"AT THE LOCH OF THE GREEN CORRIE" and FISHING AUCHALOCHY ON THE ROAD TO RUAN
“AT THE LOCH OF THE GREEN CORRIE” (A BOOK REVIEW)
If the length of time it takes to read a book is evidence of its worth then this is one of the best books I have ever read. In the case of “At The Loch of The Green Corrie” by Andrew Greig, it happens to be true. I have relished every moment of my time spent in its pages and the fact that it has taken me around eighteen months to read, arises from considering and savouring every poetic line of this beautiful book, because one doesn’t so much read as live it.
I would like to quote a few lines as evidence, but which lines? I would be as well reproducing the entire book. It is, as Alexander McCall Smith has written (and quoted on the front cover), “Exquisitely written, moving and utterly memorable.” Other reviewers are equally taken with this “ruminative, beautifully written book that is at once a biography of (Norman) MacCaig, an account of a journey in North West Scotland and a captivating memoir of Greig’s life as a poet, Himalayan climber and fisherman.” It is all of these things, but tellingly this review from The Sunday Times doesn’t get to the heart of it. No statement of what the book is about can do it justice; only the experience of being on Greig’s journey with him begins to get close. Maybe a not quite random quote would say it better:
“There’s two of me now. One is intent, excited, bent on hooking this trout, heart thumping at visions of triumph. This would knock his socks off.
“The other, with equal intentness, is following a line of thought-feeling. I’ve been here often enough now, in different weathers, physically and in my thoughts, alone and with friends, to have absorbed this place. Even as this fresh cast snags the ruffled surface, I am sure: Norman MacCaig loved the Loch of the Green Corrie as the essence of Assynt because of its removal from the world that makes it a world, because of the austerity and difficulty that enhances the place’s nature, and on account of certain people who once stood by him here.”
In my case, I am taken back to holiday travels through Assynt, being transfixed by the gut-wrenching splendour of Suilven, Canisp, Quinag, Stac Polly and other gloriously named and awe-inspiring mountains; each one unique and compelling. It is as if God had decided to place some of His terra-forming jewels into one small corner of Scotland. Some of the rock here is amongst the oldest known in the world, so maybe God began His work here, when He was playfully creating new ideas and before He rationed such things to a feature here and there elsewhere in the world.
Stac Polly in particular, looking as if it had stepped out of a John Ford movie set in Arizona, took on a sombre covering last year when we discovered that an aquaintance of ours from our days in Kintyre had fallen to his death on its slopes.
But this is not a book merely describing a unique place, although it is a book about place. It is not merely a book about the poet Norman MacCaig, although it has MacCaig at its centre. It is not merely a book about a fishing trip of some friends to the titular Loch of the Green Corrie, although that too is the heart of it. It is not really a book ‘about’, but a book sharing something very deeply embedded. Something heartfelt and permanent that transcends story and reaches into shared experience. We all have a Loch of the Green Corrie at the heart of us, where we fish for hopes and dreams, things lost or gone. A familiar and wild place we return to, knowing that ... what? ... it has slipped away into the deep water again.
Only a poetic spirit could have grasped the elusive and turned it over in his hand. The interweaving of lives and living, of memory and reminiscence, of thoughts and reflections seem to seep into your own life in a curiously personal way.
The only other book which springs to mind, insinuating into intimacy in this way is John Inglis Hall’s “Fishing A Highland Stream”. Both books have fishing in Highland waters as a theme, an activity at which I have been singularly unsuccessful, as I shall now relate.
FISHING AUCHALOCHY ON THE ROAD TO RUAN (A SELF REVIEW)
The art of rod and line has many devotees, of which, for a good many years, I was one. No longer. My sporting prowess has long had very constricted boundaries as anyone who knows of my golfing hopes will testify. Clubs would have been broken over my knee and consigned to the bin had only they been hickory shafted and not tempered steel.
I am that man that could not ‘get’ tennis because I could not judge the distance between the racket and my wrist; and believe me returning a serve with your wrist is painful indeed.
But we are talking fishing, and fishing, I thought, was my metier. It was not so.
My brother-in-law is, a huntin’, shootin’ and fishin’ sort of guy (in that he participates in at least 2 of these activities, but without the tweeds and deerstalker etc.) ... and yet also very nice to be with. He is a real person after all, and not a caricature. Anyway, he had invited me to join him on a fishing expedition to local lochs when a crowd of us were at the family home in South Kintyre.
At that time, I felt that fishing was the one thing I could successfully accomplish, sport-wise. Kitted out, we made our way to Auchalochy, a beautiful stretch of water in the hills above Campbeltown, kept well-stocked by the Kintyre Angling Club. The weather was well nigh perfect from an angling point-of-view, and fully briefed on the technicalities of the task ahead I sat on the loch shore ... and waited. My gaze wavered and I began considering how I would draw or paint the hillsides around me. Fishing is a meditative sport, but it requires concentration. Unsurprisingly, I caught nothing, but then neither did my confederate.
We walked over the ridge to tiny Loch Ruan to try our luck there. The dark waters had the look of having been a quarry pit at some point, yet had a peculiar beauty as if it had taken Wuthering Heights or another wild romantic novel for its inspiration. We separated and took positions on opposite shores. This time I determined to make a serious effort; and remembering the fly-casting trophies of my Uncle Jimmy as inspiration to uphold the family honour, cast my ‘soldier Palmer’ (is that right?) onto the deep. Alas, I seem to have forgotten that dear Uncle Jimmy was a relative by marriage only, for as I cast the line a second time - feeling I was beginning to get the hang of this lark - I felt a tugging on the end of the line, as well as a curious sensation in my tongue. You guessed it, I had managed to catch myself, or at least the part of me that was concentrating so intently.
Unusually, I remained calm and called over to my friend. “Thteve, I theem to have manadged to catth mythelf with thith hook. Can you athitht me?”
Steve, expert fisher person that he is came to my rescue and swiftly removed the hook as he would have done from any small guppy he felt to throw back in the water.
Thankfully he left me gasping on the shore. My first catch, I thrilled, and how wonderful that no piscine lifeforms were harmed in the process - only a human dullard who should not have been let loose anywhere near a fishing rod!
We made for home and rounding the ridge heading back to Auchalochy, a hailstorm of amazing ferocity barged in from the Atlantic, obscuring our vision and disorientating our route home. We became like Pooh and Piglet trying to find where the Woozle wasn’t, and walked round in circles losing our bearings, until the cataclysm ceased as quickly as it had arisen and we found ourselves several yards further back than we were before the foul weather hit.
My face stinging from the hailstone assault, I felt this was too much muchness for an initiate angler to consider any more of the same. I enjoy sitting in the comfort of my studio, dreaming dreams and committing them to paper with pen and colour. Fishing now is confined to watching those who enjoy such discomfort engaging in their discomfort via the medium of televisual communication. I’ll stick to what I know.
As Andrew Greig said “Tired, enriched, unburdened for now, I follow the burn over the bealach and off the page, into where whatever has existed once, exists for all time.”
“All time” works for me.
- “The Loch of the Green Corrie” by Andrew Greig is published by Quercus Books.
“There’s two of me now. One is intent, excited, bent on hooking this trout, heart thumping at visions of triumph. This would knock his socks off.
“The other, with equal intentness, is following a line of thought-feeling. I’ve been here often enough now, in different weathers, physically and in my thoughts, alone and with friends, to have absorbed this place. Even as this fresh cast snags the ruffled surface, I am sure: Norman MacCaig loved the Loch of the Green Corrie as the essence of Assynt because of its removal from the world that makes it a world, because of the austerity and difficulty that enhances the place’s nature, and on account of certain people who once stood by him here.”
In my case, I am taken back to holiday travels through Assynt, being transfixed by the gut-wrenching splendour of Suilven, Canisp, Quinag, Stac Polly and other gloriously named and awe-inspiring mountains; each one unique and compelling. It is as if God had decided to place some of His terra-forming jewels into one small corner of Scotland. Some of the rock here is amongst the oldest known in the world, so maybe God began His work here, when He was playfully creating new ideas and before He rationed such things to a feature here and there elsewhere in the world.
Stac Polly in particular, looking as if it had stepped out of a John Ford movie set in Arizona, took on a sombre covering last year when we discovered that an aquaintance of ours from our days in Kintyre had fallen to his death on its slopes.
But this is not a book merely describing a unique place, although it is a book about place. It is not merely a book about the poet Norman MacCaig, although it has MacCaig at its centre. It is not merely a book about a fishing trip of some friends to the titular Loch of the Green Corrie, although that too is the heart of it. It is not really a book ‘about’, but a book sharing something very deeply embedded. Something heartfelt and permanent that transcends story and reaches into shared experience. We all have a Loch of the Green Corrie at the heart of us, where we fish for hopes and dreams, things lost or gone. A familiar and wild place we return to, knowing that ... what? ... it has slipped away into the deep water again.
Only a poetic spirit could have grasped the elusive and turned it over in his hand. The interweaving of lives and living, of memory and reminiscence, of thoughts and reflections seem to seep into your own life in a curiously personal way.
The only other book which springs to mind, insinuating into intimacy in this way is John Inglis Hall’s “Fishing A Highland Stream”. Both books have fishing in Highland waters as a theme, an activity at which I have been singularly unsuccessful, as I shall now relate.
FISHING AUCHALOCHY ON THE ROAD TO RUAN (A SELF REVIEW)
I am that man that could not ‘get’ tennis because I could not judge the distance between the racket and my wrist; and believe me returning a serve with your wrist is painful indeed.
But we are talking fishing, and fishing, I thought, was my metier. It was not so.
My brother-in-law is, a huntin’, shootin’ and fishin’ sort of guy (in that he participates in at least 2 of these activities, but without the tweeds and deerstalker etc.) ... and yet also very nice to be with. He is a real person after all, and not a caricature. Anyway, he had invited me to join him on a fishing expedition to local lochs when a crowd of us were at the family home in South Kintyre.
At that time, I felt that fishing was the one thing I could successfully accomplish, sport-wise. Kitted out, we made our way to Auchalochy, a beautiful stretch of water in the hills above Campbeltown, kept well-stocked by the Kintyre Angling Club. The weather was well nigh perfect from an angling point-of-view, and fully briefed on the technicalities of the task ahead I sat on the loch shore ... and waited. My gaze wavered and I began considering how I would draw or paint the hillsides around me. Fishing is a meditative sport, but it requires concentration. Unsurprisingly, I caught nothing, but then neither did my confederate.
We walked over the ridge to tiny Loch Ruan to try our luck there. The dark waters had the look of having been a quarry pit at some point, yet had a peculiar beauty as if it had taken Wuthering Heights or another wild romantic novel for its inspiration. We separated and took positions on opposite shores. This time I determined to make a serious effort; and remembering the fly-casting trophies of my Uncle Jimmy as inspiration to uphold the family honour, cast my ‘soldier Palmer’ (is that right?) onto the deep. Alas, I seem to have forgotten that dear Uncle Jimmy was a relative by marriage only, for as I cast the line a second time - feeling I was beginning to get the hang of this lark - I felt a tugging on the end of the line, as well as a curious sensation in my tongue. You guessed it, I had managed to catch myself, or at least the part of me that was concentrating so intently.
Unusually, I remained calm and called over to my friend. “Thteve, I theem to have manadged to catth mythelf with thith hook. Can you athitht me?”
Steve, expert fisher person that he is came to my rescue and swiftly removed the hook as he would have done from any small guppy he felt to throw back in the water.
Thankfully he left me gasping on the shore. My first catch, I thrilled, and how wonderful that no piscine lifeforms were harmed in the process - only a human dullard who should not have been let loose anywhere near a fishing rod!
We made for home and rounding the ridge heading back to Auchalochy, a hailstorm of amazing ferocity barged in from the Atlantic, obscuring our vision and disorientating our route home. We became like Pooh and Piglet trying to find where the Woozle wasn’t, and walked round in circles losing our bearings, until the cataclysm ceased as quickly as it had arisen and we found ourselves several yards further back than we were before the foul weather hit.
My face stinging from the hailstone assault, I felt this was too much muchness for an initiate angler to consider any more of the same. I enjoy sitting in the comfort of my studio, dreaming dreams and committing them to paper with pen and colour. Fishing now is confined to watching those who enjoy such discomfort engaging in their discomfort via the medium of televisual communication. I’ll stick to what I know.
As Andrew Greig said “Tired, enriched, unburdened for now, I follow the burn over the bealach and off the page, into where whatever has existed once, exists for all time.”
“All time” works for me.
- “The Loch of the Green Corrie” by Andrew Greig is published by Quercus Books.
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