Roger Cox: Ambitious plans to replant our ancient woodlands are all about the art of the possible

First, though, a word about this week’s gear guide, which you’ll find on p23. Yes, I realise that given the topic of this column, lumberjack shirts are perhaps not the most tactful thing I could have chosen to feature and yes, I also realise that my invitation to “head off into the forest and fell a few” while wearing one of said shirts might seem a little crass. I was, of course, joking when I wrote that. I don’t really advocate acts of random tree-felling. We clear? Good. On with the show.

Enterprising Edinburgh artist Trevor Jones, has recently set up a website called www.treesforlifeexhibition.blogspot.com and is inviting other artists to donate tree-themed works of art. These are then sold off at a very reasonable £45-a-pop, with 100 per cent of the proceeds going to Trees For Life. At time of going to press, some 181 artworks had been submitted from all around the world – and that’s not “all around the world” as in “180 folk from Scotland plus some dude from France”. There are contributions from Canada, Norway, India, Qatar, Trinidad, Indonesia and Australia, and there’s everything from painting and photography to collage and origami.

Back when the Romans were over here, trying to force fine wine and elaborate sewage systems on the populace and no doubt getting their sandalled feet midged to pieces in the process, they called Scotland “Caledonia,” which means “wooded land” or “wooded heights”. That’s because, in those days, a vast and ancient forest covered pretty much everything north of Dundee, much like wind turbines do today. Since then, of course, we’ve chopped down or burned our way through the vast majority of our leafy inheritance, but the folks at Trees For Life are fighting back. Established in 1989, they’ve now planted more than 923,000 trees, and their goal is to create an unbroken area of forest in a 600 square mile area between Beauly and Kyle of Lochalsh. Trevor Jones hopes to raise £10,000 to help them out, and, with 25 works sold already, he’s well on the way to achieving it. Who knows – he might even help get them up to the million-tree mark.

Rumour has it that a display of footwear at the new Riverside Museum in Glasgow contains a pair of Scarpa climbing boots formerly owned by top Scottish climber Dave MacLeod. Members of the climbing fraternity keen to find out how MacLeod achieves his remarkable ascents have apparently been spending hours on end examining these iconic shoes in the hope of unlocking their secrets. Most visitors to the exhibit at Scotland’s new museum of transport and travel gravitate towards the platform boots worn by Elton John in the 1970s, or towards the Vivienne Westwood-designed “extreme platforms” that famously sent Naomi Campbell flying mid-catwalk in 1993. Guys sporting Gore-tex jackets and neck beards, though, only seem to have eyes for MacLeod’s former sole-mates.

I laughed out loud the other week when an email arrived from a German company called Heimplanet about their new invention – an inflatable tent called The Cave. Just minutes before, I’d been speaking to a couple of friends who had recently battled 70mph winds on a camping expedition to the Cairngorms. Their tent, inevitably, was ripped to shreds, but what would have happened to them, I wondered, if they’d been sleeping in The Cave? Would they have taken off, and if so, how far would they have flown? Anyway, it turns out I shouldn’t have been so quick to mock – The Cave appears to be the real deal. On the company’s website there’s a video of the structure being wind tested, and it seems rock solid up to 54mph. It can be set up in 60 seconds flat, too, and stows away into a neat little pouch measuring 20x12x8 inches. Ellis Brigham have just started selling them for £550, see www.ellis-brigham.com