I felt something of the same as I walked up from Dunbeath towards Braemore on a snowy day.

My plans for ambling up Morven had been abandoned because of deep drifts which would have defeated even a 4 x 4, so leaving the car parked near the village I set off on foot along the moorland road.

A tractor had been a little way up to feed sheep, beyond this the road, though impassable to vehicles, gave a relatively easy route across wild moorland country buried in deep snow. Ahead, Scaraben rose tantalisingly into the clear blue sky. Perhaps in the past I'd have slogged for nine hours to get up there, but long plods through deep soft snow have lost their appeal nowadays.

Instead, it was simply a grand day to walk the empty road, enjoying the vistas of moor and mountain. I did, though, make a detour from the top of the road to wallow for half a mile southwards to a cairn high above the Berriedale glen, with fine views of the whole snow-covered range of the Caithness mountains.

Turning back towards the road there, straight ahead was the anemometer mast reminding of the imminent destruction of this whole area by a giant wind farm. Sadly, just as in the days when the Flow Country was being planted by vast conifer forests, there is nothing anyone can do about it.

There are golden eagles. It is a landscape of deep peat. Elsewhere we are told there is now a presumption against wind farms on peatland because of erosion and the release of huge quantities of CO2. This may be the most important bird habitat the RSPB has ever seen considered for a wind farm.

Destroyed will be some of the best views of, and from, the only real mountains in Caithness. Elsewhere, wind farms are going up near houses on the grounds that wilder places like this are unsuitable.

But these arguments, or indeed any other, count as nothing against a much greater power. Money. It's all already been decided. The arguments are simply twisted as need be.

What stopped the Flow Country plantings? Nothing to do with the world heritage status of one the largest areas of unspoilt peat in the world. Simply an eventual realisation by the Government that taxpayers' money was being wasted on planting hopelessly uneconomic trees.

The tax concessions were withdrawn and the tree planting stopped overnight. Now, of course, many of the trees are being cut down at great expense in an attempt to restore the peatlands.

Until our Government, Scottish or Westminster, realises what an expensive white elephant these onshore wind farms are, the windfalls to be made by developers and landowners and crofters will overrule any argument. Only when the supply of vast cash subsidies is cut off - and sooner or later it must be - will these hopelessly uneconomic and almost useless developments cease. But until then, nothing can stop the juggernaut. The Dunbeath moors are almost certainly doomed.

The snowplough came through, I walked back in its tracks, my enjoyment of sunshine and snow and moorland beauty tinged with sadness.

A week later I was back, the snow had thawed from lower ground and I could drive to the top of the road and in 10 minutes walk to that cairn it had so recently taken me two hours to reach.

The Braemore road in winter. Despite the snow it presented the opportunity for a fine walk to appreciate the vistas of moor and mountain.

Now I carried on, down to the shaky suspension bridge over the Berriedale Water - damaged in floods a few years ago, it will eventually fall if stabilising cables are not replaced. Soon I was up onto the Scaraben ridge; there was a bitter wind but it was a glorious bright day with a dusting of new snow and many frozen banks and drifts which had lain for a couple of months.

No life on these wind-blasted, icy ridges, not even ptarmigan or arctic hare. It was the first fine day for a while, the traverse of the three Scaraben tops makes a grand walk in such conditions.

Below stretched the Caithness flows, patterned with white and looking very wintry, the lochs and lochans white and frozen. South and west the snow cover increased, the higher parts of the Highlands were still very much in the depths of winter. Instead of a long day taking in Morven, this was just to be an easy walk.

From the western top I headed northwards, sliding down banks of snow then crossing the moor and climbing to the steep little top of Maiden Pap - a very accessible summit which has a view in many respects better than that from Morven itself. Northwards rolled the snow-flecked moors while to the east the Braemore glen basked in sunshine.

It was not, though, especially peaceful, there was a continuous thunderous echo of jets practising high above, while some 15 ravens were flying round below my summit, croaking continually as they flew in pairs, one above the other, then dropping suddenly in their display flight.

It seemed almost like spring at Braemore, the fields green and bare of snow and now some warmth in that February sun, the river flowing gently under the yellow lichened stones of the arched bridge. But this can be a bleak spot well into May.

Another fine morning's interlude in the wintry weather gave a lovely short outing from Loch More. It must be years since I last walked out along the track to the ruinous croft of Balvreed. On a crisp sunny day in early February there is an exhilaration in striding out across the Flow Country with long vistas across loch and moor to snow-streaked mountains.

The whole area to the east of the Balvreed path was earmarked for forestry, and some four miles of deer fencing erected, much of it alongside the path.

Then the tax concessions were removed and a few years later the fence was taken down again by the RSPB who had bought the land. Now the path has reverted to what it once was, a quiet moorland walk across that wonderful evocative landscape of the Caithness flows.

That whole Flow Country planting saga gives just some hope that the same thing may happen with wind farms before too much more damage is done. Balvreed is even more fallen-down than at my last visit. I hauled a dead hind out from the entrance as pigeons fluttered from the windows. Another very wet mile across the moor is the old lodge of Thulachan in a wonderful setting above the loch.

Most windows and doors are out, the dozen or so rooms and the corridor full of plaster and debris and rotten wood, but the remains of the old hot water systems and plumbing still extant. Would that either this building or Balvreed could be renovated by volunteers for occasional use by those who love the wild places.

Rotten ice still covered Loch Thulachan and Loch Sand. By the quiet shores of both lochans and across very wet moorland I made my way back to the Balvreed path and Loch More.

Even here you can't escape the sight of the Causewaymire wind farm, turbines which have generated very little electricity during our long cold winter and a constant reminder of the threats hanging over our wonderful landscape. And, unlike the world of science fiction, there is no parallel Earth to escape to when we have ruined this one.

Ice remains on the surface of the peaceful Loch Sand.

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