The strange stories of Scotland’s high places

When I look at a mountain, usually from the foothills, I marvel at a wild majestic place that can be exquisitely beautiful and welcoming, or dark and menacing.

What I don't think about is its past.

This is a big mistake for someone who purports to love history, because I now know that the stories of our mountains are a crucial part of our heritage.

That how these high places have fared since prehistory is a reflection of how we've treated them down the centuries.

And that what happens to them is of enormous importance to our future.

That relevance is laid out beautifully in a new book called Upland, the strange history and vital future of Britain's mountains.

This view from the hills comes from someone who clearly has long been aware of the importance of mountains and not just because he climbs them.

He's the writer, Ed Douglas, and he joins me on Love Scotland.

Nice to see you, Ed.

Very nice to see you.

Ed, you're a climber, and although your book covers mountain history, geology, mountain economics, you know, I think it's basically a love letter.

Is there any traction in that?

Yes, it is.

I mean, it's where I spent a lot of my life.

It's where I found peace and kind of freedom and a sort of self-realisation.

You know, I was quite an awkward young man.

I didn't feel that I belonged very much anywhere.

But the mountains kind of take you in and you can be liberated from yourself.

That's what I really love about the mountains.

One of my favourite books is Nan Shepard's book about the Cairngorms, where it's directly about that sense of psychological space.

That's what they gave me.

But it dawned on me as I began to travel, you know, I mean, when I was a baby climber, you sort of You know, you started off on your local crags and then you went to Scotland in winter and then you went to the Alps.

And then if you were lucky, you went to the Himalaya.

And I went through this process and I've climbed all over the world.

And it dawned on me is that that process began, that our mountains were very different from the mountains I was experiencing elsewhere and why that should be.