It’s only 1.30 in the afternoon, but already the sun has disappeared from this narrow gorge. High up, light gilds the tall trees of the forest against a bluebird sky, but everything below the stone bridge is in shadow. Here, the River Tromie pours down from the wind-blown heather moorland and funnels through this bending gash in the rock on its race to the Spey.
The road above follows its contours into a tight switchback over the old arching bridge, so that everything here feels curving and gnarly. The water, the rocks, the trees. Peat-dark and foaming on top like Guinness, the river thunders around the corner, tumbling and churning and looping back on itself in a ceaseless roar. A cold rush of air rises from its tumult.
Over the millennia, the Tromie has worn the rocks here into rounded shapes, carving a pattern of ripples and waves as if writing its name. By contrast, small hollows in the stone have caught the water in pools of stillness that mirror the sky. Where the rock is wet, it is furred with mosses and delicate ferns.
Above these, in startling displays of resilience, trees grow straight out of the boulders, their roots bedded into the slightest crack. Birches are decked with nothing but lichens, naked larches display only the nubs that hope for spring, alders are bare but for their tiny cones, and a gean – the Scots wild cherry – has nothing to show for itself but a few shrivelled berries. The only trees in winter-defying glory are the evergreens: a tiny stray spruce and a stand of Scots pines.
The latter are the giant remnants of the ancient Caledonian forest and Britain’s only native pine. A vital home to red squirrels, capercaillie, crossbills and the nearly vanished wildcats, they have survived their own threatened extinction after hundreds of years of aggressive felling for shipbuilding, land clearance or war resources. They can tower to 35 metres and live for 700 years. They can also grow from bare stone. One of them sticks out from the cliffside, thrusting into the air at an absurd angle, as if asserting that its defiant life is every bit as strong as river and rock and road.
• Under the Changing Skies: The Best of the Guardian’s Country Diary, 2018-2024 is published by Guardian Faber; order at guardianbookshop.com and get a 15% discount
