I high recommend Rothiemurchus campsite.

Its run by friendly people, its quiet, in the forest ... there's some easy walking but it isn't far to some tougher country. And its near enough to Aviemore if you want noise - there are more remote areas of remnant forest.

As part of my reason for visiting the forest was to see a clearing, I paid attention to what happens in gaps in the forest ...

It is fairly obvious that if they are left alone gaps (e.g. those caused by falling trees or fire) are swiftly colonised by other trees, especially birches.

Keeping a clearing clear requires effort - probably by humans and the other mammals that accompany us.

Areas within the Rothiemurchus estate are plantation forest - like the bit in the background here. Part of the pleasure of walking here is to see, smell, touch, hear and even taste the differences between the two kinds of woodland. Same trees but entirely different forest.

Monoculture is no culture - or, rather, it is modernist consumerist culture that makes of the world no more than a commodity. Other ways of being human in relation to forests negotiate participative community cultures.

I'm getting nearer to a big clearing. But here's another small one that not only illustrates the point about mammals keeping clearings clear but also shows a rare (in this wood) sycamore. Did the wind or the cattle bring the sycamore here?

Evidence of the cattle:

A bull - elsewhere on the estate

I asked my botanist friend Matt Hall about clearings — how they're formed, maintained, etc. — and he replied:

"That's a good question about the clearings. I am no expert on this, but I think for forest cover to recede there can be a combination of factors involved, depending on the scale you are looking at. Humans are probably the only mammal that could effect widespread recession of forest cover - but climatic change can also play a big part. In the UK however, over the time period in question, the effect of climate on forest cover has probably been negligible.
"On a smaller, much more local scale things are probably more interesting. Humans can be the agent for clearing by chopping, and so can mammals by eating seedlings etc. However natural gaps can occur, as a result of local changes in soil type, water table, topography (i.e. rockiness). They can also be the result of weather action such as lightning strikes, high winds. These latter ones usually grow over, but in temperate forests this takes a long time.
"So in answer to your question, the clearing could have been a direct human action - or it could have been humans using a natural clearing (one that could have eventually grown over) as a camping ground, and possibly more subtly keeping the clearing open. Hope that makes sense!"

Rightly or wrongly, I theorise (self-importantly you might think, but lets not take this too seriously) that the postholes now marked by white blobs in English Heritage's Stonehenge car park are not evidence of the earliest human change in that immediate landscape. The clearing that they were dug in was the first human change and the maintenance of the clearing as a clearing (there's little or none of the usual stuff left by humans) preceded the erection of posts. The clearing may have begun without human activity, or it may have begun when humans camped there ... but its maintenance as a clearing makes it as much a human artefact as the postholes. Or something like that. That is, its the absence of stuff that forms evidence of the first human change, etc. Of course, the postholes are an absence too ...

I'm tempted to wonder if clearings have played large roles in human evolution — or in the evolution of human religions. It isn't (Frazerian) tree worship but clearing celebration that's important ... Maybe the tree veneration is something to do with our departure from and destruction of forests. A way of acknowledging and seeking to do "violence with impunity" as Te Pakaka Tawhai said of his people's religious activities (see my animism book and website for discussion - and my edited book, Readings in Indigenous Religions, for Tawhai's article).

But I'm really less interested in origins than in contemporary life ... So, back to my photos of a great place for a break from the madness of the bureaucracy in which we now exist.