© Catriona Parmenter Photography

Am Monadh Ruadh, the Cairngorm Mountains are the only sub-arctic habitat in Britain. This landscape of plateaus, hills, and glens was once far more lived-in than it is today. Connections with humans go back millennia. In the UK’s largest national park, climate change makes its visible mark year after year.

Based on the premise that cultural loss is ecological loss, and vice versa, Sarah Hobbs, founder of Strathspey Storywalks, plans to collect previously unrecorded placenames of Am Monadh Ruadh, as used by people who live and work in the mountains.

Recognising that place names are the iceberg tips of social history, stories, and oral records of the connection between people and land, Sarah aims to capture these to explore what grounded knowledge and perspectives have been neglected and undervalued, helping to honour and build a collective knowledge-base that doesn’t replicate the same structures and relationships that brought about both cultural and ecological collapse.

Sarah Hobbs said, “Am Monadh Ruadh (the Cairngorm Mountains) are a living landscape, yet many of these ‘living’ names and their corresponding stories have not been mapped or recorded. Highlighting ongoing human connection with mountain habitats, particularly as they change due to climate, will add to debates on our future relationships with the land, and I am utterly delighted to have the RSE’s support in getting this work underway. Mòran taing!”