2014 could be an important year for Scotland. The Commonwealth Games, the Year of Homecoming, the Independence Referendum and a celebration of an event that will probably miss most people's radar – the centenary of the death of John Muir. I guess most folk who read this will know of John Muir but it still surprises me that so many people here in Scotland have never heard of him. Perhaps that’s not too surprising as he left these shores at a young age and made his name across the Atlantic where he inspired a nation, a young nation that was…

FROM my elevated eyrie by the summit of Morven in Aberdeenshire the world around me lay in two distinct halves – one in glorious light and the other in abject blackness. In front of me lay a gently rolling landscape, a great patchwork quilt of green and golden fields, dotted with patches of woodland, the earth tones intensified by the bright autumn sunshine. It looked for all the world like a Scottish version of Middle Earth – even the tiny village below me, Logie Coldstone, had a Tolkienesque ring to it. To further the analogy, the land behind me, a…

A folder sits on the desk of Scottish Finance Minister John Swinney. It contains the recommendations of Mrs Jill Moody DipTP MRTPI, the reporter to the recent public inquiry into proposals to build 31 wind turbines in the Monadhliath close to the headwaters of the River Dulnain. It’s titled, ‘The Allt Duine Windfarm,” and since the area in question is in the former constituency of Fergus Ewing, the Energy Minister, it falls to Mr Swinney to make the crucial decision. Indeed, the Allt Duine is a tributary of the Dulnain and the proposed turbines would be erected within a mile…

In his monthly Viewpoint column, outdoors writer, broadcaster and mountain walker Cameron McNeish discusses windfarms. I’VE never been very big on pessimism but I believe many hillwalkers and wild land enthusiasts are now engaged in a battle that cannot be won. I dislike the visual effect of windfarms as much as anyone and I’ve yet to be convinced of their value in terms of energy output but after years of campaigning alongside that wily old fox from Ramblers Scotland, Dave Morris, I have learned the value of pragmatism. Sometimes, just sometimes, you have to recognize that the odds are stacked…