2#07 David Lintern: the photojournalist

Mountain Air

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Episode 2#07 gets to know none other than multi-talented photojournalist David Lintern. Based in Kingussie in the Cairngorms National Park, David is an outdoor writer and photographer of high reputation. You’ve likely seen his images and read his words across many different magazines and websites that focus on Britain’s hills, mountains and rivers. So, who better to spend an hour with discussing the challenges and rewards of this environment we all love so much?

Having just released his latest book, “Thunder Road: Voices from the Cape Wrath Trail”, David’s keen to describe the landscapes and people discovered along the most famous hiking route in Scotland’s epic north-west, as well as to discuss what he’s trying to achieve in documenting these unique subjects.

He also shares the fascinating story of how a person ends up living the life of an environmental journalist in the Scottish Highlands - a dream job, perhaps, but one which brings plenty of insecurity with its limitless freedoms. From London-based cinema projectionist, to “scruffy musician”, to founder of a children’s charity, David’s journey has taken him from a deeply urban life to one spent amongst the wildest of places. There’s even time to discuss a fateful two-month hike of the Pyrenees and a formative winter mountaineering trip across the Ben Alder range with some deeply eerie details…

Visit www.davidlintern.com to find out more about David’s work, and make sure to catch up with him on Instagram too: @davidjlintern

Listen, enjoy, tell your friends, subscribe to the podcast if you get and chance, and thank UKHillwalking.com for their kind support of this series!

[episode recorded on 26/05/22]

00:00 - Introduction

03:23 - Welcome, “a photographer and writer focusing on human-powered travel, landscape and the environment”, discussing the book “Thunder Road: Voices from the Cape Wrath Trail”

06:53 - Most definitely not “striding forth under self-imposed adversity”, more details of the Cape Wrath experience

13:28 - War games off the Scottish coast

17:33 - “Vanishing Point” photography project, the struggles of being a freelancer during the COVID pandemic, “lots of freedom, but lots of insecurity”

20:13 - Enjoying “the wrestle” of writing, details of an outdoor media career, “esoteric ramblings”

27:38 - “We were all feeling pretty experimental in COVID, weren’t we?”

28:33 - Coming to the outdoors relatively late, discovering the mountains as an adult. A former life as a London-based cinema projectionist, youth music worker, sound engineer, and university lecturer… seeing “literally thousands of films at the National Film Theatre”

33:23 - Becoming a community music leader, setting up the Soundmix charity (http://www.soundmix.org.uk/who-we-are/), working with the refugee council and “unaccompanied minors”, “what can a scruffy musician do?”

35:23 - An “early mid-life crisis” expressed by walking across the Pyrenees in a two-month charity trip, starting to work with the John Muir Trust

38:10 - A passion for cinema, music and soundtracks, performing background music for TV programmes, an interest in analogue machinery

40:13 - Creating electronic music and dub via Projector Records: “to call it a record label would suggest that it actually functioned… it was basically a group of friends that lived in a house in the mid-90s”

42:51 - Some heartfelt words about a love of the outdoors and life in Kingussie, “when you live here you realise that they’re called the grey hills and the red hills for a reason… it’s a special place”

49:39 - “The bit that’s important to me is allowing other people to speak… really I’m the least interesting bit of the equation”.

53:03 - Enriching your life through experiences in the “heavens”. How can we bring those transformative experiences back down to our everyday lives.

54:23 - Greatest mountain memory… a long winter mountaineering weekend in the Ben Alder range, the Lancet Edge, eerie sounds, unsettling footsteps, a golden eagle.

59:23 - All the time, money, freedom… what would you do? A simple answer… and a more complicated one: fixing the gap between recreational hill people, and those that live and work on the land, conservation and shooting estates (“we have big environmental decisions to make as a society… and we’re not able to have those conversations”)