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The Great Wood of Caledon - the historic native forest of Highland Scotland - has a reputation as potent and misleading as the wolves that ruled it. The popular image is of an impassable - sun-snuffing shroud - a Highlandswide jungle infested by wolf - lynx - bear - beaver - wild white cattle - wild boar - and wilder painted men. Jim Crumley shines a light into the darker corners of the Great Wood - to re-evaluate some of the questionable elements of its reputation - and to assess the possibilities of its partial resurrection into something like a national forest. The book threads a path among relict strongholds of native woodland - beginning with a soliloquy by the Fortingall Yew - the one tree in Scotland that can say of the hey-day of the Great Wood 5 -000 years ago: I was there. The journey is enriched by vivid wildlife encounters - a passionate and poetic account that binds the slow dereliction of the past to an optimistic future....