First Snow

I was away during the first couple of weeks of November, coming back with memories of some warm and sunny days on the beaches of Northumberland. This was a complete contrast to the cold weather that descended on the Peninsula shortly after my return. At first it brought cold, clear nights accompanied by bright, crisp days that were followed by a few days of snowfall, when snow found its way all the way down to sea level. This gave me an opportunity to capture some wintery scenes in the woodlands of Sunart.

​A favourite place of mine, Lochan na Dunaich, is just a couple of miles from the house. There is a lovely little trail that winds its way through the woodland there and this is where I headed to on the morning I awoke, opened the curtains, and saw the landscape covered in a fresh dusting of snow.

​The first part of the trail takes you alongside a dense stand of birch trees and on this particular morning its web of impenetrable branches was topped with a thin layer of snow. The snow was so finely balanced on them that it seemed like the slightest of movement would send it crashing to the ground.

​Thankfully, there was not a breath of wind, the slender limbs remained perfectly still and the snow, which was like powdered white sugar, clung to them, accentuating their form and allowing me to create a set of abstracts that portrayed the web of dark and tangled branches against a beautifully white backdrop. In amongst all this, were beech saplings, who had seemingly ignored autumn’s invitation to shed their leaves, defiantly holding on to them, almost as if to say that they were not yet ready for the onset of winter.

​Continuing beyond the birch trees takes you to Lochan na Dunaich, the ‘Little Loch of Sadness’, where a local tale has it that young children were lured into its waters by a Kelpie and never seen again. It is an inky black pool of water with fallen trees around its boggy edges, so you can well imagine this tale being used to warn children away from straying too close to it.

​Despite this somewhat disconcerting tale, I find the lochan to be an incredibly calming place. It sits in a natural bowl surrounded by tall trees and a steep hillside which shelters it from the worst of the weather. It was completely still on the morning I was there. Its surface perfectly mirrorlike, reflecting the surroundings in incredible detail. Surprisingly, it can be like that on the stormiest of days and on such days, a visit there can provide welcome respite from the turbulent drama of Loch Sunart, only a few hundred metres away. 

​As autumn departs and winter arrives, the trees are left bare and the colours of the woodlands on the Peninsula shift from warm hues of red, orange and yellow to a muted palette that seems to be dominated by the russet of the undergrowth, the silver of the lichen and the mauve of the birch tree twigs. This is something I first noticed on a winter walk in Ariundle Oakwood about 3 or 4 years ago.

​With this in mind, I visited Ariundle a couple of days after my wander around Lochan na Dunaich, while snow was still on the ground, albeit a fair amount of it had shifted as a result of daytime thaws, which is a common feature of the temperate climate here on the Peninsula. The weather was mixed, with morning sunshine gradually disappearing as the sky greyed.

​While I made my way into the woodland, admiring an oak that always catches my eye as I pass it, a heavy snow shower swept in. A curtain of white descended from the slate-grey sky in a matter of minutes, with large, swirling flakes tumbling through the air, creating a veil that softened the trunk and limbs of this ancient tree.

​The snow began to ease as I continued my walk into the woods, with the curtain of white lifting to reveal distant birch and oak trees on the far edge of the scrubland to the south of the path. Pausing for a moment, I picked out two of these trees using a long lens while the last of the snowflakes dotted the air in front of them. 

​Further on, a group of oaks stand on a mound that rises from the bogland that lies between the path and the Strontian River. I’ve photographed them a few times from various vantage points while they have been in leaf, but I have never been happy with the results. Undeterred, I decided to try again because their now skeletal forms seemed to stand out from the background more than they had done previously. 

​Continuing into the woods, I came to a place where innumerable beech saplings have sprung up beneath the ancient oaks that cover the hillside there. Their slender trunks and delicate branches support a crown of orange leaves that seemed to glow like embers against the muted tones around them, serving as a reminder of autumn’s lingering touch amid the starkness of a winter that was fast approaching. It is here where I ended my photowalk, turned around and made my way back home to the warmth that awaited me.