Saturday felt like spring, just as well for an outdoor book launch. My friend Linda Cracknell has just published a wee book, ‘Following our Fathers’, featuring two essays about her journeys following fathers. One was her friend’s Ule Somme, whose father Sven Somme was a Norwegian hero of the resistance during World War II and made an epic trek across Norway to escape from the Nazis. The other father was Linda’s, who died when she was small, but climbed in the Alps on a momentous expedition as a student. Linda followed in the footsteps of both of them, across Norway and up the mountain and wrote about them, beautifully.
The book launch was at a shed on a piece of community owned land called Dun Coillich. Linda is a trustee of the charity that owns it, Highland Perthshire Communities Land Trust, and I was involved when it started ten years ago and will be coming back as a trustee next month. Dun Coillich is a hill (a Marilyn, the definition of which I do not know, but it’s smaller than a Corbett, if that means anything) that sits above the confluence of two burns and guards the top of the pass that connects straths Tay and Tummel. 
Linda read from her book, and distracted us with pass the parcel, and then led us all up the hill. It was great to be there with so many people, I’m used to be on the hill by myself, and having collies look after us was particularly poignant, since my hill collie died a couple of years ago and I’d forgotten the reassurance they can bring on rough ground, constantly on the watch to make sure we’re all together.
Taking responsibility for land is not easy and all of us at HPCLT are learning, but it is still a special place, if you can get there. It’s not the easiest place to get around either, hopefully something will be done about that, but it’s worth exploring. Whatever a Marilyn is (well-rounded I guess), it’s a good height to view the landscape, without the slog of trekking up a Munro.
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