The Commission Fire Chief stood at the hutments and gazed towards the row of blackened rectangles on scorched earth that was the desolation of Polloch. Beyond the remains of bothies, a black tangle stretched to a dull horizon smudged with hazing smoke from a fire now dying in the distant wilderness.
Mackinnon emerged from the main office and joined the Fire Chief who shook his head at the forester, “God, what a mess,” he said. “No wonder Rattray was surprised you saved the hutments here. I’ve never seen such a sight. One side of the road green; the other black, a wasteland.”
“Just days ago, it was prime forest,” Mackinnon said, “all of it ready for felling. Now look at it. More than forty years of maturity, all gone…It’s clouding over, and that’s heavy cumulus,” he jabbed a thumb at the sky. “Did you catch the morning weather forecast, Chief? Don’t tell me that it’s going to rain.”
“That‘s what the met boys are predicting,” the Fire Chief said, “rain later, some time tonight. So final end of fire. Pity that the rain didn’t come sooner.”
“What the hell are we to do with this, eh?” Mackinnon extended his arm to indicate the chaos of dead forest sweeping to distant hills. He stopped short. “Ecologists will be all over Lochaber to monitor recovery patterns. National Geographic were on the phone. I guarantee that award winning photography will result. Ah, here come the planting boys.”
A long wheelbased landrover drove into view and approached, coming to a halt on the hardstanding area that fronted the group of huts. Robbie got out of the driver’s seat as his squad exited from the rear door.
There was a silence as the group stared at the razed buildings that had recently been home. Somewhere in the shambles of blackened ruin was whatever remained of their belongings, excepting what each had saved by cramming into a single suitcase. Slowly at first, then increasing their pace, they headed towards the burnt bothies. A sour stink, released into morning dew, still lingered in the air.
Mackinnon and the Fire Chief watched the men, all but young Iain who was exploring alone at the fringe of scorched trees, as they picked their way through the charred timbers. The ganger pushed a wheelbarrow out of a storage hut and up to the ruins. There he grounded it to receive what little might be salvaged by the searching men.
Two hours went by. The Fire Chief and Euan Mackinnon idled next a map pinned on the office wall. The ganger called Iain to join him and together they wandered around the periphery of the cantonment. The bicycle frame was discovered. Seared of paint, with handlebar grips, brake coverings and tyres all gone, it lay at the edge of a black waste. Robbie bent and wrenched it upright. Cursing, he hurled it from the snarls of burned branches.
Several men looked briefly up on hearing the tinny crash of metal frame striking hard ground. There was no other reaction. Some distance behind, Iain did not see the expression of anger and disgust on the ganger’s face. Silas, rummaging in a charred chest of drawers, seemed not to notice. An exclamation from Blue drew everyone’s attention. His hand held high, he displayed a credit card holder. “Money!” he shouted, but no-one laughed.
Guy pushed the wheelbarrow back to the hutments. In it lay a collection of small things, oddments found in the ruins, disfigured souvenirs of the fire. The recovered items, of no intrinsic value whatsoever, were placed with care into empty boxes and the boxes loaded into the landrover. Not wishing to intrude on a shared experience of loss, the old ganger and the youth entered the office to join Mackinnon and the others inside. From the office window they watched as the squad moved towards the nearby stand of pine. Revisiting burnt out Polloch had been akin to attending a funeral and imparted some sense of closure.
“It’s getting cloudy,” George said, eyes drawn upwards by triangles of pine. “Looks like it’s finally going to rain.”
“Rain is forecast for tonight,” Guy grunted. “A few showers last month and none of this would have happened,” he waved a hand at the ruined cantonment. “Bloody weather. Right on cue with the weekend coming.”
“I’d like to come back five years from now to see how nature grows her way out of this, reclaims the land from the Commission. They cannot do anything more here,” Blue said.
Together they reached the trees. Roland knelt and pulled a thermos flask from his knapsack. Guy and the others gathered beside him. Silas spoke quietly. “God, I’m so sorry for all of this. You guys lost everything here,” and his mouth widened as though he was close to tears again. Inflexible reserve, once breached, was gone. The inscrutable persona had vanished entirely. In its place, a non-descript man of average height had emerged; a vulnerable man, a feeble idealist whose character could not withstand his principles.
The others said nothing, but Blue and Guy moved to stand blocking line of sight from the office windows. Roland, too, stood up.
“Take as much as you like from your bothies,” their ganger called from the main doorway. “Go back up there if you like, there’s plenty of time.”
“That did it for me, Robbie,” Roland shouted in reply. It was apparent that he spoke for them all.
Robbie re-entered the office. “Ok,“ he said, “we’ll head back to Strontian in half an hour. I’m pleased that my squad were the first. They might be a clever lot but I doubt any of them will ever be opening an off-shore bank account. Not on their wages here, anyway. It’s too bad. The poor buggers had little enough to lose.”
The others will get their turn over the weekend.” Mackinnon said. “It gives them all a chance to salvage whatever they can before the roads fully open up and tourists start poking around.” With rain coming and highways cleared of debris, there would be safety inspections to make sure no danger existed to road users from deadfall. The loop would re-open from Strontian to Polloch, then the lochside stretch northeast to Glenfinnan. He could see that the squad, grouped at the stand of pine, was contemplating a sky in which the enduring blue had disappeared behind a deep layer of cloud, and jerked his head in their direction to draw the gangers attention to his men.
“They filled the barrow with books mostly,” Robbie was disappointed at an opportunity missed. “Hardly seems worth the trip.”
Mackinnon continued to stare out of the office window. The asphalt road wound past the surviving stand of pine at the hutments. A bristling black landscape lifted to high ridges in the north and east, scenic green country rolled off to the south and west. No longer in bright sunlight, under a dull sky the contrasts in texture and colour were striking.