[Closed] Autumn and loss on McMoonter's hill.

Wednesday morning broke with a cerulean cloudless sky. A chill in the September air that transforms the Maple's colour. The perfect harvest day that once the overnight dew has been burned off the combines and balers will be back out in the fields.

Mid morning the peace was broken. A helicopter circled low overhead. It lingered longer than those with nosey pilots we sometimes see. On its final pass I ran outside to just catch sight of it. It was the unmistakeable yellow of the air ambulance.

It flew off west, I ran up to the stables to see where it was heading but lost sight of it as it vanished over the standing stones field.

Our phone line was out. The engineer arrived. He asked if I knew where the accident was? While he was working up a pole at the West lodge an ambulance sped past him with its lights flashing. Minutes later it was followed by a fast response paramedic at full speed. And then the helicopter.

We live on a singletrack road along the spine of a ridge. The road has many blind summits and corners. Most everyone who lives along it has had an accident on it. I jumped in the Land Rover to see if there was anything I could do to help.

Two fields separate us from our neighbouring farm. In the park in front of the farmhouse sat the helicopter. We share the same postcode. That's probably why the helicopter came to our house first. The helicopter stood empty, the doors open, rotors still. From the road I could see the ambulances just under the open barn doors.

I turned for home.

The farm produces beef and cereals. Like all farms there have been incidents between animals and farmers. Ian had his arm broken by a cow the previous year. Christine keeps horses. She and her two daughters ride competitively. The girls would be at school today. Farm machinery would need servicing before day's work began.

A dozen scenarios raced through my mind. Whatever had happened, must have been really serious.

The helicopter left about an hour and a half later.

Mid afternoon, I spoke to Colin at the end of our drive. He couldn't look me in the eye. He broke down. All he could say was that Steven had fallen through the roof, he had landed on his head, it didn't look good.

Steven and I have been neighbours since we moved here forty years ago. We were in the same class in primary school before then. We went to scout camps together, played ping pong at the stables and shot pool down at the farm. We picked tatties with them every October and forked neeps to the cows on frosty winter mornings. We would shoot the breeze if we met on the road and just a couple of weeks ago he and Christine had looked after my niece when she was over from France.

He was as dependable as the sunrise.

While he waited for the sun to burn off the dew, he set to replacing a Perspex sheet on the barn roof in preparation for winter. The roof gave way and he fell.

Shock headlines appeared in the paper, the accident was reported on the television news. The shock waves spread far from our hill.

We learned yesterday afternoon, that Steven had passed away. He was 51.

Like his father, Steven was born to be a farmer, his wife and children are a part of our landscape. That generational connection with the land is what makes this all the more painful. Fields of ripe wheat and barley Steven planted stand uncut. He will never see this year's harvest safely home.

I will never forget the cold of that early September cerulean sky, the thwock of helicopter rotor blades and the panic.

It's going to be a tough winter here on the hill, I trust in our community to help the survivors through.

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