Wild beauty and the memory of death at Culloden Moor

Most of the memorials in Culloden Moor date to the 19th Century, even though the battle was more than a century earlier.  I think it was something the Victorians just did, hence the sheer number of Civil War memorials.   In any case, the clan headstones and the large cairn bring the apalling loss of life to the fore.   The story of the end of the Jacobite forces, and the sheer loss of life 1600 people slain on this day, 1500 of them Jacobite) is a story that, at least since  “Braveheart” is at least somewhat known. 

This, along with my visit to Urquhart Castle yesterday really has me meditating on humanity’s inhumanity to themselves today.   And we don’t need to go far to see it in action in our own time.   Maybe we are more subtle, arguments about police violence, Havana syndrome affecting our diplomats, death in Afghanistan as we leave warring parties behind, death in the Middle East so recently, death-dealing pharmeceutical companies who put profits before people’s lives and sparked an opioid crisis, and on and on and on.

But there is another side to the moor in Culloden, and that was the sheer natural beauty andtranquility of the place.  Grasses and wildflowers sway in the breeze everywhere, tangles of bushes and spots of wild raspberries dot the lanscape.   It’s wild and beautiful.  Visitors walk solemn and serene on the seemingly endless paths, about half of them with dogs.  Small children run and laugh.  

We human beings are better than the bloodshed.  Maybe this was part of the idea for the Victorians; that remembering might lead us to a more civilized way of living.   In much the same way that the concentration camp memorials in Germany an Poland remind us people that our response to genocide must be never again, I hope that places like Culloden, and Antietam in my country will remind us of just how horrible our expressions of hate can be, and lead us to a new way of being diverse people - a way of peace!

And I promise to stop ruminating on violence and hate:: tomorrow I am headed for soggy hiking in Fort William, and then on to Oban!