Seton Gordon

Years later, Desmond Nethersole-Thompson wrote to Seton enclosing a copy of The Cairngorms, a book he had written with Adam Watson in 1974. ‘You inspired Adam and myself, when we were both schoolboys and gave us the wish to walk the hills and always try to discover’

Adam took one of the last photos of Seton Gordon, aged 90. The ‘grand old man of nature’ was still standing proud, if slightly stooped, in the middle of his beloved Cairngorms, leaning on his cromag (walking stick) and still wearing his familiar but now moth-eaten and heavily patched kilt. Seton died six months later, in March 1977.

J Morton Boyd considered how ‘Seton lived in wonderment of nature, and responded to the lives of animals and people with a remarkable sympathy and sensitivity. He wrote with a mysticism which was part real and part imagination, in a simple way which endeared him to both laird and crofter.’

All in all, Seton amply demonstrated two vital skills of the naturalist; keen observation and careful recording, but he also had time to enthuse and encourage others, irrespecive of their ages or backgrounds.