John Lister-Kaye

The Dun Cow Rib


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      Sir John Lister-Kaye is one of Britain's best-known naturalists and conservationists. He is the author of ten books on wildlife and the environment and has lectured all over the world. He has served prominently in the RSPB, the Nature Conservancy Council, Scottish Natural Heritage and the Scottish Wildlife Trust. In 2002 he was awarded an OBE for services to nature conservation. In 2016 he was awarded the Royal Scottish Geographical Society's Geddes Medal for services to the environment. He lives with his wife and family among the mountains of the Scottish Highlands, where he runs the world famous Aigas Field Centre. His book Gods of the Morning won the inaugural Richard Jefferies Prize.

      Also by John Lister-Kaye

      The White Island (1972)

      The Seeing Eye (1979)

      Seal Cull (1979)

      Ill Fares the Land (1994)

      One for Sorrow (1994)

      Song of the Rolling Earth (2003)

      Nature’s Child (2004)

      At the Water’s Edge (2010)

      Gods of the Morning (2015)

      Published in Great Britain in 2017 by Canongate Books Ltd, 14 High Street, Edinburgh EH1 1TE

       canongate.co.uk

      This digital edition first published in 2017 by Canongate Books

      Copyright © John Lister-Kaye, 2017

      The moral right of the author has been asserted

      Extract from The Poems of Emily Dickinson: Variorum Edition, edited by Ralph W. Franklin, Cambridge, Mass. Reprinted by permission of The Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, Copyright © 1998 by the President and Fellows of Harvard College. Copyright © 1951, 1955, 1979, 1983 by the President and Fellows of Harvard College.

      Excerpts from The Ring of Bright Water trilogy (UK, Viking, 2000) reprinted by permission of The Marsh Agency Ltd on behalf of Gavin Maxwell.

      British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data A catalogue record for this book is available on request from the British Library

      ISBN 978 1 78689 147 1

      eISBN 978 1 78689 146 4

      Typeset in Dante MT by Palimpsest Book Production Ltd, Falkirk, Stirlingshire

      For my mother

      τροϕεῖα

      ‘A boy’s will is the wind’s will,

      And the thoughts of youth are long, long thoughts.’

      My Lost Youth, Henry Wadsworth Longfellow (1807–82)

      ‘If I can stop one heart from breaking,

      I shall not live in vain.’

      Part One: Life, VI, Emily Dickinson (1830–86)

      Contents

       Foreword: The Deep Heart’s Core

       1. Wildcats and wilderness

       2. Death of a dog

       3. The Manor House

       4. The Dun Cow

       5. Ye hunter’s badge

       6. Rheumatic fever

       7. Hearts and minds

       8. Hampton House

       9. London

       10. Bartonfield

       11. The dragon’s den

       12. The pain of injustice

       13. Summer and the Arabian Nights

       14. ‘All my holy mountain’

       15. An innocence exposed

       16. Hill Brow

       17. ‘Upon thy belly shalt thou go’

       18. Dark shadows, bright horizons

       19. Rock of ages

       20. The Pheasantry badgers

       21. Ring of Bright Water

       22. ‘Future plans for this island’

       23. Great hopes, dire straits

       24. Paradise lost and found

       Epilogue

       Acknowledgements

      Foreword

      The Deep Heart’s Core

      Years ago I built a hut overlooking a pond – a small loch or ‘lochan’ in Highland parlance – where, like Thoreau at Walden, I go to write or just bare myself to the effervescent mysteries of nature and life. It’s called the Illicit Still, named by my children because for years I kept a bottle of whisky locked away from their prying teenage eyes. It has a lumberjack’s oil drum stove, some rough and ready bunks, an old sofa, a table and chairs – just about everything serious contemplation requires. It has become a treasured centre of separateness, a place to muse, an escape.

      Sheets of wind and light cruising the surface of the loch are there to distract me, and flights of mallard come streaming past to land squabbling in the marsh. On looping wings a heron often shoulders in to stalk leggily through the shallows, or house martins and swallows skim through like fighter jets, hawking flies across the cloud-brimming surface.

      Occasionally