The End of the Wild

The track that passes the end of our little cul-de-sac heads steadily uphill through mostly pine plantation, home at this time of year to a cheerful band of over-wintering small birds including....

....coal, great, blue and long-tailed tits (above), robins, chaffinches, wrens and dunnocks, until....

....the land starts to open up as the trees fall away, at which point the dominant song is from the recently-returned skylarks, three or four rising joyfully this morning into an almost-clear blue sky.

This is the point at which the wild used to take over, for the land beyond the gate was the home of red deer, and walking with wild animals has always, for me, been something very special. We've seen red deer here, before the fences were extended to exclude them, but we never got close enough to feel a frisson of fear - unlike on Ardnamurchan where.... 

....on many occasions we walked round a corner and came face to face with the magnificence of a red deer stag.

It was the same in our visits to Namibia and Tanzania where the highlights of our stay were the walks in the bush. We were frightened, yes, but to live without experiencing, and controlling, fear is not to have lived at all.