“Can you hear them?” Stewart asks, his gaze fixed on the overstorey. A canopy of aspen leaves eddy in a Highland breeze, a thousand voices whispering down corridors of woodland. His right hand is raised, quivering – more secret handshake than deliberate tremor.

I’m surprised to see my own hand in similar motion. This hand – courier of feeling and emotion – finds a rhythm beyond my body, before my mind, as though summoned by a shared, wilder kind of calling that renders language insufficient.

This wordless exchange takes place in Scotland’s Cairngorms National Park. I am in esteemed company: ...

 

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