Sky Dance Fighting for the Wild in the Scottish Highlands

About this book

"Bring back the lynx? Over my dead body!"A mutter passed through the crowd of environmental protestors, and Rory stepped forward. "Your hunting has destroyed our hills and left them treeless wastes, devoid of wildlife. It's time that changed."Lord Purdey's lip curled in a sneer.

"Listen, you lentil-eating cat lover, Scotland is owned by me and men like me. If we want to kill anything that moves and bulldoze your beloved hills flat, we will."Someone from the group hurled a turnip. It struck Purdey a glancing blow and he crumpled slowly to the ground, just as the archaic class system he represented must eventually fall.

Or so Rory hoped... In his first two bestselling books, The Last Hillwalker and Bothy Tales, John D. Burns invited readers to join him in the hills and wild places of Scotland.

In Sky Dance, he returns to that world to ask fundamental questions about how we relate to this northern landscape – while raising a laugh or two along the way. Anyone who has stood and gazed at the majesty of the Scottish mountains will know this place and want to return to it. Now, as wild land is threatened like never before, it's time we asked ourselves what kind of future we want for the Highlands.

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Biography

John D. Burns is a bestselling and award-winning mountain writer who has spent over forty years exploring Britain's mountains. Originally from Merseyside, he moved to Inverness over thirty years ago to follow his passion for the hills. He is a past member of the Cairngorm Mountain Rescue Team and has walked and climbed in the American and Canadian Rockies, Kenya, the Alps and the Pyrenees. John began writing more than fifteen years ago, and at first found an outlet for his creativity as a performance poet. He has taken one-man plays to the Edinburgh Fringe and toured them widely around theatres and mountain festivals in the UK. It is the combination of John's love of the outdoors with his passion for writing and performance that makes him a uniquely powerful storyteller. His first two books, The Last Hillwalker and Bothy Tales, were both shortlisted for TGO Magazine's Outdoor Book of the Year. His third book, Sky Dance, is published in 2019. He continues to develop his career as a writer, blogger and outdoor storyteller while exploring the wild places he loves.