Country diary: Down in the valley we go, journeying back in time
The presentation was fascinating, but the eye was drawn outside to Roslin Glen below, with its canopies of woodland and the meandering River North Esk. JMW Turner and William Wordsworth had been similarly inspired by the landscape, so we were in good company.
Afterwards, taking the steep (not to mention precarious) path down to the glen felt like journeying even further back in time. The woodland in this vale is ancient, full of oak, birch and hawthorn. Around it, and bordering the glen, were dark and imposing walls, their original patina long gone, embossed instead by primitive species – algae, mosses and liverworts, and the fractal fronds of male ferns, hart's-tongues and ivy leaves. In places, parallel tracks of tree roots tumbled down the wall in search of soil.
The solid sandstone blocks were worthy of close inspection. Just as the toolwork of the medieval master masons in the chapel had inspired me, so too did the marks evident in the stones, triggering thoughts of all those anonymous hands that built this wall. The indentations they left are now also populated by moss, early colonisers in search of water holes and footholds.
One particular large area of the wall was dominated by liverworts, whose name is derived from medieval times, as their lobed structures resembled liver. The main species was Conocephalum conicum, great scented liverwort. Spreading along the stone joints, cracks and crevices, the lobed thalli overlaid the sandstone with a shiny, verdant carapace. These were descendants of the earliest land plants, thriving in the dark, damp conditions of an ancient wood. The modern world had never felt further away.
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
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The Sun
8 hours ago
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Watch the moment plane passengers left stunned as TV legend moonlights as air hostess and makes inflight announcement
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Daily Mail
8 hours ago
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When she stares out of her living room window, frail pensioner Maggie Jean Mackenzie rarely takes in the old, weathered landscape and low-rise townscape beyond her Hebridean home. Her mind's eye drifts instead, as it has for so long, to a far-off place of eternal wonder – a mythical mountain picked out in tourist brochures against skies of purest blue or sunsets of sherbet orange. When Mrs Mackenzie returns day after day to the snow-capped slopes of Mount Ararat in Turkey, however, it is not to cherish treasured holiday memories but to pick through her troubled thoughts in search of answers. It is here, 15 years ago, that her beloved son Donald vanished as he pursued an obsessive search to identify the last resting place of Noah's Ark. Alongside the allure of the Holy Grail, the quest for Noah's Ark ranks as the great chimera in the history of religion. The Genesis story, shared by Judaism, Christianity and Islam, has it that God, angry at human wickedness, flooded the earth. He saved just Noah and his family, along with all living species, by advising him to build a survival ark. According to the story, when the waters subsided, Noah's ark came to rest somewhere on the vast expanse of Mount Ararat. It has long been assumed by scriptural literalists that its remains really are to be found somewhere on the rubble-strewn mountainside. One such was Donald Mackenzie. Each summer, this self-styled Scots missionary would set off alone to the same hazardous region on the fringes of Iran to track down the final resting place of the fabled vessel. Each autumn, he would beat a reluctant retreat before the first snowfalls brought a temporary halt to his efforts to prove the truth of the great Bible story. Except, in 2010, he failed to return home to his native Stornoway, on the Isle of Lewis. Like the object of his obsession, he simply disappeared into the heavy mists that swirled around the summit of Turkey's most famous peak. 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Despite being brought up in the cradle of Free Presbyterianism in the Western Isles, Donald Mackenzie had resisted any real interest in religion until he found God much later in life. Once converted, however, the 47-year-old seized his new faith with alacrity – it drew this newly-evangelised missionary back time and again on his pilgrimage to a politically unstable corner of the Muslim world. It now seems increasingly likely it led him directly to his doom. It was only due to the catastrophic break-up of his mother's marriage to Fleet Street journalist, Ken Mackenzie, that Donald and his three brothers, Ross, Derick and Kenneth, grew up in a council house in Stornoway rather than a large family house in a well-to-do suburb of Glasgow. 'My father had a really good, well-paid job and he got sucked into gambling,' said Kenneth. 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He ran to danger when others, like me, run a mile from it.' Often Donald's impulsiveness landed him in serious bother. He was 19 when he was riding pillion on a friend's bike which crashed at 100mph and almost cost him his life. After months in hospital, he studied to be a draughtsman, but drifted between jobs, frequently returning to live with his mother. A dab hand with engines, he joined the Territorial Army, where he proved a crack shot and learned the survival skills he would later rely on during his trips to Ararat. Kenneth, now 59, who works in the pharmaceutical industry in London, believes his brother was particularly affected by the loss of a father figure. 'Donald needed that kind of stability and guidance. I think he would have turned out a more rounded, better person if our father had been around,' he said. 'I wouldn't say he was a bad person – he was what he was – but he might have had a good job, he would have had a stable career, and stable relationships.' 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At four times the height of Ben Nevis, Mount Ararat's imposing bulk has always been dangerous for visitors. For decades the highly militarised frontline between Nato and the Soviet bloc, it only opened up to tourism again in 2001. Armed militants from the Kurdish Workers Party, or PKK, roamed its 16,854ft peak, drawing support for their fight for an independent Kurdistan from residents of the impoverished hamlets which cling to the inhospitable slopes of this dormant volcano. Donald's 2010 trip, his fifth, was driven by an astonishing claim the Ark had been found. A shadowy organisation called Noah's Ark Ministries International – based in Hong Kong but with links to Turkish officials – insisted it had uncovered a 'wooden construction' on Ararat's northern side. 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That has made it harder to fathom the chain of events leading up to his disappearance. When Derick went over with a film crew in 2012, they were intercepted by Turkish authorities at the airport and warned off climbing Ararat. After recovering Donald's van and some of his possessions, they encountered a wall of silence. One thing Kenneth Mackenzie is clear on, however, is that his brother will never be coming home. 'I have no doubt that Donald is dead. I believe the Turkish Army are to blame, because somebody came down the mountain the day he disappeared and said, 'I hope there's nobody else up there because the Army means business up there. Anybody else up there is in trouble.' 'They are hiding something. Why would they say to Derick at the airport, 'Don't you dare come near Mount Ararat' unless they had something to hide?' While he accepts his brother is gone, things are harder for his mother, who struggles with failing health and crippling despair. 'She still clings to the hope that, maybe, he's in jail over there and might come home. Every so often, she just bursts into tears. It is as if time stood still from that moment for her.' The same could be said of her son. Fifteen years on, what befell Donald Mackenzie remains every bit as mysterious as the ancient ark he searched for in vain.
Daily Mail
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