People, happy to think of themselves ‘conservationists’, have wrought death to infant trees to resurrect the bog, a Bruegel-like ‘Massacre of the Innocents’ in the snow. The blood- ochre roots of pulled up saplings orange against white. Behind the arbitrary boundary fence- a liminal between life and death- the plantation of the saved stand silent witness to the slaughtered metres away.
Carabus violaceus on cut peatbank, Lewis.
Can you find the cat, dog and smiley face?
My friend Angus recalls a seasonal job for a national chain of coach tour operators in the seventies. One August weekend the bus he was driving broke down in a remote glen. In those pre-mobile days he had a long walk through a torrential West Highland summer downpour till finally coming to a house with a phone, not the first house he came to. After accepting a cup of tea…and a scone, he finally called the nearest garage- ten miles away. Explaining that he had fifty tourists desperate to get back to Edinburgh the canny mechanic’s opening gambit was “Well, I’m a wee bitty busy taking in the peats at the moment, would Wednesday suit you?”
Robin A Crawford 