The locus of my attention is a place in the north east of Scotland, a Forestry Commission plantation called Lossie Forest. It was while walking in this landscape that I became aware of a strange and inexplicable invisible presence, the landscape was imbued with a sense of watchfulness that, strange as this may sound, sent me fleeing down the path. Perhaps it should come as no surprise that in locations such as Lossie Forest we feel observed; the pillboxes and batteries, after all, were built precisely for this purpose. These structures have always been outmoded, at Lossie Forest they were out dated in terms of their usefulness before they were even complete. So there has always been a sense of the anachronistic about to them, they feel out of place, out of time. For many people, these concrete monoliths are nothing more than detritus, a dangerous vestige of an era that has now passed. In this sense these crumbling concrete structures are contested heritage sites, but, for the purposes of this paper I would like to propose that the landscape of Lossie Forest is emblematic of heritage in a different sense, that of inheritance in Jacques Derrida’s sense of the word. I will to argue that the ghostly sense of being looked at is demonstrated in and by this landscape, which, furthermore gives us interesting ways in to thinking about the relationship between landscape, place and time.

• http://radar.gsa.ac.uk/5810/