Dick Balharry’s wholly inspirational impact on Argyll’s outdoor learning specialist, Stramash, came about through a coincidental conversation in 2012.
Ross Lilley from SNH had mentioned the West Highland Coastal Trust to Niall Urquhart, Stramash’s Chief Executive, who immediately went to Google to find out more about it.
Interested in what he read, he phoned the Trust – and the man who answered was Dick Balharry.
They had an hour-long conversation which was a meeting of minds, the impact of which has stayed with Mr Urquhart to this day.
Shortly afterwards, Dick Balharry – always an engaged and proactive person, came down from Newtonmore to the Stramash office in Oban to see Stramash for himself. He got to know the team. He went out on activity with them to see what they were doing and how they were doing it.
Dick Balharry was so impressed with what he saw that he, along with the other Trustees of the West Highland Coastal Trust, put together a plan that allowed Stramash to deliver an outdoor education programme for the schools of north Argyll, which was provided free of charge to the schools.
The relationship with the West Highland Coastal Trust then led, with Dick Balharry’s assistance, to their further involvement with the Butler Outdoor Education Trust, an American Trust which supports a select few outdoor education programmes around the world. Stramash now runs an annual ‘Scottish Highlands Outdoor Education Programme’ for the Trust, reaching hundreds of school children with outdoor education opportunities.
Talking to Niall Urquhart about Dick Balharry, you get the sense of a huge energy that infused Stramash, blending with their own, charging and supporting new initiatives- a time of growth, of excitement, of focus, of challenge of achievement.
Sometimes the right people, with the right hearts and the right abilities come together at the right time – and things happen.
Dick Balharry had the rare gift of being able to be a part of any group, of any people, of any age from three years old to whatever, never needing to dominate it but always willing to feed it.
Niall Urquhart speaks of Balharry’s magical ability to interpret the landscape around those he was with, picking up on the physical curiosities – like a treeless landscape – and finding the physical evidence from the present and past to decode it; then fitting this into his historical knowledge, managing to leave a group of people feeling integrated in place and time in a new and rooted way.
He visited Stramash regularly and went out with them in all sorts of groups.
From 2012 he made a massive and valuable input to the organisation’s work and development. He was influential and wise, a good sounding board; and a potent advocate for them.
He played a substantial part in helping to bed-in Stramash’s expansion in establishing its services at the former British Alcan Social Club site at Fort William; and later, most recently, to Elgin, where its wonderful thirty acres of ancient oakwood, a Site of Special Scientific Interest, was a previous haunt of his own. Coincidentally, as a youngster, Niall Urquhart had also known the oak woodland as he visited it with his family for walks and for orienteering.
Dick Balharry took Niall Urquhart to visit Glen Feshie in 2013 to show him the magnificent natural regeneration of the native Caledonian pine wood. Again coincidentally, this was a place Niall had been taken to by his own father and some of the regeneration measures that he remembered seeing there [small fenced off trial areas] had been put in place by Dick Balharry when he was working with the Nature Conservancy Council for Scotland.
Niall Urquhart sees Dick Balharry’s work as conservationist and wildlife manager across the Highlands as emblematic both of the man’s philosophy and of his essential clarity of wisdom.
In his wholehearted espousal of land reform, Dick Balharry played no part in and steered clear of the extent to which this issue has been unhelpfully politicised.
He was clear that the issue of land ownership was of no account. What mattered was land management – this was the key agent of enabling the twin motivating pillars of his own life:
- managing land for the public benefit;
- managing land for the benefit of the environment.
Dick Balharry’s many friends and unequivocal admirers hope that Glenfeshie – where the landowner has understood and taken hold of the importance of managing land for the benefit of the people and of the ecology – will be the true and enduring Balharry legacy.
They would love to see Glenfeshie become the template by which evolved land management can enable all of the various needs from and uses of land to coexist constructively and in mutual respect.
Niall Urquhart says he is privileged to have been invited to Glenfeshie for The Royal Scottish Geographical Society’s presentation to Dick Balharry of the prestigious Geddes Environmental Medal - just over a week before he died.
At this presentation, Balharry said that he was delighted to have lived to see the regeneration of Glenfeshie with its remnant of the old Caledonian pinewood – and even at that stage talked energetically of ‘the vision in this’.
The words most frequently used by the Stramash Chief Executive in talking of a man he so patently respected and is proud to have had as a friend are ‘honour’ and ‘privilege’. Stramash is proud to have been a part of the world Dick Balharry conjured into a shape fit for the future and fit to serve so wonderful a place.
Representatives from Stramash are going to Newtonmore tomorrow, 29th April 2015 to be present at the funeral service for someone whose life had entwined itself in positive action with their own, marking a formal point of departure in what will nevertheless be a continuing relationship of inspiration and guidance.
The photograph at the top shows Dick Balharry on activity with Stramash – at one with the youthful inventiveness and fun of the group.
