Fire and Juniper

I spent a chilly weekend in the woods last week, warmed by fire-making, a good tweed skirt and lots of stories. I was on a bushcraft weekend with Willow Lohr, an inspiring woman who was teaching us to make amidu, the tinder carried by Otsie the iceman, lighting it with flints and steel, making feather sticks and lots of other incendiary tricks. So if I’m in a survival situation I now appreciate the preciousness of a box of matches.   Claire Hewitt was telling stories too, which blended beautifully into a weekend spent sitting around fire.   Our fire circle was under the cover of an old parachute strung under a majestic old pine and we scavenged for dead juniper twigs to make wonderfully fragrant, almost smoke free fire (which is why juniper was so liked by illegal distillers in the days of whisky stills up in the hills).  It was a beautiful piece of woodland at Crathie, near Balmoral and with the biggest goat willow tree I think I’ve ever seen amongst all the old pines, birches and juniper. And it was almost too cold for midges, so an added treat for an already great weekend.

Lost and found

The patchwork quilt has been found! I wrote about it in January on this blog, with a very grainy photograph reproduced from a newspaper, and now I’ve got the real thing.  My storyteller friend Claire Hewitt, who was with me when I first saw it at Kinloch Rannoch primary school prompted its rediscovery when she was on a journey around Highland Perthshire, doing the eighty odd miles of the Etape in eight days and collecting stories on the way.  She found a good few stories, and she found the quilt.  The Etape is a timed cycle race on closed roads that the keen cyclists put their heads down and do in a few hours, but Claire decided keep her head up and take her time, and I’m very glad she did.  She went into Kinloch Rannoch school and had them telling stories, then took out some red and white squares for the kids to sign in homage to the quilt we thought was lost.  But thankfully it was still in the school and Claire and I have now got it.  We’re looking for a good home but it needs somewhere that can show it and help gather and tell its many stories.