Alec Finlay - Gathering. A Place Aware Guide To The Cairngorms

Gathering is an innovative mapping of the Highland landscape in poems, essays, photographs and maps by Scottish artist and poet Alec Finlay (born 1966). Created for The Fife Arms hotel located in the heart of the Cairngorms, it guides the reader to modest, forgotten places in this complex region.

Finlay worked from a published collection of names assembled by Adam Watson, one of the most significant modern contributions to Scottish folk culture, consisting of over 7,000 local place-names, covering every ruined farm, shieling, hill, glen, spring, burn and wood in the region. Over a period of years, Finlay expanded Watson’s catalog into a generous ecopoetical account of the Cairngorms, accompanied by photographs showing the hills in all their seasonal variety and a series of walk guides. Essays guide the reader to names that reveal the haunts of wolves and wildcats, and cast a vivid impression of the great pinewoods that once grew there.