The treeless Shetland landscape offers unique picturesque
vistas of sculptured landmasses defined by sky and water. The fragmentation of
the various pieces of terra firma that make the Shetland Islands provides an
unusual, interlaced illusion on a grand scale, with rolling hills layering into
gradations of distance, interspersed with voes and lochs. It is a symphony of
land, sea and sky that has the appearance and wonder of a large, partially immersed
Henry Moore sculpture. It is the light that unites these elements, not only
with the graded haze of multiple horizons, but also with the shadows of clouds
moving over land; the skies gleaming with glimpses of sunlight; and the waters
a-blaze with astonishing brilliances that form this firmament. Its beauty turns
every tourist into a photographer who tries to capture the primordial light
that illuminates this incredible postcard wonder, especially at sunsets that
are irresistible to anyone holding a camera even though the marvel has been
seen and photographed so many times before that it has become a cliché: but it
never is, such is its power.
Indeed, Shetland has a history of photographers who have
travelled the islands to capture its spectacular landscape, its amazing wild
life, its ordinary, everyday events as well as its special occasions. Rattar
comes to mind as a skilled practitioner of the art, and a prolific one too. His
stunning black and white images illustrate the land and its life with a raw, crisp,
honest beauty that sets the standard for today’s travellers seeking to record
the special qualities of this place. It is in his images that we can see the
landscape and its light and life, pure and simple, uncluttered, in its native
innocence.
Today, every photographer has experienced the struggle to
cut the power pole and its lines out of the frame, and to conceal the fretted
array of fencing posts, all in an effort to regain the Rattar romance – the
original sense of place; that vibrant, organic feeling for land, light and
life. Alas, only too frequently does one make these cunningly careful moves to
discover at a later time, the unexpected feint sweep of a power line across the
captured image, or a stray pole or post protruding unexpectedly from the hills.
Everyone knows the disappointment that this interference causes. There is a
loss of innocence, of original sense of place with this rude interference of
base, basic technology. These occasions become the disappointment of all
photographers, especially the tourists who have travelled across the world to
experience what is truly unique about the Shetland Islands. Locals can easily
revisit the place and try again with a different scheming, but tourists live
with their failures forever: if only . . . Tourists do not travel to distant
places in order to experience the clutter of nearly every city and town in the
world; and ‘photoshopping’ does not solve the emotional need for recorded
truth.
So it was with some sad astonishment that the pockmarking of
the map was viewed in The Shetland Times. An array of red dots joined
with a maze of lines stretched across the drawing of central Mainland on
contours that defined the hills. This was described as the proposal for the
wind farm that filled the girth of the land around Weisdale, a place with its
own wonder and special history and mystery that opens to the surprising western
edge of southern Mainland. This was the place that everyone admires for its
most grand vistas that stretch for kilometres into an amazement of hazed beauty
along folds in between hills. This was to be the place for the turbines to be
mounted on the perimeter of crests. Power poles and fences fretted in
silhouettes against the sky will be as nothing when compared to the turbines –
their scale, noise, feel and general imposition. These will only be able to be
photoshopped out, such is their scale. No reframing will disguise these
monsters or their impacts.
While the general effect on health of these huge pieces of
equipment remains a debate - but not for those who have them nearby and have
not been blinded by the dollars - this impact is compounded by the impact on
place and feeling, the healthy interaction of subtle matters that include our
involvement with land and its scope. Our love of place lies at the core of
mental health, of coming to terms with our world. In Shetland this is
highlighted more than ever – treelessness critically opens the purity of the
landmass to the bright rawness of the sky and the reflective certainty of
water. The bold towers of wind turbines grasp the highest land profiles for
their own benefit irrespective of place and circumstance. They carry an
inherent insult in their being that cares little for those who love this land
and live this love. Theirs is not only a point pockmark. Towers demand
servicing that requires a network of roads crisscrossing the hills.
Roger Scruton has noted that beauty is a moral matter. In
this sense wind farms intrude into matters ethical. Their values can be debated
as their functional and economic efficiencies, but it is their impact on
feeling and place – feeling for place – that holds the greatest threat, the one
most difficult to articulate or evaluate. The matter is clearly seen in the
photographers’ nightmare of poles, posts and other paraphernalia. These will be
as nothing compared with the visual impact of the turbines. One only has to see
the turbines on the hills beside Lake George outside Canberra in Australia to
understand the impact of turbine towers irrespective of their number.
View of wind farm from Federal Highway over Lake George
If Shetland is serious about encouraging tourism and caring
for its much-loved places, then it needs to be fully aware of what turbines do.
The situation is a little like developing mines in a place where landscape is
so important and so limited; where place is critical. Mining the winds seems to
be the best analogy, for this technology has the same brutal impact on land.
Just look at the mine at Clibberswick on Unst. Sadly raw beauty is turned into
a mighty mess just too easily. It is fragile, like feelings, and needs care and
attention for survival.
We might be interested in how we plan our houses, our
settlements, our towns; but how we plan and care for our landscape is just as
critical if we are to develop and maintain a place and its wonder. Planning
means knowing and controlling for a prescribed outcome. Beauty needs thought
and attention just as any functional necessity. We should not allow ourselves
to be distracted by dreams of dollars, for tourism is all about dreams and
dollars too - dollars based on a desire to see a place of one’s dreams, a place
so special and different as Shetland. One can travel to other places to see
wind turbines. Why turn Shetland into a place just like any other? When we all
know the impact of poles and posts on the landscape, why leap into the hope of
towers?
The astonishing
stupidity in endorsing this wind farm is that Shetland is a place that promotes
its unique, natural beauty as a tourist destination. It is difficult enough to
get to Shetland now, what with the high costs of travel on what is an
uncompetitive route. People will think twice about visiting a place that is
determined to fill its beautiful horizons with silhouettes of towers. Why would
anyone wreck its core attraction with any turbines, even silent ones if they
exist, let alone a number in excess of one hundred, when it is trying hard to
promote its special country as an attractive destination? Would Northern Island
allow the erection of wind turbines on top of the cliffs around the Giant’s
Causeway? Considering the almost excessive care
and detail that has been given to the beautiful visitors’ centre at this
location, one can see that turbines, no matter how advantageous the position
might be for efficient energy production, would never be approved here - see: http://voussoirs.blogspot.com.au/2013/02/giants-causeway-gateway.html
Shetland has to put
a value onto its tourism if it is to truly see the losses that turbines will
bring. Folk will not visit a stark, iconic landscape that has had its wonder
littered with a scattering of raging, reverberating towers. It is this brashness
that they are escaping. It is simply unbelievable that anyone could give a
second thought to approving any wind farm on Shetland, even with the sums of
cash and jobs that calculations might promise. There will be more losses than
gains here. The immeasurable qualities of this world have more power for
tourists than any surplus of cheap energy might have for Shetland.
Will Shetland's promotional logo have to be changed?
One remains
gobsmacked at the possibility that the heart of the Mainland might become a
display of spiked hills. It does not augur well for the health of the
landscape, let alone the health of local residents and visitors, for we do gain
strength from our land, the spirit of place.
Loung Ung talks about his land and its abuses:
Land-mine mutilation is the second most painful injury,
burns being the first. Psychologically, physically, it’s very destructive to
human beings. Socially, culturally, economically, and religiously, it’s
disrupted the whole society. We’re Buddhist people so our deities tend to be
based in the rivers and the earth. Now that the land is mined, where do you go
to find spiritual sanctuary?
Surviving
the Peace: An Interview with Loung Ung in
In
the Shadow of Angkor Contemporary Writing from Cambodia Frank Stewart; Sharon May Editors Silkworm Books 2004
University of Hawai’i Press p.54
Thomas Lynch writes of his return to Ireland as:
a return to the traditions of exile and contemplative life
within a community made global by technology - men and women for whom the quiet
and the distant and the darkness allow for visions they might otherwise have
never had, who are nonetheless ‘connected’ to the wider world of faith by
broadband and modem and common quest.
Booking
Passage We Irish & Americans Thomas
Lynch Johnathon Cape London 2005 page 143-144
What visions might remain when ‘the quiet and the distant
and the darkness’ are permeated with towers?
We might get an understanding of the brutality of the
impacts from our own culture with texts inspired by the Pslams:
I will lift up mine eyes unto the hills, from whence
cometh my power,
My electricity cometh from the turbines, twixt heaven and
earth.
(after Psalm 121)
When I consider thy heavens, the work of thy fingers, the
moon and the stars, which thou hast ordained; and the wind turbines -
What is man, that thou art mindful of him?
What is man doing?
(after Psalm 8:3-4)
Now that the sky is mined, where will we gain our
strength? |
  |
For a recent study and debate on wind farms see:
http://www.abc.net.au/mediawatch/transcripts/
(Turbine torture)
http://www.theguardian.com/environment/2015/feb/23/windfarm-study-author-threatens-to-sue-media-watch-for-misrepresentation
P.S.
One is left pondering why Shetland spends so much time,
effort and money on trying to attract tourists when it seems to do so much to
dissuade them. Some years ago the ship, Norrona, that provided a direct
link between the Sheltand Islands and Norway, Denmark, the Faroe Islands and
Iceland, stopped calling into Lerwick on its weekly run. This was the route
the Vikings took. It appeared that no one in Shetland could care less. Nothing
was done to make sure that this service was kept available for locals and visitors.
It was merely dismissed, leaving the Shetland Islands isolated from its
neighbours.
Now we have the wind farm to be constructed on the beautiful
landscape of central Shetland, ironically named Viking. If Shetland is
really interested in encouraging tourism, then it might have done more to
ensure that its connections to the Viking world were more than a label for a
project that will scar the landscape for years to come, making it more like the
rest of the developed world – a place avoided by those who seek out nature’s quiet
beauty and wonder.
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