Country diary: flat feet, long in the claw. A warlike creature

Inshriach, Aviemore Tracks revealed the badger and I had been cohabiting all this time. I just wasn't looking hard enough

The bothy at Inshriach sits alone in a clearing, with a view through the trees across the Spey to the Monadhliath mountains. When I arrive, all this is under a foot of snow: juniper hunched over with the weight of it, silver birch cryptic against its white backdrop, the whole glade swathed in mist. The sunlit uplands to the north are glossy and white like Italian meringue, dolloped on with a spoon.