The snow does not flatter heather. It emphasises its ugly formlessness while adding no compensating character to make it interesting. Even a park or garden lawn is better. At least the smoothness there allows the prints of birds and animals to be displayed. But heather manages to be untidy without character; and usually there's too much of it.
The infatuated people of the Moors for the Future lobby (mostly bird watchers and bird shooters and opaquely motivated bureaucrats) don't usually try to claim any beauty for the moors. They might claim a certain grandeur but in that they would be confusing the vegetation with the underlying structure which is there anyway. Looking over from the high point of Stony Ridge towards the west you may feel that the high hills of Kinder and Bleaklow show this at its best but how much finer would it be with woodland covering much of it.
Would you prefer a skeleton to a living being? Anyway these low hills are no comparison with the bare heights and splendour of true mountains.
Trees give life to a landscape and a variety to a country walk. Each tree is different. In tropical forests there are vast numbers of separate species and we can't hope to see that range here. But we can enjoy the different forms and angles of just the few native trees we have. Those who spent much of their childhood climbing trees will know that no two oaks are the same. And look at the quirky assymmetrical shapes of scots pine and hawthorn. So let the tree culling stop and let's allow the heather to die through natural succession.
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