‘It was an afterthought to pay my respects to the yew. I’d been numerous times before and wasn’t sure what was to be gained by making the little trip from the car park to the walled enclosure. I’d parked the car beside the church in Fortingall, a village whose thatched roofs and topiary feel more akin to rural Devon than rugged highland Perthshire, then set off on the bike to ride up Glen Lyon and over the mountain pass to Ben Lawyers. Approaching by single track road the entrance to the glen looks like something from a fantasy novel, impenetrable, but the road narrows again and winds above the precipitous gorge on one side and hanging gardens of rock and forest on the other. Above the gorge I paused by the protective wall and peered over the edge at the River Lyon. Way below, waterfalls rumbled. It was peak salmon-run season, and I wondered if the pools below the falls were flush with the fish whose ecological imperative binds mountain to stream and stream to river and ocean. Beyond the tenebrous light of the ravine, sunlit mountains.’