Please note: this piece contains descriptions some readers may find upsetting.
Sixty-three: the number of dead rabbits on the short drive from the campsite in Edzell, to Brechin. We have a grim fascination with counting them. They dart out into the road like they are in a game of Frogger (a video game we play) – jumping into the busy highway and trying to get safely across. It’s 1986, Glen Esk, and we’re on holiday with the summer and our whole lives ahead of us.
This is my Mum’s preferred place, because it’s where she came as a child. The optimistic hills, energetic water of the burns, contented woods: they all tunnelled into her veins at a young age and she wants to share it. We follow her cunningly, feeling the connection too. Our West Highland Terrier however, succumbs to her own native instincts. Thrilled by the intoxicating smells and sharp with the sight of white flashes in the bracken, she disappears. The whole campsite searches high and low until dark. There is a steep gorge close by and we almost give her up for dead. But she finds her way back, and is discovered exhausted in the ladies’ shower block by the morning cleaners.
'Have you lost a wee white dug?' comes the welcome shout as we eat breakfast in the brown frame tent. She is in fact grey as rain and sleeps for two days.
We’ve befriended another big family who are sharing the field. Nine kids altogether. My big sister is a teenager and finds us silly, so I’m in charge, along with the eldest from the other family. He’s a year older than me and I have a crush on him. I don’t really understand it, but he is kind and fun. He makes me feel good. This is the last summer I’ll spend lost in childhood make-believe. By next year I’ll be preoccupied with getting a tan, making my hair go blonde in the sun and BOYS, specifically, anyone who resembles Scott from Neighbours. For now, despite the pre-teen frission it’s all about the rabbits. I’m not quite ready to step out into the hazardous road of adolescence.
On the campsite they are at epidemic quantities and it rouses our impulse to hunt. We’re a pack. We enjoy free run of the woods with long days spent tracking. We try to shoot them with homemade bows and arrows. At night we set crude and completely ineffective traps around their burrows. We check the scat – making the younger kids squeeze the round droppings for freshness. Every morning we run out into the trees to see if anything been caught in our hidden pit or string noose. We sometimes find remains and imagine it was the meal of a wildcat.
'It’s more likely to have been killed by an owl or buzzard,' says the boy. 'Could be a stoat.'
Of course, the scent we leave behind and total lack of skill means the rabbits are safe.
The roadkill makes up a tiny fraction of the grey rabbits living in Glen Esk. I wonder why they need to cross the road; it must be a clear boundary. Maybe they are honestly that stupid and can’t see it from the trees, after all I’m just as clueless about the places I’ll go and the things I’ll see. But, higher up the Glen on the other side it’s beautiful enough to be on an album cover. The rabbits don’t go much further than the tree line but I could keep walking for days, singing to myself, looking for adders and wild fruit. Steep dewy banks lead to stony ground, purple with heather. You eventually reach untamed mountains, dramatically resting with the kind of silence that makes every shout of a crow resonate like the reverb on Wild Boys by Duran Duran.
Near the end of the holiday we go to a ceilidh in the village. The stovies are the best we’ve ever had but there is no dancing so Mum organises a dance back at camp. Despite me pairing with my sisters the other kids pick up the scent of something new.
'Ha ha ha they want to dance together!' they tease me and the boy.
To my relief he quietly takes me aside saying, 'Don’t worry, I know you don’t want to.' It’s not time to take that leap.
We never do catch a rabbit, but finally hit one in the car. Thump. 'Yep, it’s dead,' shouts Dad. He picks it up and puts in in the boot. We are triumphant! Guided by Mum, the boys skin it and cure the fur with table salt. They pose with the pelt for me to take a grainy photo and she cooks the meat up for dinner. My brother hangs the foot on his belt and will still have it squirrelled in a tin years later. That’s the thing about a happy childhood – you want to keep hold of the feelings because there’s no going back. You have to trust your instincts, cross that road and face life trundling at high speed towards you. The rewards to be found on the other side are worth the risk. So much of who we are is a result of our experiences growing up. Within a few years it will be me sleeping for days following all-night escapades but no matter how far I migrate from the girl I am in 1986, Glen Esk is dug-in there, deep under my skin.