The Great Wood of Caledon - the historic native forest of Highland
Scotland - has a reputation as potent and misleading as the wolves that
ruled it. The popular image is of an impassable, sun-snuffing shroud, a
Highlandswide jungle infested by wolf, lynx, bear, beaver, wild white
cattle, wild boar, and wilder painted men.
Jim Crumley shines a light into the darker corners of the Great Wood, to
re-evaluate some of the questionable elements of its reputation, and to
assess the possibilities of its partial resurrection into something like
a national forest. The book threads a path among relict strongholds of
native woodland, beginning with a soliloquy by the Fortingall Yew, the
one tree in Scotland that can say of the hey-day of the Great Wood 5,000
years ago: 'I was there.' The journey is enriched by vivid wildlife
encounters, a passionate and poetic account that binds the slow
dereliction of the past to an optimistic future.