The Big Grey Man of Ben Macdui

Macaroni balls. Sounds like something a cyclist gets after a long run in tight pants, doesn't it? Hands up when you know for sure that's not what they are.

I'm on a recce in the Cairngorms and I've tried to get up on to the plateau near Coire an t-Sneachda, where deep snowdrifts still cling to the walls of the corrie, even in mid June. Out of nowhere, gusts of wind so strong that they twice have me on my knees force me back down.

Having a coffee in the car while assessing alternative routes, I pull a little plastic bag from my backpack, courtesy of a kind friend who doesn't trust me to feed myself, take one of the mysterious, brown wrinkled balls between thumb and forefinger, and savour the sensual springiness as I squeeze. Dipping it in salt crystals from a silver-paper twist, I raise it to my lips and bite. The mouth-feel and flavour are deeply satisfying.

Draining the coffee, I wipe my lips and head up by a different route. Straight out of the car park, I meet a couple of young, street-clothed women pulled along by a perky Jack Russell on a long lead. They ask the way to the Cairngorm summit, so I point them to the Windy Ridge track. But visions of their little pet soaring like a kite, move me to warn of the likely strong gales up top. They thank me kindly, ignore me completely and push on.

My friend Iain reckons no one ever listens to him. That can't be true or I wouldn't know he says it. But I take his point. It's frustrating that you can't pass hard-won experience on to the young. Muttering about this, I find myself joined in my uphill trudge by a tall, dark, similarly muttering figure, with a woolly bunnet pulled down over his forehead and a scarf covering the lower half of his face up to his nose. His beef seems to be tourists rather than young people, but he sounds as disgruntled as me.

Falling silent as he matches his pace to mine with a loping, effortless stride, he fixes me with a disconcerting stare. I feel compelled to speak, so tell him my plan to come back and camp out on Ben Macdui, once I've recced the route.

"Wild camping, iss it?" he says, as he holds me with his glittering eye.

I sense disapproval but burble on. "I've been on a course in the Lake District and now I'm ready to go solo. I'm really looking forward to it. I want to test myself in tough conditions." 

"On Ben Macdui?" he says, shaking his head. "You'll not haff heard of Am Fear Liath Mòr?"

"What's that?"

"It iss a who, not a what. The Big Grey Man of Ben Macdui."

He says no more and a sepulchral silence falls between us, as our footsteps crunch on the stony track, three of mine to two of his, in a syncopated, slightly stressed beat. I'm keen to hear more but hesitant to question him, so I study the plants beside the winding track, many of them more at home in cooler climes than Scotland. 

Dark-hearted flowers of dwarf cornel peek out between clumps of Alpine lady's mantle, their silver-edged leaves spotted with shimmering dewdrops. Ragged deergrass blossoms seek the sun, while solitary bees sip nectar from cloudberry flowers, whose rose-orange fruits I last saw nestling in tall glasses in a Turku boardroom. 

"Strange tales are told of Liath Mòr," my companion comes to life again. "Many more will never be told." He lapses into silence and I wonder if one lifetime will be enough to reach the end of this conversation. 

"Sightings are rare," he starts up again, casting a glance in my direction. "But his presence is often felt and his footsteps heard in the mist ... behind you."

I suppress a shudder and try scepticism. "Yeah, but you get stories like that in the hills. Most told by tourists with scant experience of wind and mist and mountains."

My companion emits a guttural sound and I realise I've annoyed him. "Professor John Norman Collie wass not a tourist," he says. "He was an eminent scientist and mountaineer, the first to tell of Am Fear Liath Mòr."

Crunch, crunch on the track. This is a man who talks slow but walks deceptively fast, and I'm starting to pant as I struggle to keep pace, keen to hear his story. 

“Collie heard footsteps stalking him, near the cloud-covered summit of the Ben. He told himself it was nonsense but the footsteps kept on coming. He was seized with terror. 'I took to my heels,’ he reported later, ‘staggering blindly among the boulders for four or five miles. There is something very queer about the top of Ben Macdui and I will not go back there again.’"

My companion turns his head to gauge my reaction. We walk on. Crunch, crunch, crunch. He speaks again. “Alexander Tewnion was not a tourist. He wass a naturalist and mountaineer. Will I tell you his story?”

By this time I can breathe or speak but not both, so I simply nod and he continues. "As Tewnion reached the top of Ben Macdui, the mist swirled across the Lairig Ghru, shrouding the mountain. He heard loud footsteps and a huge shape came charging at him. He pulled his revolver and fired three times.

“'When it still came on, I turned and hared down the path,’ he reported later, ‘reaching Glen Derry in a time that I have never bettered.’”

Crunch, crunch, crunch. I've heard more than enough to know I should find another mountain for my next camping expedtion. The wind is up again, as strong as ever, shrieking like a lost soul and trying to push me back down the mountain. 

"What about you?" I ask and my companion's dark eyes turn towards me. "Have you ever encountered the Big Grey Man?" 

The cloud is down now, clammy on our faces, as we approach the snow-banks in the headwall of Coire Cas. "I haff not," he says, lengthening his stride and pulling effortlessly away from me. 

As the cloud closes around him his soft Highland tones sound in my ears one last time.

"But you have.”