Squished flies and Squeaky Wheels!
Due to the kindness of friends and the presentation of a gift I do not deserve, I am the owner of a square yard of land near Glencoe in Scotland, the land of my birth. Last year I visited my piece of land. Let me explain.
I have come to the conclusion after many years that I am a strange human being. “I could have told you that,” echoes from near and far. There is, for example, a lot that is unusual about my holidays. I fly into the UK and I have somewhere to rest my head but then the situation sort of falls apart. A friend once joked that he found me ‘wandering aimlessly’ on one of my walks. He was right. In London, visiting our daughter, I would set off on a day’s sightseeing to a definitive destination and never arrive. Transport was not the problem, it was just that there were so many interesting sideshows on the way. Of course, if money has been paid to go to a play or a game I will make it but I suppose that one of my many weaknesses in both my personal and professional life is that I was and am never really goal oriented. But I was determined to visit my piece of land in Scotland.
I sat in the café next to the Drumnadrochit Hotel where I was spending a few nights. The previous day I had spent on a gentle walk through the beauty of Glen Affric. The wide path is for mountain bikers as well as hikers. I saw few of either. I resolved to walk a distance out but not so far that my gippy knee would not let me walk back. This area has become an haven for the return of the Scots Pine, the most beautiful of trees which is not as prevalent as it once was but is being fostered back into a return. The wooded sparsity is just enough to allow views of the surrounding hills. At this time the heather was not blooming purple but the burns were still filled with the waters of snow melt. So I was accompanied by one of the most relaxing and pleasant sounds that Mother Nature gives us, that of a tumbling stream. So I had walked enough that day to justify the cooked breakfast that morning and allow for the lazy luxury of a longish drive the next day.
It was not too early on the following morning when I set off for Glencoe. I reflected as I drove south with Loch Ness on my left that this was not a drive that I would ever have contemplated in the nearly 40 years that I lived in Britain. It was the Canadian within me which had accepted longer distances as no big deal. Down to Glencoe and back to Drumnadrochit in a day was fine. Except that my destination Glencoe Wood Nature Reserve is not actually in Glencoe.
Friends, I am a man. Dear Reader, I am an old man. The upbringing of my youth somehow forbade me from asking directions. It is not a slur on my manhood to accuse me of loving poetry; nor did I baulk at knitting a scarf while watching my son’s hockey games; I loved my 30 years of playing rugby but I was never really aggressively competitive (I loved the beauty of the game and waxed lyrical about it but played in a position where nobody talked about rugby and beauty in the same breath). But stopping to ask a friendly local the way is an embarrassing weakening of my manhood. (I have no idea why, Dear Pals. It just is!) So I was driving over the Ballachulish Bridge and turning right away from the entry to Glencoe and heading further south with only the vaguest of ideas of where I was going. I had belief that the park would be advertised. It was the merest flicker as I flashed by; the smallest register on a peripheral vision which has not improved with age. A slow reaction time placed me a quarter of a mile down the road seeking for a place to do an U-turn. I found myself in the small car park of the Glencoe Wood Nature Reserve. I was excited now to visit my little patch of land. The office was a shack and a shop but inside was a young male in a ranger’s uniform. He found my land immediately and suggested I sat nav my way to it. My phone did not allow for this but he showed me on the map roughly where it was. So I wandered up the well marked trail and after about 20 minutes found myself by a marshy area with native trees and appropriate moss and a proximity to my land which was close enough. I took some time there before wondering back and engaging the young ranger in a conversation about how they had purchased the land and were working hard to return it to its natural state. And then he said something that floored me.
“Have you noticed when you are driving fast along a motorway that when you reach your destination you are no longer faced with abundant dead flies on your bonnet and radiator? 30 years ago you would have had to wash them off.”
Something I had never considered but realised was true. There simply is not the abundance of insect life which was around in the UK when I was growing up. Therefore, Dear Reader, it is not rocket science to realise the effect that would have on insectivores of which birds are a major part.
I was walking home from morning coffee this morning (April 16th) and met a neighbour who was walking with his two year old grandchild in our local strip park. We passed the time of day briefly. He commented that he was not hearing the song birds to which he was accustomed at this time of year. I shared my story from Glencoe. Maybe no insects, no song birds eh?
We know that climate change is upon us and we also know that there are things we can do about it. I have spoken to the local stream keepers here in North Vancouver. Their care has resulted in the return of salmon to some of the local creeks. I have a friend whose sister will not fly because of the pollution that it causes. My pathetic little efforts consist of never drinking bottled water, not turning the heating in the house up too far; avoiding plastic utensils, I have written against the use of gas powered leaf blowers which emit much that is very bad. Much of this pathetic pandering to important issues doth butter no parsnips, I realise. I know that Peter Davidson is not Greta Thunberg. But I do believe that science will develop more and better ways to save our planet, but that all the rest of us can do is be the occasional squeaky wheel that voices concern when something is obviously a pollutant and needs environmentally friendly oil! Naively I did not believe that a major political party could be elected without having a section for developing green policies but then along came Trumpian Republicans and back came coal mining. And, as of last week, we now have an electrical outlet for an EV although I still drive my petrol powered stick shift. So maybe, Friends, the greening of Davidsons is ‘more honoured in the breach than the observance’ to quote the Bard.
Dear Reader, the optimist in me believes that all things fall and are built again. Hmm but then again I have never been to California or Gaza or Mariupol! I suspect, Dear Reader, that we all occasionally feel that we hang around on the edge of effectiveness, that we understand that we cannot really control events but that events have a nasty habit of controlling us. But that does not mean that we can cease being true to ourselves, if we have a great cause in our heads and hearts we can continue to be the squeaky wheels that seek the wholesome oil of change. Our opinion may not seem to make a blind bit of difference but, I believe, in a zeitgeist in the future in which what was once mocked will be accepted as a norm . If we can but believe as Patrick Kavanagh does that “All great civilizations are built on parochialism” then what we do locally can make a difference world- wide.
In short, Dear Friends, being a squeaky wheel may help to bring back squished insects. Just a thought.
Thanks for reading.
