What a mess lots of people are waking up to this morning, yesterday morning was bad enough, roads closed etc. to the point I couldn't have driven south if I'd wanted to, this morning though puts my travel disruption into some perspective, sobering. My thoughts are with all who are affected.
Much of Scotland unproductive.
In the conventional sense yes, yes it is I suppose. However if we think less conventionally and look at where people live and focus on what they do the picture that forms isn't so bleak. But you have to search it out and temper your expectation, and resist the temptation to compare apples and oranges.
Historically the productivity of the highlands, or the lack of it, was an issue that vexed the then landlords and some of the greatest minds of the 1700 and 1800's, tasked with making "improvements" to the land in terms of productivity, many of which failed, the best documented instances recorded efforts made on forfeited estates and lands post 1745 on behalf of the crown.
Yet the area supported a huge population that subsisted, quite literally, on the milk of a pastural economy, an economy that had existed from the late stone age right down to the dawn of the industrial revolution.
Much has been written on the period known as the highland-clearances but in essence it boiled down the imposition of new economic models parachuted into the area in an attempt to make the vast estates pay. In a relatively short period of time areas that had been populated were now largely devoid of people other than by those directly employed by the owner or tenant.
The end result shattered the long established social structure of the highlands and saw people moved out of the interior down to the shore and eventually, for the vast majority, onto emigration ships bound for the new world.
The hills remain empty, in part because the sought productivity never really materialised, the sheep yielded little profit in comparison to other areas and as the fashion for hunting fishing and shooting gathered apace so the lets were actively bought up by the new class of idle rich victorian sportsmen.
Land being given over to deer and purposely left unproductive is a very modern construct. Denis Rixson's book:
Knoydart, a History is a fantastic book that looks at many of these issues over it's course, and in many ways can be used as a microcosmic guide to understanding the clearances and issues of economy and productivity affecting the highlands, down to the present.
It's also interesting to note
the Scottish National Heritage Wild-Land area map denotes the upland areas that were all at one time permanently inhabited or, in the case of the highest ground, grazed in summer and subsequently cleared for sheep and then given over to deer forest.
There's a lot of potential locked up in our empty expanses, but without people it'll remain locked up.
I do hope the Forestry Commission isn't planning to ban camping anywhere on it's ground, well obviously you wouldn't want to camp where there's timber operations underway, so within reason. I'm sure the fellow who suggested it was full of good intention, just as those highland modernisers of the seventeen and eighteen centuries were.