Winds of Change

To this lake today. The waves rushing across it make it look like the sea, though they are caused by the wind rather than tides. There is a lot of wind here. The lake is up on a plateau in the hills of North Wales. All around it is peaty soil with heather and sphagnum moss, forming tumps which, in different stages of drying out after recent warm weather, take on a beautiful succession of colours from green to yellow-green, dusky pink and rusty orange. Subdued and subtle colours  - at a distance a myriad shades of tinted straw - but close up, and interspersed with the heather, like the hues of another world.

I love to be in these empty landscapes, though ruined cottages and the remains of old lead mines show that they were not always quite so empty. There are wind turbines barely visible on the horizon, also showing that the land is being utilised in this way again. Concrete and tarmac are being laid across the peat where before there were just tracks and rubble roads. Pylons are being built to carry away the power generated.

I have mixed feelings about this. Green energy is of course a good thing, though some question how green this technology really is. And the peat too is a carbon store and this carbon is released when the peat is excavated or dries out through draining. Should I regret the loss of this wild landscape and the special things that are here? Or should I welcome the alternative ways of producing energy? If only I could be sure that it would help to avoid climate change my regret would at least be tinged with hope. But the more I find out about the technology and the impact of putting it in such places, the less I am sure.