Here is an interesting thought: during Lockdown we are all ‘hefting to place’. Hefting is the term used for moorland-bred sheep which can be released on to the hill where they were born without wandering away – there is an internal boundary in their heads as to where they belong which they never cross.
I think Lockdown will have two very different impacts on humankind. Firstly, many of those who have been imprisoned in cities and large towns will want to move out, seeking refuge in the countryside as a more natural place to live through a lockdown if it happens again. The population in rural areas will expand. People who cannot move permanently will wish to holiday here. Highland second home ownership and tourism will boom.
Secondly, those who already live in more rural areas like the Black Isle, including folk who commuted to work in towns like Inverness or Dingwall but live in the countryside, are hefting, perhaps unknowingly, to place.
How? Well, we are walking our boundaries, a territorial habit as old as man. We are getting to know every tree, rock, hedge or wall intimately. We are watching the seasons change. We are learning to tend our gardens and to grow again: seeds, plants, ourselves. We are looking at the circle of our horizon with curiosity. We are getting to know and supporting our neighbours and local shops as would have happened naturally 100 years ago. We are slowing down, forced to live smaller and more simply.
Some of this will evaporate when Lockdown ends of course and people gey back to work Some, but not all. The natural world has changed for the better during Lockdown. Let us hope the human world has learned from the impact of Lockdown too. It will be very difficult to live as we did before, without realising the harm we were inflicting through the effects of our previous fast-paced modern life.
When putting in a new planter yesterday I found this underneath an old bucket – a field mouse’s magnificent stash of hazel nuts and plum stones for the winter. Its whole small world comprises my garden. And for a few months my own world has not been that much larger.
I replaced the bucket and put my planter elsewhere…
Vee Walker writes... 