain in snow two months after the operation. Diminished is how I seemed to those who know me. Lately I have been trying to undimish myself, and thankfully I am almost back to fully fit, and getting quite strong. The physical setback had quite a profound effect on my mental health but that is now also healing. Perhaps its these hurts and setbacks, the losses, the downs that teach us the biggest lessons. Somehow we get up again. I want to live better, and more gently on this small planet. I want to love those close to me, family and friends. And be more active against injustice and ecocide. But sometimes that is daunting in the face of current politics and changes in society.

How we live and what we leave as legacy of our short years on this little planet was recently brought home by the brevity of a gravestone. An entire lifespan condensed to a dash between birth and death. The birth and end dates can, sadly, be too close for some who left this earthly place far too soon. The dates mere bookends to life. The dash between matters, it’s a life, and it’s going to be our eulogy. That tiny little mark and it's span should be lived well and filled with love and gratitude. At the end that is all there is to life. Two dates conjoined by a little mark. The love you gave and received the only after life. Dates and a dash chiseled on your temporal stone. Time erodes, moss covers and we are forgotten.

“In three words I can sum up everything I've learned about life: it goes on.”

Polarity

That day I stand in the Meadows. Music pulses out across the crowd. A light haze above, and an earthy skunky aroma in the air. A variety of genders in red dresses move to the rhythm of the music full of joy and Sativa. I'm an imposter here, astounded, and confounded at the variety of humanity around me. Betwixt loving the spectacle and joy of what's around, and between the polarities of who I am.  Edinburgh man to be one day, or country boy the next. Even among the furthest bogs and lochs of the moor of Rannoch I never felt so far from myself. And yet I feel very alive. The paradox of the gael. A living, breathing, dichotomy. 

This day I am on the river seeking silver salar and it's wisdom. This river that connects me between a loch and a hard place. A Strath or auld reekie. The dùthchas wins only because the decision is made for me. And that's ok.

The Kate Bushes

RECCO onboard the SAR Helicopters in Scotland

Teams have R9 detectors as sometimes helcopters don't fly

Some great news for mountain rescue in Scotland. Recco R9 detectors will be carried as winter kit on Inverness and Prestwick coastguard flights. This is something I have wanted for years. Currently we have detectors with Glencoe, Lochaber, Killin, Tayside and Cairngorm MRT’s and Glencoe Ski Patrol. Very soon we hope to have one with Braemar MRT. This gives good coverage to the teams they are with, and neighbouring teams who they assist, and who often give back up to the teams venturing into avalanche terrain. There is no point in a rescuers rescuer being in bed miles away in a time critical event when a team has members buried. 

The purpose of the detectors on the aircraft is to provide the R9 as an additional resource to equipped teams, but also very importantly give teams in remote areas where in a large proportion of the time a helicopter will be the only meaningful way to get the rescuers to an avalanche scene inside a survival window. And also as a victim location tool out with that critical time window. We should never forget Robert Burnett in the Southern Cairngorms who was dug out after 22 hours burial. Found using bamboo probes by Braemar rescuers and Invercauld estate workers, this remains a salient lesson to never give up on the buried victim.

Its been a long haul over the last 15 years getting Recco coverage in Scotland as a Recco trainer. Unlike the Alpine nations we have sadly bought into the myth that in Scotland its always too late or its trauma that has killed the victims. When there is no data to support this myth and anecdotal evidence that with earlier recovery by being searchable there would be more survivors. The ratio of trauma to triple H syndrome or where trauma is a contributing factor is in my view the same as any other country with unpredictable maritime snowpacks. A previous blog post explores this. 

https://crankitupgear.blogspot.com/2016/12/triple-h-or-trauma-in-scottish.html

A huge thanks to my colleague Nigel Harling Helicopter SAR liaison for MRC England for getting the idea of equipping the flights achieved. He has worked tirelessly with the coastguard for the last 6 months as Recco UK SAR helicopter rep. A special thanks also to Kirsty Pallas for incorporating Recco familiarity to students on the SMR avalanche course. And of course a big thanks to Recco who have supplied detectors on long term free contracts. A tremendous company to work for, and dedicated to avalanche safety and the saving of lives. 

Coastguard SAR in Action

New ideas and technology are slow to be taken up in Scotland, despite ICAR and other organisations regarding Recco as a standard search tool in avalanches. It reminds me very much of when I had a defib on trial here at Glencoe for the team in 1992, on loan after a person I was treating as first on scene arrested, and I did not have one. I had the piss taken about getting myself electrocuted when I had the big Marquette defib and later a Laerdal Heartstart. They were heavy and noisy monophasic defibs. No one was laughing when one of my colleagues Billy Muir delivered twenty shocks to a lady and got ROSP. I was on the ventilation BVM via ET tube that wild night. Who would dream of turning up at a cardiac event these days without a defib. Billy also saved someone life fairly recently working for Rabbie tours on a distillery visit where a tourist arrested and he used the distilleries defib to successfully resuscitate them. Few folk can say they definitively saved someones life. I hope they give him drams for life! 

Handheld R9 deployed in St Anton Austria