Wednesday Morning, 3 am
My Dad was an avid hill walker; he always talked about how he felt at peace in the hills. I remember him packing the night before for a ridiculously early start to head off and bag another Munro. He had this map where he could colour in all the hills that he had climbed. He often walked alone with his thoughts, but he did have some other hill nerds ( Which I affectionately called them) to join him at times.
When he passed away in 2009, I found that looking through this huge box of loose prints my mum had kept was one of the most cathartic things to help me in my grief. To this day, I print all my own family photos because holding those prints is so very different to looking at the photos on a screen. I found some of his hill-walking photos he had taken on a point-and-shoot film camera with these little handwritten notes on the back. They were like treasure to me.
In one of the photos, he mentioned Bennachie, a hill very close to where I now lived. So in 2025, I embarked on my own hill-walking adventures in an attempt to feel closer to him and try to understand his love of the Scottish hills.
I scanned his old photos and his map, and I took images of his old things. When I set off on my own walks, I took both digital and film images of things that interested me along the way. I put all my work and thoughts into a scrapbook as a memoir to my Dad, one of the best humans I have ever known.
This is an ongoing project that will never be fully finished. I, too, found a love of walking in the hills and each time I set out, I get a chance to stop, remove myself from the busy life we all lead, take in nature and think of my Dad.