I’m driving along a narrow back road in the Cairngorms early on a Friday morning, to join a group of volunteers on a Willow Walk. To my left, the Lairig Ghru is blanketed in low cloud. At this time of the morning, there’s no-one else on the road, aside from a lonely Deer who stares at me as I pass.

 The group is already assembled at the Cairngorms Mountain car park when I arrive. This is the third Willow Walk to take place this summer, a day-long trek to carry and plant Willow saplings at altitude. Volunteers pack harnesses with trees and carry them up and over the plateau and down again to the shores of Loch A’an, deep in the RSPB Scotland Abernethy reserve, before returning on the same route after the saplings are planted. 

Signing up for one of these walks therefore means giving up your free time, or even taking a day off work, to carry thousands of saplings effectively up a mountain twice. It doesn’t seem like most people’s idea of a good time.  

But that’s just not the case here. Not only are people willing to do this, but the walk is in high demand.  

As we begin our ascent, snaking up the gravelled Windy Ridge path towards the plateau, my aim is to find out why. Spirits and bags are light, and we make quick progress to where we stop to pick up the trees, and the real journey begins. 

Eating a quick snack at the sapling pick-up point, we gather around the bags and bags of bundled leaf and new growth, watching green stems buffet in the wind. One of the volunteers, Catriona, looks over them almost maternally: 

“It actually makes me quite proud looking at them, because I helped grow them from seeds.” 

Catriona, who would otherwise be working in a hospital, escapes to the Cairngorms Connect Tree Nursery whenever she can, and has come on the hike to help finish this part of the Willows’ journey. 

Harnesses and rucksacks are gently filled with the precious cargo and swung onto the backs of the volunteers. Once planted, these trees will form part of landscape-scale restoration of native woods and the building up of high-altitude woodland and scrub. 

^{Image (above): Volunteers fill harnesses with green Willow saplings, with a dramatic backdrop of blue hills and forest behind. Photo: Rosie Beetschen}

There’s a sense that the people living around this landscape, like Catriona, want to have a hand in its restoration, and feel empowered by this. Ewan is one of the Mountain Leaders for the walk, and feels this is key part of the draw towards the project. 

“I think it’s so important for people in the community that they can get involved in things like this, and be a part of the change.” Walking with this energetic group, with the landscape stretching out all around, you can’t help but feel like you are part of something a lot bigger than yourself. 

We reach the top of the first ascent, and it’s time to come off the Windy Ridge path, and into open heather, rock and grass: the decent to Loch A’an.  
I speak to Claire, as we wind our way down, facing straight into the wind and the shock of the plateau dropping off.  

“It feels like you’re really making a tangible change.” She says. “There is an outcome. You can say: look, we’ve achieved this.”

 In the world of ecological restoration, working at the ancient timescales of trees and rivers, progress can sometimes feel frustratingly slow. For Claire and other volunteers, these walks represent a very clear vision of hope for the future. 

It’s time for me to leave the volunteers behind and head back, a bad back preventing me from going any further. Although this is planned, I still feel a pang of disappointment.  

The group become pinpricks, and disappear over the lip of the land, wrapped in cloud. I am struck by how small they seem, against the vast swathes of heather-clad hill, and the sharp contrast that exists in the scale of this restoration.  

A seemingly tiny group is making landscape-level change. 

^{Image (above): "The group become pinpricks, and disappear over the lip of the land". The brightly dressed group look tiny against the vast Cairngorms Plateau. Photo: Rosie Beetschen}

Picking my way back down the path is a slow and gruelling experience. Loch Morlich hangs in the centre of my vision, seemingly getting no closer. It felt like we had flown up on the ascent, swept along by the chatter and energy of the group. 

I realise that perhaps this is another reason why we do this walk. It’s as much about people and connections as it is about the planting of the trees. 

Driving back down the mountain is less lonely than in the early morning, and not just because the roads have filled up with the bustle of excited visitors. I’m also kept company by the lingering feeling of being part of a community of people working to restore a landscape they love. 

It’s certainly answered the question of why people do the Willow Walk for me, because I can’t wait to sign up for another next summer. 

The work at the Cairngorms Connect Tree Nursery is currently being funded by the Scottish Government’s Nature Restoration Fund, managed by NatureScot, and a grant from the LIFE programme of the European Union. Cairngorms Connect is funded by the Endangered Landscapes and Seascapes Programme.