In the hills this morning, an encounter with the seventy year old bothy hunter, John. He sees me untying the bike having just emerged from a walk through the hanging wood and we get chatting. He tells me of his hill-walking and his bothy hunting. Apparently, he's hunted all 106 of them in Scotland but not found all of them. Some of them managed to escape his compass. That's the beauty of the hills, I tell him, even compasses lose their bearings on occasion. Anyway, he suggests a mirror for my bicycle, telling me all the benefits of being able to see what four wheeled beast is creeping up behind you. He is an avid cyclist and walker and has been since his boyhood days, so he knows a thing or two about bikes and cycling (and car drivers). I mull it over and then say that I can already see behind me without the need for a mirror, that over the past half century of cycling (and I'm only 49) I have developed 'eyes on the back of ma heid' and can echo-locate a bit like bats (or Cairo taxi drivers), and that by putting a mirror on my bike it would necessarily detract from that natural technology that has grown within me. 'Replacing your natural technology with an artificial one is no good,' I say. 'You just become weaker as an animal able to navigate the land'. The ears are the first point of call for the animal, not the eyes, and so a mirror would re-route that primacy into the eyes, thus enfeebling the ears. It would also, in making the eyes the first point of call, take the animal out of me.' He doesn't know what to say, but I can see he agrees. I wish him well on his hike, tell him to watch out for that icy wind up there, and jump on to my mirrorless bike.
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