Others were, of course, exercised by the matter of Munro’s responsibility for all Commission operations throughout the entire Lochaber ‘Region’, and who might fall heir to it. Euan Mackinnon, a rangy man with the wry humour of experience in its early forties, was responsible for converting a large area of wild hinterland into pulp mill forest, and gave short shrift to such thoughts.
He was ambitious, but not for a hierarchical position in the Commission. His outlook was that of a practical man, well settled in the landscape of his ancestors and focused on maintaining a high level of competence in his life. His marriage to a local lady was both fruitful and happy. He was highly regarded in the community; a man satisfied with his lot but not made complacent by it. He knew the area well, and was fascinated by its history of human occupation and its aeons of geological time.
His realm was Commission bought territory, a vast tract of Lochaber whose snout was the most westerly point of the British mainland. For centuries this area, with Glencoe, had been the southern boundary of Clan Donald territories; before that it had been fought over by Picts, Dalriadan colonisers, and Vikings. Before them, nobody knew. There were vague theories about a people who lived in wooden lodges and adapted to new techniques long before the coming of Christ whose message would not reach Lochaber until 600AD when the princely Columba had arrived to spread his mission from blessed Iona, a few hours distant given a Celtic birlinn in the prevailing wind.
Two years earlier, a Viking ship burial, complete with grave goods and skeleton outfitted for Valhalla, had been unearthed at a settlement on the Ardnamurchan coastline. Such artifacts as had been discovered there were recent, given the millenia of Lochaber’s hosting of homo sapiens.
But the Ardnamurchan peninsula gave joy not only to the anthropologist, but to the geologist for whom the elemental topography held delight and opportunities for creativity.
Sixty million years ago, at a time when the Indian subcontinent was colliding with Asia, the area had torn itself from Greenland and drifted east in a massive upheaval. With its volcanic ring dyke, it became the first place in the world where complex rock formations were understood to have formed from collapsing calderas. For more than a million years there had been no volcanic activity. Now a wild moorland surged upward into grouped peaks between Strontian and Ardgour.
The Commission had for decades been developing its particular solution to economic land use of the area, so that a vast covering of fully mature spruce and pine already existed between Strontian, on Loch Sunart, and Polloch, tucked behind a swampy intrusion of Loch Shiel.
A distant whine of chainsaws followed any traveller in these parts. Every few miles a forest track would offshoot the asphalt B-road that straddled the peninsula, regularly achieving gradients of 1:5, and occasionally1:4. Along such tracks roadside log piles awaited removal by truck.
After three decades of existence one entered this forest by crawling, such was the density of plantation. A passer-by by saw pleasant vistas of green but behind the illusion of greenery all was brown. No creature, flightless or otherwise, could sustain itself inside the phalanx of trees and no light penetrated the mesh of branches that barriered the sky. This forest stood hushed, sectioned by access rides, awaiting felling.
Already dry, the entire region was now parched and crackling under the prolonged effect of brassy sun and stirring breeze. River courses had become a trickle, and that trickle came courtesy of natural spring water that still bubbled coldly from underground sources. The hillside burns contributed to rivers not at all. Streams would glisten briefly with dew early each morning and revert to dry scars for the remainder of the day.
Denied runoff, hill lochs were shrinking and there was concern among local fishermen that salmon runs lacked depth and would barricade the higher spawning grounds. Volunteer bailiffs patrolled all shallow beats with keen vigilance.
Danger of fire, inherent in these conditions, was not lost on Mackinnon. Only on Monday, Robbie had closed in on him voicing similar concerns, proposing a series of contingency plans including the burning of several fire breaks at strategic locations and a military style plan of action in the event of a local outbreak or a serious conflagration. Differing scenarios should be contemplated, the ganger had urged.
On the following day, he had persuaded Munro to support this planning initiative and Commission resources had reluctantly been promised to safeguard the great areas of mature plantation which were under threat. Mackinnon knew Munro to have had influence in a largely conservative Commission. His ‘leverage’ in their councils had been vital in obtaining dispensations for extra expenditure. But now Munro was dead and such assurances of support as had been given would have expired with him.
Mackinnon would pursue Head Office in the matter. It would likely be futile, he knew, for he possessed no clout in an establishment long since controlled by replacing fathers with their progeny – entirely on a merit basis, of course, as was continually emphasised. Fees paid out in private education were refunded in this way, a privately educated person being ten times more likely than his or her state educated counterpart to reach high office within the bureaucracies of public service.
The local police sergeant had briefed him, confidentially, on the staples and nails on the road. Enquiries so far had revealed little traffic and no commercial vehicles other than the library van and an empty fish truck, driven by local men. Both had been shocked at being interviewed.
He was to cope as best he could “until the situation could be resolved”, which is how Head Office had unsympathetically phrased their reaction to the untimely and permanent departure of a Regional Chief. A sense of being inconvenienced was unmistakeable.
No doubt, somewhere in the monolith that was the Commission (a non-ministerial Government Department with its Commissioners appointed by The Monarch), a media relations officer was chewing his biro over a press release, pondering how to deal with death ‘going forward’ from a few details strained through a telephone receiver.
Meanwhile, the long range forecast gave little hope of change. All local hotels were taking floods of early bookings and frantically searching for staff as an extended period of unremitting sunshine was promised.
The economy of the region was supposed to be boosted by such weather. Humans had become of interest to ecologists and studies of ‘the reaction of people to the environment’ were in vogue. An influential poll showed that people spent eighteen per cent more time outdoors during daylight when there was zero ambient precipitation. Short sleeved men and lightly clad women drinking at al fresco tables provided outside pubs and hotels showed that the leisure industry kept abreast of scientific discovery.
Indifferent to it all, the pulp industry moved inexorably on. Small teeth engaged with other small teeth in the slowly turning wheels of the great Commission, manufacturing cardboard and paper from the forests they created and destroyed.