Touch The Earth
Today, the hills and glens of Corgarff and Strathdon
are very thinly populated and, in many areas, deserted. The old life
of the clans is gone. So too is their language of Scottish Gaelic and
most of its associated culture, though it survives still in other parts
of the Highlands. In some parts of the Highlands, forcible clearance
of people from their lands by landowners was partly the cause of the
disappearance, but underlying this was the basic problem of how an often
unsparing land could support many people except at a level of harsh
poverty. Throughout much of the 18th, 19th and 20th centuries, poverty
drove people from the Highlands, and indeed other parts of Scotland,
to create the great Scottish Diaspora to the Americas, Australia, New
Zealand and elsewhere. Lowland Scotland was however a driving force
in the enlightenment and later, under the influence of writers like
Sir Walter Scott and RL Stevenson, in the Romantic Movement. It was
also a powerhouse of the industrial revolution. The Romantic Movement
helped change the attitude of many to the Highlands, from regarding
them as wild and barbarous, to seeing their beauty and challenge.
Many
of those who left the Highlands and lowland rural Scotland did not go
abroad but went to work in the new industries created in lowland Scotland
and the rest of the United Kingdom by the industrial revolution. Scotland
was one of the earliest countries in the world where the majority of
the population became urbanised and still has one of the most urbanised
populations in the world.
From
the late 19th century onwards, these people began to rediscover the
beauty, the challenge and often the peace of the Highlands. Perhaps
as a necessary balance to the grim industrial surroundings or sprawling
suburbs many of them lived in, they seemed to feel a need to rediscover
a more “natural” world, to “touch the earth”
as some have put it. They returned to walk the old, now deserted paths
and ways, the hills and mountains. During the 20th century, their numbers
grew greatly, especially in its later decades. They included people
from all walks of life; from the comfortably well off middle classes,
and from the poor and unemployed. The advent of the private car gave
many more an easier access to the Highlands and now they include many
people from England and other parts of the United Kingdom as well as
from overseas.
The watcher at the bridge would see a new peaceable kind
of passer by, the successor to the drovers, the Hanoverian soldiers,
the whisky smugglers and others. In a sense, the people have returned
to the glens.
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| Jenny Smith's house at
Delachuper |
the bothy at Delachuper
is hired to walkers |
