In common

It’s time for me to break my silence here – thanks for keeping the discussion going in my absence.

Among other reasons for the pause was a long trip away, at least by my standards – mostly recreational, and mostly in Scotland. To get back into the swing of this blog I’m going to say a few things about the trip, relating them to some of the wider issues generally discussed here. Then, with publication of my new book imminent (tickets for the launch in Frome on 14 October available here – it’s free), I’ll start turning to some posts about that.

So – one part of my trip involved cycling the Hebridean Way, a 180+ mile cycle ride across the island chain of the Outer Hebrides, from Barra in the south to Lewis in the north. I was accompanied most of the way by my son, before his work as a river ecologist called him away. Part of his job involves rescuing wild salmon from the depredations of a road widening project in the Highlands, and the salmon’s call upon his time were more important than mine. At this juncture in world history, widening roads and destroying salmon habitat doesn’t seem to me a great use of precious resources, but I’ve (almost) given up on trying to make sense of modern priorities.

Anyway, one of the pleasures of the time I was able to spend with my son is his well-honed ability to spot and identify wildlife. Hence, my trip involved an impressive rollcall of accompanying characters such as sea eagles, golden eagles, short-eared owls, lapwings, snipe, ptarmigan, godwits, seals, dolphins and pine marten. Many of these creatures used to be more widely spread across the country but have now retreated to its wilder edges – not least due to farming practices geared to higher productivity, and lower price. People talk about a ‘shifting baseline syndrome’ of wildlife loss, where the relatively slow decline across human generations blinds us to the richness that’s been lost. I’d argue there’s also a shifting baseline syndrome of human economic action, which is directly causative of the former. We cannot imagine the less monetised, less energised and more localised worlds of the past involving more people and more wildlife on farms, or imagine that it’s feasible or acceptable to project such ways of being into the future.

I completed the last part of ...