Les Terres ALTES

Eyes and minds turn to the far north-east of Eu­rope, to the rugged land be­yond Hadrian’s Wall.

We as a fam­ily are al­ready there, deep into the glens, the roots and the clans of the Stew­arts, Wilsons and MacKen­zies - the maze of iden­tity and want­ing to un­der­stand some­thing of where we come from.

I wasn’t going to write about Scot­land’s knife-edge par­lia­men­tary elec­tion, just a month away, but it is com­pelling. The re­sult will, ei­ther way, re­ver­ber­ate across the con­ti­nent.

As the quake wors­ens within the rul­ing SNP pro-in­de­pen­dence party caused by the truth tus­sle be­tween past and cur­rent lead­ers Alex Salmond and Nicola Stur­geon (much to the cer­tain plea­sure of Alexan­der Boris de Pf­ef­fel John­son) then all bets are off.

Stur­geon, a bea­con of co­her­ent com­mon sense dur­ing the pan­demic and up until this point well able to rally what ap­peared to be suf­fi­cient sup­port for a sec­ond ref­er­en­dum, is now on the ropes, as is her and her sup­port­ers’ fun­da­men­tal en­deav­our. A clear SNP ma­jor­ity is no longer prob­a­ble, say the opin­ion polls. No ma­jor­ity, no man­date. But these are ex­cep­tional times. Mem­o­ries have short­ened to but a few days. The gen­eral news frenzy is numb­ing. Truths are lost in the storm of opin­ions. It re­mains any­one’s call.

If the SNP gets a ma­jor­ity and or­gan­ises a sec­ond ref­er­en­dum, will more Eu­ro­pean lead­ers end up in the dock, in exile, in prison?

With com­par­isons end­lessly drawn, with the EU open­ing the doors for fur­ther po­lit­i­cal tri­als in Spain, it is not hard to feel the tremors.

I am not an ob­ses­sively po­lit­i­cal an­i­mal, but I hold firmly to the val­ues of non-vi­o­lence, to democ­racy and the courage at the dark­est times of di­a­logue, com­pro­mise and con­cil­i­a­tion. I sup­port iden­tity and grass-roots self-re­liance within a fed­eral world ad­her­ing to a com­mon moral code of equal­ity, re­spon­si­bil­ity, peace. We are, of course, still an in­sane dis­tance away from that, hence my con­stant en­cour­age­ments, chiefly to self, to first and fore­most pri­ori­tis­ing the sus­tain­ing of the nat­ural world and com­mu­ni­ties that sus­tain us.

Parochial­ism, the focus and care of fun­da­men­tals - what and who we exist along­side, unity with our sur­round­ings - is the key to ful­fil­ment and com­mon pur­pose. I de­fine it as not detri­men­tally in­su­lar. That is im­pos­si­ble in this global age. I value it as the foun­da­tion for fine-tuned prin­ci­pals with which to face the uni­ver­sal. All great civil­i­sa­tions, poet Patrick Ka­vanagh rightly de­fined, are based on parochial­ism.

It mat­ters more than any­thing who we are, how we iden­tify. Fail­ure to ac­knowl­edge and nur­ture this, to seed his­to­ries of re­spect and con­cil­i­a­tion, is mad­ness.

How on Earth do gov­ern­ments still not un­der­stand that his­tory con­denses the essence of causes and that, where force is ap­plied, what is laid down is the in­deli­ble, un­de­ni­able ac­cu­mu­la­tion of ev­i­dence sup­port­ing a cause? Yet it hap­pens again and again, for­ever com­pound­ing, per­pet­u­at­ing.

Once more I give thanks for the peo­ple, and the na­ture, around me.