Last year early one morning I went for a walk just before sunrise.
The last few bellows of tired stags at the end of the rut were being offered up all around me and I saw an otter at the edge of the loch. I’m not sure which one of us was more surprised to see the other, but it stared at this strange figure before it inquisitively, before diving under and disappearing. I felt connected, part of nature, at peace.
s the sun rose I carried on up the hill to the ancient round stone walled sheep pen above the cottage at Killin to stand in the centre. For a moment it became so quiet that the only sound I could hear was my heart beating. It felt almost spiritual. The Loch was like glass and if you had taken a photo of Carrol rocks reflection in it, it would have been hard to tell which way up the photo should have been. I looked up to see if any of the red kites were soaring but it was too early for them. I wondered how the badgers were getting on with their preparations and what had happened to the red squirrels that we’d seen the year before, who had seemingly made their way over the bridge at the ford and been exploring right up into Gordonbush.
And then like someone dragging the needle across a record player I was suddenly jolted back into focus.
There had been contractors here marking out and putting pegs in the ground where SSEN was planning to put these giant 57-60m pylons. They had been surveying what needed to be dug up, how they were going to get all their plant, concrete lorries and cranes up here. Which swathes of old woodlands, SSi and archeological sites they’d need to plough, crush and bulldoze through. I looked toward Golspie and Ben Horn and tried to picture what the Pylons would do in that direction, I looked the other way over the heather toward Loth, Kildonan and Helmsdale and tried to imagine the same. I looked up along the strath toward Ben Klibreck and the mountains in the distance and I felt heavy pain, huge sadness, disbelief and anger.
How could anyone in their right mind consider that these Pylon plans were ok? Was all this being done so that in the future, more people hundreds of miles away could ask Alexa to close their curtains for them? Had we lost the plot? How could corporations be allowed to get away with this? How could people who had never been and would never come here make decisions about it’s future? I was left with only one thought. The plans to run pylons through this special place are nothing short of criminal.
