Books,bothies and thinking in place: a new contribution to geographies of the book

Introduction

To the average reader, this entry portrays nothing special; it harbours no great insights, no deeper philosophical meaning and no obviously geographical information. It is, to most, exceptionally ordinary. The ‘Dynamic Dunfers’ ¹ have merely written their names, noted their stay (Figure 1). On this page, they have added their pen to those of others, each scribing their own mark. And so, this book, of which this page is but one, is party to hundreds of such figures, individuals or groups giving permanence to their transience, through ink on paper. Yet, these marks are not normal, this book not commonplace. While print culture is already known to be ‘profoundly, and importantly, a matter of geography, and a matter for geography’, ² the ‘print culture’ of these books is by no means mainstream. These books have no publisher, no printer, no title page, no chapters, headings or index, no contents, no printed text and no editor in the assumed definition of the word. They will never sit on a library shelf, and the reader does not know ‘what to expect’; they are quite simply different.

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Figure 1.

‘Dynamic Dunfers’, an entry from Ruigh Aitechain Bothy in 1976.

However, despite their unique qualities, these books are still most certainly geographical artefacts to be considered among Cartier’s notions of ‘object studies’. ³ They are, as Keighren states, ‘culturally situated phenomenon’, developed in individual buildings and able to impart a plethora of cultural particulars. ⁴ Moreover, these books also have a unique element to bring to geographies of the book. Like the field notes consulted by Lorimer, ⁵ they are lone documents, the only ones of their kind, the antithesis of the reproducible image of the book that we hold in light of the digital opportunities available today. Although this limits the possibilities for analysing their ‘trajectories of diffusion’, ⁶ it by no means undermines their research potential. On the contrary, these books, in their handwritten state, become a modern day manuscript reflective of the initial days of the revolutionary move from orality to literacy. ⁷ They take us back to a time when there was only one book, one ‘object’, in one place. Although in this instance untrained, the makers thus mimic the monks of days gone by, creating books to be valued and protected. Although battered, worn and smeared with the remnants of spilt tea and squashed midgies, these books are both precious and beaten, treasured and abused, to be treated with reverence and irreverence: the embodiment of contradiction. These books push the boundaries of geographies of the book, opening the subfield to these conflicting circumstances and new ‘books’ to be studied. In doing so, they also pay homage to the folk geographies of buildings, the originator of which can plausibly be F.B. Kniffen, who pays full attention to the vernacular, the ordinary, and the lived within. ⁸

This article therefore considers a unique type of book: the ‘bothy book’ formed within simple rural shelters of the same name. I aim, in what follows to show that these are cultural artefacts that stress the co-mingling of persons and place where environments are continually made, and remade, created and shaped, through the practices users are part of, and party to. I also highlight the means by which these books push the boundaries of Ogborn and Withers’ ‘geographies of the book’ subfield, opening the subfield to these conflicting circumstances and the new ‘books’ to be studies. Finally, I demonstrate that these books are also thoroughly entangled in the ‘dwelling’ lifeworld of these buildings and hence are both representational and performative, as well as material objects. This larger problematic is traced in this article through the narrative of bothy users, using their words to provide insight into dwelling in such buildings and, through this, the overarching relationship between ‘Hut Thought Word’.

From book to bothy

These books, termed ‘bothy books’ are situated in buildings of that same name which now pepper the rural Scottish landscape. Originating from the Gaelic word bothan – a hut, ⁹ these buildings are a relic of a temporally distant self-landscape engagement, with this term historically used to denote the accommodation provided for unmarried, male farm-workers, or a basic shelter provided for shepherds working in remote settings. As one labourer recalls,

The bothy is a dirty-looking thatched house, joined on to the end of a cow byre and scarcely one yard from the door there is a large dung-hill . . . In front of the side of the house is a window, below which there is an old table; and at the end of it is a press fastened to the wall for holding milk pails. The bothy is very often in a terrible state of filth – an empty dark, filthy sooty place. ¹⁰

Despite these foundations, few of the buildings termed ‘bothies’ today could claim ancestry in this form. Many originate from the small rural family homes of shepherds or stalkers (as in the case of Ryvoan bothy in the Cairngorms Mountains), ¹¹ although byres and redundant railway or mining structures are also used. ¹² Social, and technological change, such as the Highland Clearances and the invention of the jeep (which facilitated easy mountain access, removing the necessity for estate staff to be lodged throughout the expanse of their properties), made these buildings available in the late 1940s. Resourceful cyclists and walkers then moved in throughout the 1950s, inhabiting for recreation what agriculture had left behind. These earlier buildings have since been complemented by the addition of forestry and purpose-built buildings (such as the memorial huts built to commemorate notable outdoor enthusiasts) which have expanded the bothy repertoire. Today, and for up to a century preceding, these buildings have been used as havens for recreation and access to the more remote sections of the Scottish outdoors.

In response to steadily increasing use of these unlocked and publicly available structures, the Mountain Bothies Association (MBA) was established in 1965 with the aim, ‘to maintain simple shelters in remote country for the use and benefit of all who love wild and lonely places’. ¹³ Bothies, however, rely on the co-operation of a number of people and groups, from landowners, foresters and government organisations, to the group that the MBA define as having ‘the broadest range of interests of all: those who use bothies for their recreation’. ¹⁴ These buildings are not luxury dwellings but rather simple structures, sparsely furnished, often with raised wooden sleeping platforms and a fireplace or woodburning stove. With no soft furnishings and no modern living aids, these buildings are all but a vernacular shell. Yet, these buildings are open to the public, free to use, housing as many as the floor space can accommodate. As such the bothy is a sub-species of ‘out-dwelling’, a term used to reference structures, predominantly human-made, which are fixed in place and yet allow for transitory use; places which provide shelter from the wilds, but also a level of interaction with the outdoors which is more than ‘usual’; a place which is not home, which is a bolt-hole, a home away from home, and in some instances a life saving shelter. From the initial meeting of the MBA in 1965, it was decided that each bothy would be furnished with a ‘house book’.

Hut thought word ¹⁵

The particular book from which the ‘Dynamic Dunfers’ opening extract is taken is housed within Ruigh Aitechain bothy. Now home to walkers, wanderers and enthusiasts unknown, the building is mistakenly known as Landseer’s bothy, haven of the noted English painter who watched and studied red deer, etching Scottish iconography in his ‘Monarch of the Glen’. ¹⁶ Sitting amidst the Cairngorms, this bothy and this book thus gather the dispersed geographies of the many, largely unknown, contributors to this notable, yet unnoticed place.

Huts of this type have often been overlooked, the world within their walls viewed through the product rather than the process. But there are those who have made note of their connection with thought. Poignantly, the French philosopher Gaston Bachelard once commented that

A hermit’s hut. What a subject for an engraving! Indeed, real images are engravings, for it is the imagination that engraves them on our memories . . . And because of this very primitiveness, restored, desires and experiences through simple images, an album of pictures of huts could constitute a textbook of simple exercises for the phenomenology of the imagination. ¹⁷

Taking note and for the moment putting aside Bachelard’s use of the complicated term ‘primitive’, what he speaks of here is the way in which a ‘hut dream’ can penetrate the imagination, shaping and creating the way in which individual’s experience the world around them. By his reckoning, the hut is of particular significance for those (in his mind phenomenologists) who are ‘looking for the roots of the function of inhabiting’ where ‘we hope to live elsewhere, far from the over-crowded house, far from city cares. We flee in thought in search of real refuge’. ¹⁸ Thus, the hut dream is not just a dream of a far off retreat, but something we can find within the mind, without leaving home. Therefore, the hut is emblematic of humanity’s affinity for simplicity, for intimacy, for a space to think. Thus, while the ‘hut dream’ can shape the mind, many seek this same intellectual refuge in huts in a more physical sense.

E.B White wrote Charlotte’s Web within the walls of his hut, and he is far from alone in having found such places productive spaces in which to write and think. Dylan Thomas had his boathouse and likewise Henry Thoreau had his cabin at Walden Pond. Aiming to both undermine the economic entanglements of the emerging market regime and embark on a spiritual adventure, Thoreau lived at Walden Pond for just over 2 years, using it to explore the rich treasures a simple life could afford. Consequently, as his biographer Henry Seidel Canby, writes, ‘the social thinker, the scientist, and the artist concerned with form as well as meaning, all awoke in Thoreau at Walden’. ¹⁹

Spiritual connections can also be made with small buildings. The Norwegian philosopher Arne Naess, founder of the ‘deep ecology’ movement, coined his personal philosophy ‘ecosophy T’ after his mountain hut. A prime example of those who experience ‘mountain epiphanies’ (see Note 10, p. 180), Naess believed that true spiritual perception and appreciation of the inherent value of nature required sustained distance from city life. As he states, ‘it takes time for the new milieu to work in depth. It is quite normal that several weeks must pass before the sensitivity for nature is so developed that it fills the mind’ (p. 179). ²⁰ Admittedly, Naess here fails to see the potential for nature within the city and for him, a hut allows both access to nature (as rural) and sustained and contemplative residence within it. More recently, Pollan has written of ‘The Architecture of Daydreams’, in accounting for his own need for, and experience of creating A Place of My Own, a place to read, to write, and in his words ‘launch . . . critiques of modern society’. ²¹ For him, a hut becomes a necessity, ‘a place of solitude a few steps off the beaten track of real life’. ²²

Of particular note to this work is Martin Heidegger and his hut at Todtnauberg in Germany’s Black Forest. Heidegger named this six by seven metres building ‘die Hutte’ (‘the hut’), and it is here that he crafted some of his most famous work, including the first draft of perhaps his best-known edition, the book Being and Time. ²³ Within this work, the Cartesian split of mind and body was challenged, and rather than having a world upon which we build, he argued that we make that world in the act of dwelling. In Heidegger’s words, ‘only if we are capable of dwelling, only then can we build’. ²⁴ As such in ‘Building Dwelling Thinking’, Heidegger tackles the association of place, person and product, intimating at the ways in which our surroundings structure our thinking. These ideas have been taken up by anthropologist Ingold, ²⁵ and geographers Wylie, ²⁶ Harrison ²⁷ and Cloke and Jones, ²⁸ among others. All of these works stress the co-mingling of person and place where environments are thus continually made, and remade, created and shaped through the practices users are part of, and party to.

Thus, the work undertaken in Heidegger’s hut was indeed ‘great philosophical’ ²⁹ stuff, but it was also precisely at the same time about the everydayness of dwelling, of being. In his short essay, ‘Why Do I Stay in the Provinces?’, published in 1934, Heidegger set out the significance of the hut in his life, and by extension, his work. ³⁰ Sharr endorses this synthesis in arguing that, to Heidegger, this hut was more than a physical location, it was, as he put it, his ‘work-world’, where the rural rigour and solitude provided a ‘constant dialogue partner’. ³¹ It is therefore argued that there is a profound connection between Heidegger’s black forest hut and the philosophical, ethical and practical dimensions of his writing ‘great philosophy’ books.

Just as Heidegger’s ‘hut books’ were shaped by Todtnauberg, so too are these buildings and their bothy books ‘enmeshed’ in their user’s thinking, ultimately becoming, as Benjamin notes, ‘as much a philosophical event as it is an architectural one’. ³² As such, buildings of this type can be seen as places where ideas gestate and words are put down. Not only are books part of bothy life, they are also a uniquely placed product of time spent in these spaces, a place for people to give personal expression to their world view through their vernacular philosophising. Bothy books thus provide a new contribution to Ogborn and Withers’ ‘geographies of the book’ subfield. But, it is also important to highlight that these books are also embroiled in the ‘dwelling’ lifeworld of these buildings. This notion of books as representational and performative, as well as material, is carried through in this article, which uses the narratives of bothy users to provide a lived geography of these buildings and their connection to this notion of ‘Hut Thought Word’.

Books as source

In illustrating these claims, this work will draw upon those bothies which are presently, and were previously, found in the Cairngorm area of the Scottish Highlands. The 67 books used, housed in 5 boxes and dated from 1973 to 2008, covered 8 bothies from the Cairngorm area, encompassing the entries from Ryvoan (shown in Figure 2), Inshriach, Sinclair, Fords of Avon, Jeans, Ruigh Aitechain, Garbh Coire and Corrour. Though written individually in ‘wild and lonely places’, ³³ these books are stored en mass by Scottish Natural Heritage (SNH) in Aviemore. A further five of those books still in situ within the bothies were also consulted, these spanning 2007–2011. ³⁴ These books, both those in situ, and those stored by SNH, are an unstudied archive, an untouched treasure of research data.

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Figure 2.

Ryvoan bothy.

Housed as they are, either in archive (Figure 3) or in situ bothies, these books exist in a quasi limbo between official documentation and personal effect and as such are innovative resources that help push the ever expanding boundaries of what constitutes source material for contemporary historical geographies. ³⁵ They are in this manner unique, uncharted academic territory. These books were systematically read, box through box, some requiring extreme care so as not to dismember their fragile form. This close reading, involving not only words but also textures and smells provided an invite into the world of their making. It was from here that themes were coded, and it became possible for a bothy world to be rewoven. All quotes from the bothy books used in this article are presented in a manner faithful to the originals, including spelling, formatting and use of regional terms.

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Figure 3.

Examples of the bothy books from the archive held by Scottish Natural Heritage.

And so, what follows is a geography of a type of book, an account of geographies within a book, and a geography of the people and place involved in that process. It sits comfortably within the new and emerging literatures which focus on the book, its creation, distribution and reception. Geographies of the book, while ‘terminologically novel’, ³⁶ have deep roots in histories of the book and the history of science. As an area of study, it is generally accepted to have roots in Febvre and Martin’s 1958 publication of L’Apparation du Livre, translated as The Coming of the Book, ³⁷ a seminal work that introduced historical geographers to the importance of place and culture in efforts to understand print. ³⁸ As a result, this new subfield of geographical inquiry deals predominantly with either situating the production of printed knowledge or with the reception and consumption of books. In doing so, both strands, as Keighren notes, ‘[make] the claim that . . . place matters’. ³⁹ As such attention is paid to the ‘paper world’ ⁴⁰ with specific works focusing on the ‘spatial setting of reading’, ⁴¹ the locational reception of books ⁴² and the idea of ‘scribal communities’. ⁴³ Cumulatively, this work pays heed to Hall’s assertion that a greater holistic understanding of the book allow us to move towards a social history of culture. ⁴⁴ Of particular interest for the following project is John’s engagement with the small-scale intimate geographies of production, which complements yet contrasts Withers’ notion that the production of a book is not static, but rather is built through process, across space, and by numerous actors. ⁴⁵ This foregrounding of the spatial ties to the work of book historian, Secord, who makes a stand against localism through which he explores the notion of ‘knowledge in transit’, ⁴⁶ thus breaking down the distinction between ‘production’ and ‘dissemination’. More latterly, geographers Withers and Keighren have sought to move beyond these spatially focused readings and take a more social approach in focusing on the epistemology of travel and exploration narratives. In particular, they pay attention to the author–publisher relationship, and the way in which words are translated from conception to publication. ⁴⁷ Ultimately, all of this is underpinned by Cartier who acknowledges a sociological perspective, ‘viewing the text not only as a physical object but also as a historically and culturally situated phenomenon’. ⁴⁸

These books can also be seen as material objects in their own right, a point often forgotten in traditional synopses of this sub genre. Lorimer’s ⁴⁹ 2003 work explores this idea in developing a sense of use of Cairngorm adventure at Glenmore Lodge, a library book. Through, analysing the issue stamps which coat the cover’s interior and the ‘fugitive entries’ made to the book by the numerous borrowers, he conjectures upon its use. As Lorimer writes, ‘To acknowledge these significant social acts is to attend to this individual book’s historicity and to transform it into material object’ (see Note 48). Such scholarship on books evidences the conclusions of eminent scholar’s in this field, Ogborn and Withers’ who argue that, in addition to analysing the ways in which questions of geography are embroiled within the creation of the ‘book’, a geography of books ‘makes a new sort of knowledge possible’. ⁵⁰

Therefore, despite the ‘electronic revolution’, ⁵¹ in line with the use of increasingly divergent resources, ⁵² efforts must still be made to heed Keighren’s call to ‘expand the range of material forms and genres which usefully can be subject to geographical interpretation’. ⁵³ It is on this basis that the following work began, in search of a new means to understand a series of books which were, and still are, an understudied source.

And so, what follows is indeed a geography of these books themselves, as objects with geographies of production, circulation and consumption, alert too to the spaces of writing, reading and relocation. Yet, utilising literatures of landscapes, dwelling and morality, the aim is also to present these books as windows into dwelling in huts, to the conflation of person and place, the way in which this gathering together can be understood through thoughts on paper. In doing so, this article thus seeks to make a unique contribution, moving geographies of the book away from trajectories, receptions and anthropocentric relationships and towards a more thorough appreciation of the space for dwelling within the literary sphere. It is therefore argued that books can provide an insight into not only the spatial relations of production and consumption, or the social relationships embedded in creation, but also the relationships between people and their places, or specifically their buildings.

Consequently, as one bothy user has noted, ‘good evening [or indeed just hello] to ye’ll all, welcome to [what appears to be academic geography’s first] episode o’BOTHY NICHTS’. ⁵⁴

‘To my grandchildren of the future’: ⁵⁵ literary dynamics

Despite the fact that this article is about bothies, in light of the argument set forth above, the focus of this work is not on the bothies as buildings but on the bothy books once, or still, held within their walls. These books begin life empty, void of ink and lead. Only once deposited within the bothy, by Warden or MBA, do they begin to document the lived and dwelt experience of bothy use. These books are depositories of not only the customary name and date functionality of most visitors’ books but also thoughts, feelings and ‘episodes’ of experience. They thereby inhabit an interesting literary dynamic where some rules are followed and others deposed, written with no obvious purpose, no prearranged audience, but nonetheless deemed valuable, intended for keeping, written ‘to my grandchildren of the future’. ⁵⁶

Additionally, in line with Withers’ astute hypothesis, for bothy books, ‘production is less a location than a process distributed across space and different persons’. ⁵⁷ The books have numerous, diverse – and for some part unnamed – authors with no ‘rights to [their] literary gems’. ⁵⁸ Consequently, the books also have a multitude of implicitly adopted tones, styles and aims. For some, such as those displayed below, the bothy books are a rudimentary cookbook:

bothy burgers

½ lb. mince

1 onion

salt and pepper

1 teaspoon hot curry powder ⁵⁹

For others, they are a guide-book, an honest and proud reflection of ambitions achieved and machoism revered, ⁶⁰ a weather check of aspects such as cloud cover and snow conditions, ⁶¹ or even an outlet for artistic expression such as short plays, poetry and song which hark back to the traditions of the bothy ballad. ⁶² The books also appear in ‘dear diary’ form, ⁶³ a safe haven for thoughts, confessions or moments shared. The entry below in which the user describes his companions’ actions provides one such example:

I am sitting by the fire while Phil eases his social conscience by burning rubbish on it so this message is being scribed with the pervading odor of burning plastic bags and other noxious items . . .

Use of the hut much appreciated. ⁶⁴

These entries are like a written pause in time, allowing us to see into an evening, an event, a moment, a culture. Through them we become part of, or at least onlookers to, the scene. Although we cannot taste or smell the moment, the words allow us passage into a secret, some might say lost world of the bothy. Despite one user’s proclamation that ‘words don’t matter, people do’, ⁶⁵ words do matter; the words people write become more than an archive, they create a written picture.

Aside from the visitor’s book tradition of name and date, the most prominent form taken by the books is that of the social network. This can somewhat surprisingly come in the form of a rudimentary dating site, an in situ lonely hearts column or a children’s pen-pal finder. ⁶⁶ More often, however, the books appear akin to the ‘wall’ of an online forum through which issues such as litter, wildlife, geology and outdoor gear can be debated and discussed. ⁶⁷ Clearly, these books are not ascribed a single meaning, they are interactive objects, produced and consumed by the culture which surrounds them. These books also fit neatly with Secord’s ideas of ‘knowledge in transit’, where ‘it is not so much a question of seeing how knowledge transcends the local circumstances of its production, but instead of seeing how every local situation has within it connections with possibilities for interaction with other settings’. ⁶⁸ It is this phenomena which accounts for the near-unique dialogic structure of these books. Epitomised by the phrase ‘Dear next writer’, there is an anticipatory nature to these geographically sited conversations penned by transient participants for readers and authors yet to come. Here, the geographies of the bothy books give material form to Ogborn and Withers’ argument that ‘production, circulation and consumption need to be considered together’. ⁶⁹

However, despite their unique authorship, bothies do have – in some form – several of the more customary characteristics of a book. First, across the archive, a number of figures reappear as though characters in a ‘normal’ book. Tim Harrison, the researching post-graduate (Figure 4), Dave Holland, the dedicated warden, and the ‘Wandering Sailor’ (Figure 5) are just three of the regular contributors appearing in several entries across numerous books.

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Figure 4.

Tim Harrison. One of the numerous entries he logged during his time researching in the area.

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Figure 5.

The Wandering Sailor. An example of his customary red stamp.

In addition to characters, the books are also peppered with illustrations. One of the more graphic and yet clean-natured of those on offer, Figure 6, highlights that although bothy books are not traditional books, they are most certainly branches of that established communicative genre.

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Figure 6.

The Dreaded Munro Basher!

Perhaps most prominently, bothy books can also have editors, if not quite in the traditional sense. In this instance, the books offer a challenge to the all too often assumed role of editors in works of book geography as these editors are not merely those who refine or collate the stories within. The editors role here is not to standardise the font or homogenise the voice and thus I find the production of these books akin to Darnton’s ⁷⁰ envisioning of a communications circuit in which all those agents involved in production of texts have a role in the value chain of communication. Most obviously those Maintenance Officers tasked with stewardship of particular bothies, who supply and remove the books edit these texts by providing blank pages and removing full volumes. Moreover, although Mitchell and Brown claim that bothies are a place to get away from ‘rules and regulations’, ⁷¹ they are clearly not devoid of all restrictions. For some, such as the entries shown below, there appears to be pressure to write certain comments, to fulfil certain roles or self-edit:

sorry, at 5.30am bright and witty comments are beyond me!! ⁷²

no mice, no blizzards, no moments of great philosophical insight. No explosions ⁷³

haven’t got time to draw pretty pictures or wax lyrically or write down tatty jokes or anything – sorry ⁷⁴

In other situations, the ‘editing’ is far more apparent: pages are ripped out, comments are written over and entries stipulating proper use are employed, as shown in Figure 7.

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Figure 7.

‘Teacher from Glasgow’, commenting on the use of the book by children.

Finally, the books themselves can also be seen to edit the actions of the users, as in the case in Corrour bothy in 1978 when the occupants refrain from executing the bothy mouse apparently in light of a rule placed on the inside cover of the book, ‘protect and preserve plant and animal life’. ⁷⁵ Clearly, both the books and the bothy are not an entirely free space, the entries and the users who create them are certainly restricted by the assumptions and actions of those who surround them, the assumed rules of bothy culture. Ultimately, the bothy books themselves create new geographies in a different sort of book. They are, as users note, both ‘a marvelous idea’ ⁷⁶ and an ‘interesting read’, ⁷⁷ a precious chronicle which permits access to the unspoken textures of experience within the bothy world and the ultimate new source for an understudied culture.

Dwelling, memory and the bothy

The utility of the books can be taken beyond their literary characteristics. As Johns states, ⁷⁸ in addition to understanding the materiality of the books, attention must also turn to the material conditions, indeed the locations, in which these books were produced. Focusing on the relationships and locations of printing in early modern London, he argues for recognition of ‘particular clusters of representations, practices and skills’. ⁷⁹ This geography of the book, rather than focusing on distribution, takes note of the intricate geographies of micro places.

It is with this attention to the place of production that I turn to dwelling, to the co-production of people and place, and ultimately to the bothies themselves. As Cresswell aptly notes, traditional analysis of landscapes through documents has produced a rather static visual depiction of the environment that it seeks to explore, resulting in ‘purely material topographies’. ⁸⁰ In contrast, landscape phenomenology, inspired by Heidegger and Merleau-Ponty, and developed by Ingold, focuses on the embodied practices of being in the world. ⁸¹ In this way, landscape is defined as a processual interaction of body and world, thus breaking down the Cartesian distinction between these two. In this reading, closer attention is paid to the full ‘livedness’ of landscape, and in turn this opens up the opportunity to ‘enliven’ ⁸² geographical inquiry through inclusion of the affective, emotional realm. However, as Lorimer notes, ‘Much is . . . contingent on the availability of “sources” which capture (or at least take us closer to) the smells, sounds, sights and feelings of direct, embodied experience’. ⁸³ Luckily, the bothy books are a prime source for such a task. The entries detail the life-in-the-now of people in the past, providing a rich emotional plane for discussion of bothy culture in relation to lived experiences such as grief and memory, and for considering how places are co-produced through inhabitation.

Bothy culture is clearly, in part, a product of the connections between persons, environments and emotions. These can indeed be emotions of grief or remembrance and these sentiments may be built into the structures themselves, as is the case for the Jean’s Hut, the Sinclair Hut or the Hutchinson’s Memorial Hut (a.k.a Etchachan Bothy). These buildings were (and in the case of Hutchinson’s still are) the physical embodiment of memory-making, ‘environments of memory’ at their zenith. ⁸⁴ This notion is exemplified in the placard pinned to Guirdil Cottage (an MBA bothy), which marks the memory of Tom and Margaret Brown:

ONLY IN HEAVENLY SPIRIT NOW THEY TREAD

HIGH TOPS, WHERE DAILY WORRIES FLED.

WHERE LIFE WAS GOOD AND DAYS WERE LONG

AND NATURE THRILLED THEM WITH IT’S SONG ⁸⁵

But, it is not only the names, or the placards, which instil these relationships. Recognition of the term dwelling involves a change from seeing the world in a ‘built perspective’ where humans create (build) upon an inanimate world, to that of a dwelling perspective, in which all acts of living and thinking are acts of dwelling, of being-in-the-world: a co-production of people and place. As Ingold notes, echoing Heidegger, ‘it is in the very process of dwelling that we build’. ⁸⁶ Thus, dwelling emphasises the ways in which recurrent encounters with places echo upon one another, enabling the development of complex associations which ‘serve to build up memory and affection for those places, thereby rendering the places themselves deepened by time and qualified by memory’. ⁸⁷ We humans are indeed, as Jones has noted, ‘creatures of memory’ ⁸⁸ and bothy users are not blind to this fact, their entries clearly implicating memory-making as a distinctive emotional element of bothy culture:

treasured memories before I depart for Afghanistan ⁸⁹

The weekend leaves me with very happy memories ⁹⁰

harder to leave than to come ⁹¹

These entries, exemplify that memory is both spatial and, as Jones also asserts, ‘clearly bound up with processes of place and emotional attachments to place’. ⁹²

But these memories are also affected by the taskscape of the bothy, the repeated practices which imbue a place with specific associations, characteristics or, in this case, emotions. Bothies are places in which dangers are encountered and deaths have occurred: these ‘wild and lonely’ ⁹³ places are not the placid landscapes of a romantic idyll. Harrowing entries such as that from Jean’s Hut in 1977, detailing the frantic efforts of a mountaineer following his companion’s fall from a cornice, immediately force this point home. The Cairngorm Tragedy of 1971, which remains one of Scotland’s worst mountaineering accidents in which five school children and their instructor perished in bad weather en route to a bothy, is perhaps the ultimate example. Although not wholly attributable to the bothies themselves, the subsequent closure of many high level structures on safety grounds highlights the connection between bothies and emotional engagement. Furthermore, even when the surrounding environment, or the structure of the bothy itself, is not implicated in the deaths, these places are still used as environments in which to remember, as Figure 8 portrays.

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Figure 8.

‘Jo’s Walk’, an emotional entry from Inshriach bothy.

Clearly, the bothy landscape is a story, enfolding, as Ingold notes, the lives of those who have been involved in its creation. Remembering here ‘is not so much a matter of calling up an internal image, stored in the mind, as of engaging perceptually with an environment that is itself pregnant with the past’. ⁹⁴ Thus, we are brought back to Meinig’s reminder that we observe ‘the powerful fact that life must be lived amidst that which was made before’. ⁹⁵ Bothies are essentially places in which the ‘stuff of life’ in all its forms takes place, with birthdays, anniversaries, proposals and honeymoons all encountered within their walls. ⁹⁶ Even for those who do not implicate specific events within their experience, bothies can still be viewed as ‘not just physical shelters but stages in your past’, be they fleeting or sustained. ⁹⁷ A tangible example can be found in the baby feet prints cast in concrete in the foyer at Peanmeanach Bothy on Scotland’s west coast, likely the result of a child accompanying an MBA work party as was the case in Strathan Bothy. ⁹⁸ As one user (Interview with Ian Mitchell) aptly highlights, these ‘baby feet’ are symbols of which each user will have their own, metaphorical agents which complement Urry’s assertions that places harbour marks of those who interact with them. ⁹⁹ These marks, these ‘baby feet’, highlight that these buildings have life-histories. They emphasise that landscapes are testimony to the lives who have dwelt there, and, as Ingold states, ‘in so doing, have left there something of themselves’. ¹⁰⁰

Despite this time-depth, however, the creation of the bothy, just like the creation of the books, is a continuing process; it does not stop with the creation of the bothy or the end of one book. As one entrant astutely notes, ‘each time you visit the bothy it’s a different experience, it’s never the same’. ¹⁰¹ And as Ingold then comments,

Building, then, is a process that is continually going on, for as long as people dwell in an environment. It does not begin here, with a pre-formed plan, and end there, with a finished artifact. The ‘final form’ is but a fleeting moment in the life of any feature. ¹⁰²

The dichotomy of bothy escapism: ‘in the mountains you feel free’ vs Star Trek

While Ingold appears to see landscape as a process, fluid and changeable, he has nonetheless been critiqued for viewing dwelling as purely ‘something created out of people’s activities rather than through their representations’. ¹⁰³ The bothy books allow for an exploration of a different interpretation, one in which representation and imagination are seen as key to the experience of dwelling within a bothy. I begin this task with the words of A. M. Lawrence, ¹⁰⁴ from a poem reproduced and displayed in a bothy (Figure 9).

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Figure 9.

‘I leave tonight from Euston’, posted on the door in Ryvoan bothy.

The last verse of this traditional bothy poem provides a perfect introduction to a discussion of the dichotomy of bothy escapism: the need and pleasure at leaving ‘civilization’ behind, yet the inability to really do so.

It would seem that many agree with the words of T.S. Elliot quoted in a Fords of Avon bothy book, ‘in the mountains, there you feel free’ ¹⁰⁵ – the mountains appear, as stated in the poem below (Figure 9), ‘wondrous kind’. Like many of the settings engaged in studies of therapeutic landscapes, the bothy is certainly among the ‘non-ordinary’. ¹⁰⁶ However, like other places of ‘self-landscape encounter’, there is definitely evidence of bothy users engaging with the Western tradition of a ‘retreat to nature’ for therapeutic means: ¹⁰⁷

FRED NIND EDINBURGH – SOUL CLEANSING ¹⁰⁸

Here we found where we have been looking for: the silence of a wonderful nature, the silence we needed to find ourselves. It was here we learned to respect every little thing, to be protect[ed] to have warm[th] and some food made on a little hunting fire far away from home and civilization. Thank you little hut for the protection you gave us. ¹⁰⁹

fairly blows the cobwebs away ¹¹⁰

The quotes above are just some of the many entries which elucidate this point. It seems that therapeutic landscape studies need not be confined to the designed versions such as gardens so commonly addressed. Moreover, the theory that, ‘in coming closer to other ecologies or rhythms of life, we may obtain distance from everyday routines, perhaps also experiencing renewed energy and finding different perspectives upon our circumstances’, ¹¹¹ is certainly valid in the bothy experience. The dialogue below is but one example:

a lovely escape from reality even if it was just for one day

[commented on with]

or even ‘escape to reality’ – after all, it’s just a question of attitude ¹¹²

The discourse that urbanisation has led to a renewed focus on the restorative potential of nature is widely documented. ¹¹³ Subsequently, the literature suggests that ‘work pressures, urban noise, and other stressors drive people to seek relief through outdoor recreation’, ¹¹⁴ a point captured forcefully in one entry:

it was one of those mad ideas late at night suffering from city blues ‘get me out of here’ and we marked this bothy on our maps two months ago ¹¹⁵

This sense of self-help, of healing, is certainly a self-conscious decision for some. Despite the physical strain of the bothy experience, it is still identified as a therapeutic recreational activity, in which ‘the beauty of the mountains pays for your sweat’. ¹¹⁶ Here, we see, just as Tuan found, ¹¹⁷ the moral conflation of the aesthetics of ‘nature’ with appraisals of what is ‘good’. For these users, no matter what the weather conditions or the state of your final destination, bothying is ‘still, better than sitting at home watching DALLAS’. ¹¹⁸ Their love of the self-landscape engagement, the ‘need’ as Mitchell terms it, ¹¹⁹ is certainly strong. For these ‘bothy addicts’, ¹²⁰ it is a ‘fix’, ¹²¹ an ‘annual pilgrimage’, ¹²² all sentiments which perfectly illustrate these ‘bothyites’ ¹²³ emotional attachment to bothy culture.

This search for therapeutic engagement is often coupled with a hunt for solitude, a common attraction to wilderness areas. ¹²⁴ Such notions are included in the MBA’s definition of bothies as designed for those with a love of ‘wild and lonely’ ¹²⁵ places, and these ideas are carried over into the bothy books themselves:

Here to get my head together and let my mind thoughtfully meander. Just the place I need to be alone, great bothy. ¹²⁶

Such users praise the bothy experience as ‘wonderfully deserted’ ¹²⁷ and decry situations where the ‘traffic on the Lairig Ghru [is] up to motorway standards today!’. ¹²⁸ To leave ‘civilization’ ¹²⁹ behind is the apex of bothy pleasure. Ultimately, therefore it appears, as Conradson argues, that ‘these environmental encounters are in part appreciated for their capacity to move us to think and feel differently’. ¹³⁰

However, although therapeutic landscapes have the ability to ‘shape our feelings’, ¹³¹ this does not mean they have the ability to cause users completely to evade the ‘real world’, ¹³² quite the opposite in fact. It may be true that ‘experiences in one place can seed the construction of new stories to live by in other places’, ¹³³ but this does not alter the reality that the claims to be able to escape civilisation are, according to the books, a total fallacy for most users. In line with Mitchell’s comments, ‘maybe it’s a therapeutic self-deception but it’s self deception nonetheless’: ¹³⁴ bothy culture is not a utopia and the users cannot entirely escape. Even at the most basic level, as Moran has highlighted, each bothy itself is an infringement on that isolationist, wilderness ideal so cherished by many users. ¹³⁵ The numerous comments concerning their ‘home comforts’, ¹³⁶ and even those who critique any complaints as to their condition, all speak to the idea that bothies themselves are a ‘real home from home’, ¹³⁷ a ‘holiday resort’ ¹³⁸ and an infraction on the escapist ideals discussed above. Even the litter they leave, a clear bone of contention within the culture, is a symbol of civilisation, and harks back to the commercial world that bothy users claim to leave behind. ¹³⁹

Here, we are reminded of Conradson’s point that those seeking retreat ‘all arrived with baggage, trailing behind . . . in only partly visible ways’. ¹⁴⁰ The encroachment of civilisation, this notion of bringing-the-outside-in, is far from confined to physical aspects and it is here that the books highlight the dichotomy of bothy escapism. One simple example comes from the numerous Star Trek inspired entries which dot the books from the 1970s, a clear reflection of the world back ‘home’. ¹⁴¹ In addition to these ‘captain’s log’ ¹⁴² entries, a plethora of references to pubs and women (highlighting the gender bias of certain bothies), along with historic and current world references, dust the beaten pages of every bothy book. ¹⁴³ From Charles and Diana’s wedding, ¹⁴⁴ to the troubles in Ireland, ¹⁴⁵ popular music, ¹⁴⁶ popular fashion, ¹⁴⁷ the Falklands War, ¹⁴⁸ the Cold War, ¹⁴⁹ the global energy wars, ¹⁵⁰ and even through the innumerable entries concerning football teams, rivalries and scores, ¹⁵¹ the outside world is stitched to every book and every bothy. Figure 10 provides a classic visual example.

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Figure 10.

An illustration capturing a climber’s mental map of Europe. Note the nuclear weapons on either side of the world, representing the Cold War.

And so, like Lea, I would call upon Conradson’s critique of how the therapeutic landscape tradition has tended to equate ‘physical presence within a landscape with the unproblematic receipt of its therapeutic influence’. ¹⁵² If landscapes are made through a co-mingling of people and place, then the idealised landscape that bothy users imagine, of a therapeutic landscape where nature equates with the good, is actually fairly static and limited. The ‘orchestration of feeling’, after all, is ‘no simple matter’. ¹⁵³ Not only are these places not therapeutic for all, even for those who find such solace it appears impossible not to bring all of their ‘stuff’ with them. So, by dwelling in place, people undermine their own image of what that place would be, and what it could do for them. The argument made here need not suggest that places cannot be therapeutic, but rather that they are not always therapeutic in the way that they are assumed to be. Ultimately, dwelling is not just a hermetically sealed process of people in place, but rather a coming together of people place, preconception and preexisting experience. As Cloke and Jones note,

Dwelling can only be a useful concept if it can be adapted to a world where views of authenticity as some form of idealised past original stable state are clearly unhelpful; to the complex interpenetration of places with other places, and to the flows of ideas, people, and materials which coconstitute and coconstruct those places; and to the need for dynamic rather than fixed ways of understanding embodied engagements with landscapes. ¹⁵⁴

Bothy culture does take users away from their usual world, and it does allow space for reflection and a place to ‘feel differently’, but the bothy experience and the dwelling implicated therein is not a complete secondment. All of the bothy users’ preconditions, their gender, their class, even their age, they all travel into the ‘wilderness’ embodied within the users themselves. Bothy culture is not separate from ‘real life’, not sectioned off. Although taking place in the ‘non-ordinary’, it is still very much a product of the ‘civilization’ outwith.

A new compass and a new map: moral geographies of the bothy

The bothy books also provide the opportunity to delve into the spatial patterns and relations of bothy culture which ‘invite’ ¹⁵⁵ a specifically moral reading. As Jackson ¹⁵⁶ has highlighted, because of its moral content, culture is also often a site of contestation and of difference. Bothy culture is no different and there appear to be a number of strata within the sub-culture itself. A discussion of difference in the bothy sense, however, must begin with a discussion of camaraderie. From the numerous entries describing ‘strangers who treated me like a friend’ ¹⁵⁷ or those depicting ‘good fun’ ¹⁵⁸ with ‘liquid gold’ ¹⁵⁹ around a ‘night of fire’ ¹⁶⁰ going on ‘into the sma’ hours’, ¹⁶¹ it is clear that despite the numerous users who seek solitude, the fellowship of bothy culture is certainly strong. Conceivably the strongest signal of this solidarity comes with respect for mountain safety, portrayed through the various entries detailing parties retreating to report missing persons on the basis of their unclaimed belongings. ¹⁶²

It is perhaps the very nature of the bothy which creates this camaraderie: a sense of togetherness, a transgression of everyday life, which brings with it a new set of moral mores in the bothy space. Here, a lack of hygiene is tolerated, sleeping arrangements are unorthodox and privacy is but a luxury. Although these buildings are shelter, a home for the evening if you will, they remain very much a public space. Smith questions whether moral codes apply in private spaces, ¹⁶³ and yet here it is the fluidity of definition which allows the bothy to turn Smith’s argument on its head. The bothy is public, but if anything it is here that conventional moral codes need to be reapplied or readjusted. Among the books, it thus appears that there is a new moral compass from which users can navigate. This new moral code is not universal, though, and subsequently there is much weight in Mitchell and Brown’s argument that ‘the so-called camaraderie of the hills is a bit of a myth’. ¹⁶⁴ Bothy culture is not merely that of the mountaineering fraternity as commonly portrayed in popular literature, and, while it always includes an engagement with the world lived out-of-doors, it is actually an incredibly diverse recreational activity. From climbers to photographers, children’s groups to bird watchers, bikers to researchers, mountain challengers to people just ‘pottering around’, ¹⁶⁵ a ream of activity is accommodated within the bothy walls. Moreover, users can be local or foreign, they can be male, they can be female, they can be old, they can be young – essentially they can be, and are, anyone.

This multifarious catchment culminates in what can only be described as a stratified bothy culture as the comments below suggest:

Is there any way to stop Scouts/D of E/School Parties . . . their paw marks? ¹⁶⁶

bothy and surrounding area are an absolute disgrace. Obviously too many punters and not enough mountaineers in the area ¹⁶⁷

just enough midgies to keep the tourists away ¹⁶⁸

Many thanks . . . There’s a dram on the shelf for a genuine walker (not a Sunday tourist) Cheers! ¹⁶⁹

With different communities of bothy users commenting, sometimes negatively, on other ‘communities’, some obvious cleavages emerge between the supposedly ‘authentic’ (non-tourist, non-organised group, well equipped) bothyite and the ‘interlopers’, creating clear fractures in the bothy community. Ultimately, as this crude opening comment from the 2006–2008 Inshriach Bothy book aptly illustrates, ‘shitty dogs Shithead dog owners’, difference is perhaps what bothies do best. ¹⁷⁰ These comments imply a means of proper practice, for as Matless notes, ‘the good citizen . . . [makes] sense only in relation to the “anti-citizen”’. ¹⁷¹ Subsequently, just as Matless found in his work on the Norfolk Broadlands, ¹⁷² clearly some activities here (mountaineering or ‘genuine’ walking) are afforded a higher moral reading than others (day trippers, ‘punters’) due to the moral codes ascribed. ‘Genuine’ outdoor pursuits are attributed to hardiness, often masculinity and a good dose of self reliance, while the latter are credited to hedonistic revelry, or conversely the characteristics of being safe and sedate.

This question of difference can also be seen between the bothies themselves. Focusing on Lorimer’s belief that ‘particularity and mundanity are . . . the qualities that matter most’, ¹⁷³ the notion of bothy culture as a homogenous entity can be seen as a misnomer. Indeed, bothy culture is in fact a mosaic, a seasonally controlled phenomenon of fluctuating character. Not only are the bothies different in their physical design, the structures themselves have their own individual cultures. ¹⁷⁴ As Mitchell has alluded, the bothies of the ‘high doss’, Garbh Corrie and the like, are the realm of the climber, a crude, gendered and odorous space. ¹⁷⁵ Due to their accessibility, the valley bothies, such as Ryvoan and Inshriach, are, although not exclusively, the sphere of a far gentler clientele, by day at least. Contrast the crude literary gems coursing out of the high level bothies with that of Figure 11, and the variety rapidly reveals itself.

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Figure 11.

A child’s perspective – ‘Thea Main I am thea. I live in . . . I have blonde hair, blue eyes and I am six years’.

This spatial disparity brings to mind Philo’s assertion that we have to understand local culture to intuit the everyday moralities of ‘particular people in particular places’, ¹⁷⁶ and so the idea of a local morality is introduced, moralities that are ‘made and remade across space’. ¹⁷⁷ This intricate map of local moralities is a product of the community of users, and of the differences between them, but it is also a topographic difference, a feature of the location and the co-production of the bothy landscape by both building and user. Also of note is that this differentiation is seasonally fluxional, with the summer welcoming a variety of users and the winter months narrowing the bounds once more. With this in mind, it is clear that the term ‘bothy’ encompasses a broad and multifaceted cultural remit, each with its own moral code, again ensuring that the bothy is continuously made and remade.

As Matless states, such tensions ‘are inherent in and formative of the landscapes of leisure and pleasure, always there to be carefully negotiated, stretched, stumbled over, inhabited’. ¹⁷⁸ Yet, despite the difficulties of navigating a new moral map, with a new moral compass, the fact that these buildings are appreciated is not restricted to one group or one bothy:

for this relief, much thanks (hamlet Act 1, scene 1) ¹⁷⁹

As this quote, scribed into a Ruigh Aitechain book in 1979, suggests, the bothy system is most certainly loved. The comments from this one bothy alone more than clarify this affection:

HEAVEN IS . . . a warm dry bothy ¹⁸⁰

heartfelt thanks to these four walls ¹⁸¹

a real port in a storm ¹⁸²

Thank you very much to everyone involved in maintaining this place you may well have saved my life ¹⁸³

Ultimately, as Mitchell argues, these are not just physical places; if they were, they could be replicated, ‘what makes them unique is their culture’. ¹⁸⁴ As Figure 12 demonstrates, foreign visitors are not blind to this fact and Scotland would do well to heed their words.

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Figure 12.

‘Treasure them and look after them well’.

Conclusion

In offering some conclusions, let me return to the ‘Dynamic Dunfers’ and their entry from 1976 which opened this article. This entry, at least for me, is not ordinary, it is most definitely special. Alan Hunt is my father and Fiona Gray is my mother and this entry was written 12 years before I was born. This entry prompted me to dwell upon and within these books, to seek to understand their creation, meaning and impact. Instilling such intrigue, it is also this entry which has led me to consider the connection between hut thought word.

While compiled en masse in ‘wild and lonely’ places, these books are nonetheless personal, emotional and social artefacts. And yet, while clearly invested with collective meaning, but unlike the great philosophical musings ensconced in Heidegger’s hut, for the most part the comments recorded in the bothy books are ‘no moments of great philosophical insight’. Especially when encountered alone, out of situ, they are exceptionally ordinary, passing words fleetingly scribed on paper. Yet, it is the very existence of these books, with their strange geographies, which finds a wonderful theoretical resonance when set in the orbit of Ogborn and Withers’ claims about book geographies. As they note, ‘the many processes, decisions and practices involved meant that the places of production had a significant effect on what “books” themselves actually were’. ¹⁸⁵ This relationship has thus been read backwards, decoded from the books and partially displayed here, in doing so potentially enlivening work on geographies of the book in seeing these books or indeed ‘things’ as thoroughly caught up in the dwelling that co-produces bothy culture. In this way, the relationship between hut thought word is uncovered in the books, through the experience of dwelling that they now embody. This article has thus been made of two parts, first seeking to offer new types of books to be studied, and second to provide a window into the lifeworld of those who spend time in and around these buildings. It is the provision of this window which allows us to reflect back on the very context of the books themselves, emphasising that understandings of dwelling in a place can teach more about the geographies of these books, and the sub discipline of book geographies more broadly. While it is a story that these books tell, ‘telling a story is not like weaving a tapestry to cover up the world, it is rather a way of guiding the attention of listeners or readers into it’. ¹⁸⁶ In this way, perhaps ironically, these books do also provide myriad entry ways to taking seriously the Heideggerian point about dwelling in and with everyday objects. In this instance, this co-dwelling is not only the books created in this place but also all of the other ingredients, human and physical, organic and inorganic, invited and uninvited, material and immaterial, prosaic and even sensed, which go into making up the bothy lifeworld. And so these physical books demonstrate the relationship between these three elements: the hut, the thought and the word. They are, thus, to borrow from Merleau-Ponty, not only the product but the homeland of our thoughts. ¹⁸⁷