Rewilding & Rerouting: Connecting with nature

At the summit of West Kip in the Pentland Hills, the wind is a banshee. It slaps at your face, pulls at your trousers, screams above your voice and threatens to topple you off. With red faces and snot flowing freely, my friend and I staggered against the gale and were rewarded with unobstructed views. 

A patchwork of heather, grass and gorse covers distant hillsides, a reservoir shines sapphire in the sun, and a solitary house sits nearby. This sort of terrain is familiar in Scotland. It is, however, a relatively recent sight shaped by generations of human settlements. The magic of the Pentland Hills is deeply ancient – it has seen continental collisions, volcanic eruptions and melting glaciers forging and carving the land like the work of primordial Norse giants. Now, as rewilding efforts and climate change take hold, the land continues to shapeshift. 

We went to the Pentlands hoping a long sunny ramble would untangle the sparking wires of our minds, relieve the seasonal depression and the work woes. I left with a foreign feeling of self-pride for something that wasn’t achieved from behind a laptop, and a closer connection to the evolution of the land – and, admittedly, myself. 

440 million years ago, Scotland was part of one landmass, England was part of another, and between them was an ocean. Over millions of years, the two continents inched closer until, ultimately, they collided. The crush lifted land and rock on the seabed like folds in fabric to eventually give us the rugged Highlands and parts of the Pentlands. Millions of years after the continents merged, lava and ash from furious volcanic eruptions created rock up to 5,000 feet thick. But, primarily, the hills still rise high because of a huge gash in the Earth’s crust called the Pentland Fault, which runs along the A702 highway and enabled the rocks to be pushed upwards.

Rambling in the Pentland Hills, however, will hardly remind you of such violent beginnings. Most hills are rounded with gentle slopes. The highest peak is Scald Law at a somewhat manageable 1,900 feet. This is because, during the last ice age, glaciers strewn with rocks smoothed and eroded the hills like sandpaper. When the ice age ended around 11,000 years ago, torrents of melted glacier water carved the network of channels and valleys we see today. 

Still, we should’ve double checked the weather forecast. When I felt too overwhelmed by the wind gusts that made us stumble precariously close to the edge, my friend urged us to keep climbing. It didn’t help that a couple striding downwards warned that the wind would only worsen. But in a strange way, our vulnerability to the elements made me feel relieved. Anxiety for me often takes the form of claustrophobia, where my catastrophising mind, my stacking "what if" scenarios, feel like walls closing in. Vast, open landscapes like the Pentlands are an antidote. I so rarely find myself working with nature, not against it: using the wind to propel us up the hillside, or clinging to rocks, or sitting on pillowy moss while we snacked on stroopwafels. 

It's likely the Pentland Hills were once blanketed by oak and birch woodland, before Bronze Age settlers logged the trees for farming. Today, much of the Pentlands is private property. Sheep dot the hillside like balls of cotton wool. In February they’re heavily pregnant and it’s best not to get too close. I didn’t like the way one eyed me defensively as it blocked my path. I gave it a wide berth. 

Land under the City of Edinburgh Council is being rewilded, but very carefully to avoid harming existing wildlife. For instance, the expanded moorlands have been helpful for curlews, who nest among heather at least 30 metres from the nearest tree. This keeps their eggs safely out of reach from egg-stealing crows. Farmers, too, are planting trees. As climate change brings milder winters and more ferocious storms to the region, trees will help hills withstand erosion by stabilising the earth and soaking up heavy rainfall. 

Of course, my friend was right to push us onwards. When we sheltered against the slant of the hill, things became more manageable. I’m not, by a long stretch, an athletic person. And if I’m honest, I’m not the kind of person who relishes a challenge. If alone, I certainly would’ve turned around in search of a pint. But I was surprised by what my body could actually achieve by making it to the top. I spent most of my twenties bound to a desk. At age 30, a little wiser, a little wilder, I’m slowly learning what I’m capable of away from it – even if it does only begin with a small round hill.

Amid the ever-changing nature of the Pentlands, wandering the hills brought me closer to its wildlife. Roe deer emerged from hideouts at dusk. Birds sparkled white in the sunshine or nested carefully in spiky gorse. Wildlife has persisted throughout centuries of human settlements – it’s clear it, like us, can thrive when given the chance. And as my thirties unfurl, I’m excited to discover new limits of my comfort zone, ready to be breached.