Lesley Riddoch: For life's biggest dangers, look very close to home

Published on Sunday 25 January 2009 20:59

AS I was reading a baffling National Trust sign by the tame, flat, well-compacted paths of Culloden Moor – "These paths are icy and dangerous" – three climbers had fallen foul of the truly dangerous avalanche conditions in Glencoe.

Later, still ignorant of Saturday's tragedy, I was embroiled in animated conversation at a Burns supper for the Highland Hospice in Inverness about the parlous state of adventure-seeking among most Scots.

"I tried to get my son to come walking in the north-west Highlands and stay out overnight, but he refused to stay in a bothy in the middle of nowhere without knowing who else would be in there," I was told. "I said the uncertainty would be part of the fun – and I'd never had a situation I couldn't deal with, but he point-blank refused to come."

Despairing of the risk-averse culture all around – school picnics cancelled in case of E coli from cow pats, an appeal for Gaza cancelled in case the BBC might look partisan – I recalled an incident at a B&B on Harris some years ago when two girls aged seven were desperate to get on to the fabulous Scarista beach.

"Why can't you just go without the grown-ups?" I asked. "They're not allowed on the beach by themselves," the father replied.

"But what could possibly happen? And what were you doing aged seven – I'll bet you were sailing boats!" There were embarrassed smiles all round: "Sailing at five, actually."

It's no wonder islanders' children aren't queuing up to become fishermen. Well-meaning parents have steadily taken all the excitement and adventure away from the great outdoors, leaving only risk, cold, dread, danger and uncertainty.

As the men who died on Buchaille Etive Mor discovered, these dangers are always present on Scotland's mountains, moors and seas. As the men on the Buchaille also knew, these dangers create the excitement that makes people take chances, calculate risk and learn from experience.

What happened this weekend must not fuel the growing tendency to arrest that learning process – to stop contact with the unpredictable forces of nature – in the belief that risk can be removed from everything.

It's true that a lot of fishermen wouldn't recommend the job to their own children – lone creel fishermen have the highest death rate on the islands. But "dangerous" fishing still earns a decent income – "safe" crofting does not. And there's the rub.

Safety first is great for the Tufty Club, but it doesn't equip children for a world where the greatest threat is not "nature danger" or "stranger danger" but our cultural reliance on seeking excitement through drink.

The search for adventure often goes no further than the bottom of a bottle – and that's killing scores of Scots every week.

Take fire risk, for example. Community safety minister Fergus Ewing has just ordered B&B owners in Scotland to be relieved of the expensive requirement to deface their (often) elegant Victorian properties by installing fire doors every few yards, and systems of connected smoke detectors. His reasoning is quite sound – B&Bs tend to be run by sensible, careful people who don't allow smoking in rooms (the most common source of fires), staff the premises virtually round the clock, are up at 6am making breakfasts and keep a very watchful eye on all activity because their business is also their home. Homes of multiple occupation, on the other hand, will keep the legislation – because the behaviour of young tenants and absentee landlords tends to raise the risk of harm. The most dangerous situation, however, is the wholly private one, the one no amount of toughened glass can guard against – the forgotten chip pan or dropped cigarette that causes a fire because people are blind drunk.

Is drinking adventurous? Diageo has just chosen racing driver Lewis Hamilton as the man to front its "drink sensibly" campaign – a riposte to Kenny MacAskill's plans for statutory restrictions on Scotland's "got tae drink" culture. Hamilton is obviously a hard-working, law-abiding kind of guy, but his sport is infused with glamour and adventure. Associating himself with a big drinks company, he effortlessly brings the scent of danger with him. Yet for successful young men such as Hamilton or Andy Murray who are serious about their pursuit of adventure, a reliance on alcohol is doubtless viewed as self-indulgent and self-limiting.

But drink, not danger, is how the average Scot experiences release and the illusion of adventure. The decision by our generation to get "proper" 9-to-5 jobs has turned the natural world into an optional extra experienced on special occasions only. We commute in cars sealed from the environment and come home brain-dead to children watching The Simpsons. Some of us retain a niggling guilt about abandonment of the hard, nature-focused lives of our forebears. And well we might.

The current recession could conceivably trigger a situation where people are forced back on to the land. Last year's rise in oil prices and growth in biofuels triggered a rise in fertiliser prices of 500 per cent that is still affecting yields across the world. The bee situation isn't sorted, and cattle "emissions" – which contribute more to climate change than all forms of transport – are set to quadruple as developing economies start eating meat.

How can we face up to what lies ahead when so many people are completely distanced from nature? When I wear a white jacket, I'm told I'm brave. When I cycle through the pot-holes of Glasgow, I'm told I'm mad. When I drive to Inverness, I'm told to postpone the trip until winter ends.

We over-dramatise the danger of the Great Outdoors but sleep-walk into the jaws of risk in our debt-laden, drink-sodden culture.

Time to see ourselves as ithers see us… lest we want to share the all-too-Scottish fate of our national Bard.