Bring Back the Wolf - Feral: Rewilding the Land, the Sea, and Human Life - page 101

ther and ling, bronzed by the winter. As we climbed, a cold rain began
to spatter, soaking the pages of my notebook. My ballpoint now
scored a dotted line on the page, more imprint than ink, ghost-written.
Head down against the wind, I noticed the fruiting bodies of the tiny
lichens on the moor. It was as if an enamellist with a fine brush had
crept up the mountainside, ornamenting them minutely with a shock-
ing deep orange. We stepped over crimson plush cushions of sphagnum
moss, like the upholstery in an Indian restaurant.
As we reached the peak of Binnilidh Bheag, the lights came on. The
land, dull brown and tan before, flashed into colour. The sunshine,
cleaned by the rain, was laser-sharp, and the wetness of the land accen-
tuated its tints. Little pools on the moor below us exploded into points
of light. The pines through which we had walked flared up: green fire
amid the cool mauve of the bare birches. Beyond them the meanders
and oxbows of the River Moriston snaked mercury, bulging with light.
The sun clipped out the features, making a scrapbook of the land.
Ribbons of low trees surged up the small burns. Whale-grey rocks
breached from the waves of heather. Among the beetle tints of the
moor, a tiny green field emerged, and the broken wall around it rose
into view, delineated by shadow. I thought of the love with which that
field had been raised, suckled from the barrow with dung, primped
and petted with mattock and spade, through brutal winters and cruel,
deceptive springs, clothed with kale and neeps and tatties, before the
Clearances snatched its makers from the land.
Would the rewilding of a large tract of the Highlands inflict similar
damage upon the lives of its few remaining inhabitants, depriving
them of their remaining means of making a living? This is a question
I was unable to answer until I read a report published by the Scottish
Gamekeepers' Association, which set out to document what it called
'the economic importance of red deer to Scotland's rural economy'. 24
It succeeded in demonstrating the opposite.
After denouncing attempts by conservationists and two of the more
imaginative estates (Glenfeshie and Mar Lodge) to reduce the number
of deer and encourage the reforestation of glens and braes, the associ-
ation explained that in areas dominated by large landholdings (such
as the region in which Trees for Life is working) deer stalking is the
main source of employment. Other opportunities in such places, it