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Song of the Rolling Earth: A Highland Odyssey

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It is not enough for a person simply to notice that the earth is being avoidably stressed by human practices such as hunting beavers and wolves to extermination. Nor will the problem of environmental damage be solved by that person's moving from noticing the problem to resolving to do something about it. The new convert to environmental activism has to find -- or create -- working channels for his or her zeal. Awareness, personal resolve, public channels: each is necessary, each has its own story.

SONG OF THE ROLLING EARTH: A HIGHLAND ODYSSEY is one Englishman's story of how he targeted the Highlands and Islands of Scotland by mixing personal awareness, resolution and action-oriented public channels into a package called "restoration ecology."

It was tensions in his life story that made John, the current Eighth Baronet Lister-Kay (1946 - ), an apostle of restoration ecology. For centuries his Yorkshire ancestors had accumulated wealth through holding and working coal mines. Had the post World War II Labor government not nationalized Britain's coal industry, young John Lister-Kaye might have had handed to him an earth-unfriendly family business to support, uncriticized, his boyhood enthusiasms for butterflies and worms and lessons learned in a school providentially placed next door to a huge nature preserve.

Then came the 1967 Torrey Canyon oil tanker spill off the coast of Cornwall, not far from where John Lister-Kaye was working in the steel industry. He went in person to the miles upon miles of polluted beaches and saw the destruction of fish and birds. To fight ruination of all human environments instantly became John's lifelong crusade.

A channel for his energy was offered by famed naturalist Gavin Maxwell (see The Ring of Bright Water Trilogy) who invited John to work with him on nature projects on and around Scotland's Isle of Skye. From this collaboration came Lister-Kaye's first book, THE WHITE ISLAND, with emphasis on otters (see The White Island ).

Maxwell's untimely death in 1969 launched John Lister-Kaye into a self-directed search for techniques to make others see millenia of destruction of the Scottish environment and then empower them to do something about it. He began by conceiving, advertising and conducting simple one-on-one and small group treks to view golden eagles, grey seals, capercaillies, etc. and to discuss in as much depth as the visitors cared to the natural history of the Highlands and Islands.

Soon Lister-Kaye had acquired a travel van, permanent lodgings in the highlands to house and feed guests and a renowned mountaineer partner. He also married his talented publicist, an earl's daughter, Sorrel Bentinck. They had three children while realizing the first stages of John's restoration ecology crusade.

The crusade found its final form in 1977 with the purchase of House of Aigas, an estate west of Inverness. This became Lister-Kaye headquarters, hotel, boarding house, classroom and base for exploration of the Highlands near and far. It flourishes in late 2008 as Aigas Field Centre (see http://www.aigas.co.uk). Thousands and adults and children have studied there in the intervening 31 years. Soon to come: official opening of a large super insulated, thatched roof classroom facility with full audio-visual capacity.

All this sounds prosaic enough. But Sir John is gifted with a vivid, poetic pen. He makes you shiver with the cold of his home above north latitude 57, flinch from the Highland midges, thrill to have a badger wander by you a foot away in the dark and marvel at the stoic courage of Scotsmen who "be-long" to their crofts. As a self- anointed popularizer of other people's good ideas, Lister-Kaye also shares his vast specialized reading with you. Thus you sip Sir Martin Holdgate's theory of five great waves of human impact on the land -- turning finally in desperation to restoration ecology (see From Care to Action: Making a Sustainable World). Gavin Maxwell, of course, becomes your key to otters and on and on. Sir John wears his erudition lightly.

The book's Epilogue concludes with a noisy, good-hearted businessman visitor from Houston, Jim McColl, asking Sir John: "What's your product?" and concluding after days at Aigas Field Centre, "This time I know it's real. ... I've got your product! ... Insight! That's what it is, ... insight."

How right Jim was. -OOO-