The Seeing Eye

While my wife and I were among 20 American Elderhostelers at Aigas Field Studies Centre near Inverness, Scotland in September 2008, we bought two books by the establishment's founder, Sir John Lister Kaye. I enjoyed them so much that I have sent off for three more. *** THE SEEING EYE: NOTES OF A HIGHLAND NATURALIST (1980) tells Sir John's personal experiences in Scotland from 1969 - 1979 and his efforts to open up the "Highland wilderness to the world at large" (FOREWORD). THE SEEING EYE tells of Lister-Kaye's slow but steady coming to awareness of the centuries-long process of humans blindly desolating the thinly peopled Scottish Highlands. From having diverse animal and plant populations at the end of the last Ice Age resembling today's Norway and Sweden, Scotland was relentlessly ground by man into a "green desert." Gone were its wolves and beavers, many bird species and huge ancient forests of Scots pines. *** THE SEEING EYE tells of Sir John's crusade first to show this latter-day tragedy to a world looking in other directions and then to do something concrete to fix it. -OOO-