Having wrested control of their land from its deer-stalking aristocratic owners, local people in the remote region of Assynt, in north-western Scotland, are pinning their hopes of long-term survival on attracting eco-tourists. Euan Ferguson reports There can be few better places to talk about wolves than here: standing on the col of Stac Pollaidh, one of the most characterful mountains on these islands, gazing out at the Summer Isles, the outer Hebrides, on one of those admittedly rare but nonetheless wonderful Scottish west coast days where the sky’s a hard delighted blue from dawn until the sun slips away somewhere close to 11 o’clock at night. Neil Birnie, who runs a tourism company called Wilderness Scotland, is attempting, remarkably successfully, to reassure me on the subject of wolves, about whose reintroduction there has been much recent debate. “There’s not one recorded instance of them killing a human,” he says. “They could run free here without any problem whatsoever, no danger at all. They’d kill the deer, fine, and help save the area: the deer, kept and bred by the big estates from Victorian times, have for decades got all the young trees just as they’re trying to grow – and the result is all those empty, empty hillsides you see. The wolves are indigenous, anyway, and would do a wonderful job. I think we have to accept that they’d need to be fenced, and sadly it would cost a fortune. People just wouldn’t be ready to bump into them, despite the facts. Personally I’d be delighted to run into one right now.”

This is one of many similarly fascinating conversations he grants me the privilege of enjoying, as we hike back for a late lochside lunch, and as my eco-education begins in something close to earnest. Previously, my only faintly greenish thought about nature came when I started, a few years ago after a trip to Tasmania, to try to remember to pick up my fag butts, in order to play my self-righteous bit. (This did lead to a disgusted shout of panic a week later when I pull two walking shirts from the washer to find twin heavy glops of wet nicotine misery in the top pockets.) But we are spending a couple of days in Assynt, the luckiest couple of sunny days this year, in one of the last truly wild places in the country, and there’s a hell of a lot to learn. Assynt, high on the west coast, nearing Cape Wrath, feels qualitatively different from much of the rest of Scotland. The mountains are not the highest: but they seem it. Partly because of the fascinating geological history – the area used to be part of Nova Scotia, or, as we decide, Nova Scotia used to be part of Assynt – there are few of the long rolling ranges you see around much of the Highlands. Instead you get distinct, separate peaks, shaped like sphinxes, like dogs, like giants: Pollaidh, of course, and the mighty Suilven, and Quinag, and Canisp; and below them some of the most gorgeous sea-lochs on the planet. The Observer, Sunday 14 June 2009.