Journeying towards a positive future
Sometimes, a journey leads you down paths never contemplated when you first set out.
Such paths, however, though challenging and at times daunting, often hold the most significant rewards. Since I last wrote, my adventure has unexpectedly shifted from exploring land use issues on the bike and with my camera to listening to the voices of others. I have even become drawn into the vortex that is the proposed Galloway National Park.
My project's aim has always been to explore our various rapidly changing land use types and how they balance or otherwise; biodiversity, community, climate, society, and commercial needs.
Duchrae Hills
My method initially involved a series of immersive cycles around Scotland, including Galloway, capturing examples through the lens of my camera. Without any prior intent, somewhere down the line this has led to running two workshops (so far) to gather insights and wisdoms from others. Before the first workshop I asked the question “‘What three words describe land use in Scotland today?” and from the 70 odd replies I produced the accompanying word cloud. The workshops then focused around the theme of "Who has rights to live, grow, and pass through any given place?", with the idea to develop a collaborative ‘toolkit’ that can be shared with any person or entity exploring land use.
We are still considering the feedback, but my immediate thoughts following the responses from the first workshop consolidated into a 'Charter of Rights' for all global life. Quite a revelation!
But what I have I discovered from all this? Over the past months, I keep returning to two core threads, the first being that, as a nation, we have 'improved', commoditised and industrialised many of our landscapes, often at the expense of our climate and the myriad beings with whom we share this planet.
And of 'shadows' that drive individual agendas with little apparent consideration of the whole. The word cloud suggests I may not alone in this thinking.
My second thread provides a glimmer of hope, in the form of a growing chorus of quiet voices simply delivering urgently needed change. Inspirational land managers, interest communities and individuals working on anything from their back gardens to landscape scale projects, proactively striving to deliver a solution based future rooted in sharing and interconnectedness.
As these voices grow in number they are becoming louder, harder to ignore, and increasingly united in wisdom, encouragement and evidence.
I am pondering where this leaves my thinking regarding the proposed National Park. I am still asking ‘if’ and ‘how’ rather than ‘yes’ or ‘no’. I believe we need to start listening to each other's concerns, for they are real whether we agree with them or not.
We must play our role as the community in offering solutions-based thinking and work together to agree the strategies to address the very real issues already facing us, with or without a National Park, including housing, tourism, jobs, infrastructure, an ageing population and increasingly fewer of our young staying in the area. There must be a way these could be agreed before any final go-ahead for a Park is given, so everyone knows what they are getting. There will always be compromises, for nothing comes for free, but doing nothing also has a cost.
As I ponder these thoughts, I realise they rather uncannily mirror my thinking on the bike. Instead of arriving at a destination, however, I merely find myself at the next turning, which leaves me both anxious and hopeful about what lies ahead.
But as Martin Luther King Jr once famously said, "You don't have to see the whole staircase, just take the first step."
Ted Leeming
This article is part of a series of readers' responses to the Galloway National Park proposal published in the Glenkens Gazette Issue 145. Read the others in the series below.
The Glenkens Gazette, Glenkens Hub and Glenkens Community & Arts Trust do not have a view for or against the National Park proposal. We are, however, committed to helping our communities find the information they need to make up their own mind. To support this, we host an information page on the Hub and are publishing articles in the Gazette periodically. If you have any questions about the proposal do get in touch and we will see if we can find the right people for an answer!