www.karistewart.co.uk Bothy Log .  Day 1 - Saturday- Arrived at Inshriach Bothy this afternoon. Spent the first hour marvelling at the incredible thoughtfulness and craftsmanship that has gone into its design. Have made myself at home as much as possible before the sun went down around 4.30pm.

The Bothy; a shelter from the weather, more substantial than my tent, less than a building; essentially a room in the outdoors. Nestled in a sparse hilltop wood, on a kink in the Spey, the Bothy rooted its simple nature into the core of my practice for a week.

January 2014. Slowing down, ongoing thoughts and connecting with nature. My intentions for my Artist’s Residency for the week stay at the Bothy were to build up work that captures the feelings, essence and atmosphere of the place and of being isolated in the wild. Secondly an outlet for my work, to allow it to flourish in the right wild environment and thirdly to document a diary each day focusing on the spirit of place within the forest. I came away with so much more.

I stayed at the Inshriach Bothy for 2 weeks as part of the RSA Residencies for Scotland scheme. I wanted to use my time there to generate ideas for the second part of my residency at The Highland Print Studio in Inverness. I wasn't sure what to expect from my bothy experience, and I definitely found parts of it more challenging than I'd expected. But overall it was a great experience. It's good to go back to basics and it definitely gives you a different perspective on what’s important in life. Collecting water, chopping wood and keeping the fire going where the most essential daily tasks. Boiling the kettle felt like a big achievement!

On the way back home, on the way to get the train, I went to the Alpine division of Waterstones in Aviemore and bought Nan Shepherd’s The Living Mountain. On the journey, through the feet of the loafy mountains, the Cairngorms, to Edinburgh I inadvertently made the film adaptation of the book. The ground was heavy with water and streams were wrenched out of the side of rock in thrashing white spasms and wrested into glassy black lochs. Through the cinemascope window, a cut scene to decaying bracken in shades of bruise and spiky gorse, and then the bare arch of the mountain back, and moving to its descending nape. Flickering telegraph poles made a zoetrope-view that may well have never have ended if it were not for the peppering of buildings that became small towns, then towns fringed in industrial buildings and orange-lighted concrete lots.

Notes from a Diary, Inshriach Bothy, October 2013. I have just come back from a weeklong residency at Inshriach Bothy in the Cairngorms National Park, Scotland. I was alone for a week, off grid, the longest time I’ve ever spent completely isolated. I had no plans for the week and no idea what to expect. I was both nervous and excited. The following pages are taken from a diary, which I kept for the week.

https://vimeo.com/johnnybarrington some by moonlight. but only one contains a moon.

www.craigcoulthard.com www.thecurseandthecure.co.uk