Looking down to the Moniack Burn from the heights of Reelig Glen, Inverness-shire, Scotland.

Commentary.

 

Paths to Middle Earth.

Steep, shaded, wooded gorges.

Cataracts, waterfalls and gushing burns.

A micro-climate, wet, humid and green.

Mosses, lichens, algae and ferns.

Surreal, unreal, mystical, magical

glens that impact our imagination.

Light filters through the dense canopy

and dances on the cascading waters.

Some crannies dark and foreboding,

others pierced by radiant beams of brilliant light.

There are many such places in Scotland.

Gorges on the River Findhorn, The Hermitage in Perthshire,

Corrieshalloch Gorge in Wester Ross.

Puck’s Glen in Argyll and

Finnich Glen in Stirlingshire, to name but a few.

Reelig Glen, near Beauly in Inverness-shire is shown here.

The Moniack Burn flows northwards to the Beauly Firth

through this primeval, other worldly glen.

Previous flows, particularly following Ice-Ages,

eroded the local metamorphosed sedimentary rock

to produce a gorge, a cleft, over 200 feet deep in places.

This seemingly Jurassic landscape, has its own living giants,

trees between 150 and 220 feet tall!

An amazing and beautiful place.

 

 

Done