Mist and Smoke

In the last few months, I have been telling myself to get out the car whenever a scene that makes an impression through the car windscreen, might register as a photograph.

In practice, I rarely do as my phone is doubling as a Sat Nav. Google Maps tends to lose the plot in the absence of a mobile signal and certainly does not like photographic interludes. Also leaving the warmth of my vehicle's cab, is not an appealing proposition.

The two photographs below result from those occasions when intent and action aligned. They are not good photos in any sense but they do at least capture the mood of the current changing of season.

In the first "winter photo", the mist had come down over the mountain at the back of Balintore. This is one of my favourite landscape looks, as the mountains loom, as if toweringly and Tolkienesquely high, under the blanket of cloud.

Balintore under cloud - 31st January 2026

The second more recent "spring photo" shows heather-burning taking place on the hills around Balintore. Most burning occurs in the spring when the plant material has dried out, allowing it to burn, while cold, damp conditions underfoot mean the fire is most easily controlled.I had not seen heather-burning for some time, so I felt it was a spectacle worth capturing.

To the right of the frame were other mountains covered in snow, but the I couldn't quite fit them in.  I so wanted to call the photo "The Land of Fire and Ice" which I thought was another name for Scotland. The Internet tells me disappointingly, that this phrase refers to Iceland.

heather burning: 3rd March 2026

Heather burning is definitely on the decline. Anything to do with shooting is politically contentious, even though the scientific evaluation of the impacts is far from clear.

I can recall many smoky days with amazing orange sunsets at the start of the restoration. On one most memorable evening, there was a thick glowing orange atmosphere around the castle, lit up by brilliant sunshine. There were even embedded sparkles. To this day, I do not know the physics that were involved.

Now we are in March, I can announce with glee that this is the month in which we gain the most daylight. I was surprised by the amount of change when I heard this statistic for the first time recently. Kirriemuir gets an extra 2 hours and 24 minutes of the stuff in March. I will relish every second, and am quite inspired to draw this graph.