A Work of Hope - Feral: Rewilding the Land, the Sea, and Human Life - page 148

they were growths covering rocks and old tree stumps. Springing between
the humps, he showed me the successional process. After a rock rolls
down from the slopes above or is bared by disturbance, lichens begin to
creep over it. They dissolve some of the mineral content, breaking down
the surface and creating organic matter. This allows moss to move in,
displacing the pioneer lichens. The moss in turn creates a habitat for leafy
plants such as bilberry and cowberry. The process can take a century or
more. These hummocks are a characteristic feature of old forest. They
will form only under trees, perhaps because in such thin soil the plants
would dry out in the open. Alan had watched one rock for twenty years
and seen the vegetation it harboured shifting from one phase to the next.
After he had pledged to restore the Caledonian Forest in 1986, he
spent a couple of years educating himself and raising money. He began
by persuading some private landowners in Glen Cannich, to the north
of where we stood, to allow him to protect pine seedlings on their
estates. In 1989 he took a Forestry Commission official to a place in
Glen Affric in which remnant pines were growing.
'I said, “You've got the land, we've got the money. Let's put them
together.” It was an unlikely partnership. I was a hippy-like character
from Findhorn with a beard and long hair, he was a government offi-
cial. But the relationship between Trees for Life and the commission
has been going strong ever since.
'We're more radical than they are. They can't take a position on
wolves, for example. Nor are they ready to embrace the removal of
roads and tracks - yet. We can be bolder than them. I know the glen
better than many of their staff, and I can see opportunities which
sometimes they haven't yet spotted. About three-quarters of the trees
we've planted are on Forestry Commission land, on many of its estates
across the Highlands. We're working with their neighbours as well.
The idea is to connect the new forests all the way to the west coast.'
We set off along the track on foot, then soon plunged into deep hea-
ther and struck up the hillside. The great pines here, none younger
than a century, looked like the acacias of East Africa, lat-topped above
the dun savannahs. Some were wider than they were tall. Each had a
distinct growth pattern. Some trees had a single straight trunk,
unbranched until it spread into the canopy; some had branches all the