Autumn Vibes

Autumn seemed to really take hold in October, with the colour palette of the landscape on the Peninsula shifting to a mix of warm yellow, orange and red hues when the trees responded to both the drop in temperature and the drop in light levels. The expansive mix of woodland here provided ample opportunities to capture this change, with me spending my time in the woods of Moidart and Sunart photographing the varied colours of the birch, beech, rowan, larch and oak trees that can be found there.

​As is usual, I first noticed the onset of the change in colours when yellow appeared on the pockets of birch trees scattered among the oak woodland around my home at Resipole. The most prominent of these can be found in the field on the north side of the road to Salen, near the car park for Sàilean nan Cuileag, where a group of these trees stand out from a backdrop of still green-leaved oak trees that are always last to change colour.

​The light from the morning sun falls on them from the east and emphasises the twisted shapes of their silver-barked trunks which contrast against the golden backdrop created by the yellow and orange leaves that hang on them.

In late afternoon, when the sun has moved around to the west, the trees are backlit and those silvery trunks now appear dark, almost black. However, the contrast of both colour and light means that they still stand out from the golden autumn foliage that surrounds them.

​You can also find groups of birch trees in the more shaded parts of the hillside, where darker and damper conditions have encouraged the growth of grey-green lichen that seems to drip from their branches. This lichen, usnea subfloridana, thrives on the acidic bark of birch trees and, for good reason, is known as 'old man’s beard'.

​Probably the most vivid autumn colour is the deep orange of fallen beech leaves and the woodland at Mingarry becomes carpeted in them at this time of the year. This creates a glorious display there, making it an ideal place to spend a couple of hours with the camera, especially when the morning sun breaks through the overhead canopy allowing dappled light to fall on the deeply coloured woodland floor.

​Allt nan Coinneal, or the Stream of Candles, runs parallel to a track that leads up through the beech woods to the ruins of High Mingarry and has a small waterfall part way up that I’ve passed countless times when walking the dog, but never stopped to photograph. However, on a dog walk this year, I noticed that the waterfall was scattered with golden coloured beech leaves, so I returned with the camera and spent an hour or so exploring it. I started with taking some wide shots of the whole fall using a patch of beech leaves caught in the rocks below it to anchor the composition, then changing to taking a series of close up shots of parts of it before finally leaving once I was happy that I had the images I was hoping for.

​Rowan trees seem to have been having a particularly good year, with their branches laden with a bountiful crop of bright red berries. I first noticed this on a walk down to Sàilean nan Cuileag when my eye was drawn to a swath of red berries and gold leaves that stood out from the dark, almost grey backdrop of trees that can be found on the western side of the bay. 

​Why so many berries I wondered? Well, it seems that rowan trees are subject to a natural phenomenon known as “masting” where they produce heavy crops of berries in some years and far fewer in others. If you want to know more about this, do check out the recent blog titled “Witchwood” in the Frame of Mind section of my website.

​Rowan trees were believed to have the power to ward off evil and were often planted next to homes, barns, and cattle pens to protect them from malevolent forces, and this year’s bountiful bright red crop has drawn my eye to many old buildings that have this "Tree of Protection” as a guardian. One example of this is an old byre by the road between Strontian and Polloch.

​The reason for me being on the road to Polloch was to visit Loch Doilet because, at this time of the year, steep hillsides that cradle it are covered with large swathes of golden larch that contrast beautifully with the green of the pine trees planted alongside them.

​Given the narrowness of the glen there, I found that the best way for me to get a wide perspective of the contrast in colours was to use the drone, flying it both above the loch and up the hillsides on either side of it.

​When using the drone, I took some expansive shots of the view towards each end of the loch before focusing on a few abstract shots that emphasised the contrast between the green and gold trees.

​With the drone shots completed, I turned to my camera and using a long lens, picked out some more intimate details of the trees from my vantage point at the side of the loch, with the first being of a pair of green pine trees completely surrounded by the larch catching the last of the afternoon’s light before it disappeared behind the hills to the west of me.

​Next was a closer shot of a row of silver-barked larch tree trunks on the other side of the loch, beautifully topped with a band of gold pine needles.

​To end, I focused on the larch trees that were near me, zooming in to capture the detail of strands of golden needles hanging from their branches.

​The final tree species to focus on was the oak. They can be found across the Peninsula, either mixed woodland with other native species or in the remnants of the ancient Atlantic oakwood that covers a large part of the northern shore of Loch Sunart. 

​They are always the last trees to change colour, but when they do, they produce an exquisite mix of yellow, gold and russet brown foliage to adorn their gnarled and twisted branches.

​A great example of this is on what is probably my favourite oak tree on the Peninsula, which can be found in the woodland near Salen. Although diminutive in size, it’s form seems perfectly balanced to me and it always catches my eye when I pass by it, no matter what time of the year. However, it is in late October that it is at its best, with vibrant autumn leaves shining out from the subdued woodland scrub that surrounds it.

​By the end of the month, the first of the winds of the winter storm season had stripped a lot of leaves from the trees and although this may be disappointing to some, it does mean that light can reach the floor of the deciduous woodland at Ariundle.

​When it does, the moss-covered boulders that can be found there are iridescent, giving off a lustrous and pearly sheen that changes in intensity as you wander through them. In such conditions, they seem magical to me and capable of harbouring mystical beings waiting to be unveiled.

​Indeed, the nearby village of Strontian derives its name from the mythological sídhe, a supernatural race comparable to the faeries or elves. In Scottish Gaelic, the village is called Sròn an t-Sìthein, which translates to ‘low round hill inhabited by the sídhe’, leaving me wondering if I had been under their watchful eye as I wandered through the woodland at the end of October’s photographic journey.