The heatwave is followed by days of heavy rain, bringing much needed relief to the parched ground and averting the very real risk of fire. I have heard of historic accounts of arson and accidental fires on the Moss and sometimes seen evidence that this is an ongoing problem – charred branches surrounded by empty bottles and discarded rubbish. Last month, an extreme wildfire warning was issued and a grassland fire burned for days in the hills above the nearby town of Cumbernauld, with properties evacuated. A blaze could easily take hold on a dried-out peatland and would quickly damage this fragile ecosystem, polluting the air and endangering all manner of lives. So, in that sense, at least, the rain is welcome.
I think of those fires when Nalini sends me a voice note a few days before our walk. On an evening cycle round the Moss, she had been stopped in her tracks by an inaccessible barrier of birch branches that had been dragged across the boardwalk. She only reached the halfway point before being forced to return. Nalini called the Moss a place of beauty but while she laughed about it, she was clearly frustrated by this unexpected disruption. By telling me about what had happened, I think she was saying something about the possibility that my project would bring me into contact with some of the tensions and competing uses of the site. ‘I hope you like a challenge’, she said. I do.
Taking advantage of a break in the rain and the extra hour gifted by after school club, we set off together on a Tuesday afternoon. As we reach the main path, Nalini turns to the left and I to the right. These are our habitual routes and for Nalini, the anticlockwise direction is reserved for the school run, while clockwise is for leisure. This is, of course, why we passed each other in opposite directions on my first walk. I share that there is something important to me about following the same path in the same direction for each of these walks and I hadn’t considered that this might not be the way that my co-walkers would choose to go. As well received as it is, I feel uncomfortable imposing my own preference here, but we nevertheless continue in my chosen direction. I will have to be careful about who is leading who on these walks, even when we appear to be travelling side by side.
The Moss seems to be breathing out again after a tense few weeks. We fall into a rhythm and take the opportunity to further explore the connections that we have through our work in Scottish theatre. Nalini is an actress and has worked with many of the performers, writers and directors that I have known. I even saw her on stage in her first performance, almost twenty years ago now, but we had never met before I moved to Lenzie. Our conversation takes us away from the Moss but as we pass by notable features, we allow the site to interrupt our flow.
As we walk along the north path through the birchwood, I point out the broken and felled branches that I noticed on my previous visit. I have since confirmed that this intervention has been instructed by East Dunbartonshire Council to allow the bog to recover, by discouraging walkers from leaving the main path and thereby damaging the peatland through repeated footfall. At the same time, the thirsty birch can overwhelm the bog, and the trees have to be frequently cut back to prevent encroachment. The branch barrier was an act of protest, then. As I impart these fragments of knowledge, which I have held on to for the last week or so, I realise how counterintuitive it seems to protect the site by damaging its established woodland.
I find myself trying to explain these site management policies to Nalini, but I am still underinformed and unsure of the points I am trying to convey. Nalini confesses her lack of knowledge of the ecological importance of the peatland and expresses her surprise that trees would be damaged for this purpose. During her recent misadventure with her bike, she spoke to a passing walker who also mentioned this (‘it’s the council’), but she dismissed it at the time as a local conspiracy theory. I wonder whether this person was, in fact, the perpetrator? Already, I can see that the rationale and aspirations informing the management of the Moss are misaligned with the community’s perception and understanding of these interventions. I wonder if there could be a new initiative to encourage peatland literacy, and whether scientific knowledge of the site should be shared more widely across the town. I will soon take up this discussion with my contact at the council, who has offered to walk with me this summer.
We continue past ‘the climbing tree’ as we approach the start of the boardwalk. Nalini’s geography of the site is marked by her children’s games and exploration. There are also ‘the den’ and ‘the tree swing’, both visible from the main path. Walking with children might reveal an alternative Moss and I plan to complete a circle with one of my own children next, letting them lead me through the detours and delays that typically characterise their progress. Nalini shows me the place where the makeshift blockade has been cleared to the side of the boardwalk.
Nalini moved to Lenzie with her family a couple of years before the COVID-19 lockdown. Her sister already lived in the town and the alure of a slower life away from the city brought them here too. Caught up in the upheaval of the move and a busy work schedule, it was nine months before Nalini visited the Moss. Today, she walks it very regularly, sometimes more than once a day. She is part of a ‘mums’ group’, who often walk together. As we follow the boardwalk, stepping over broken sections and noting replaced planks, Nalini recalls the lockdown days in 2020 and 2021, when the old path was narrower and it was often necessary to step onto the boggy ground to maintain social distancing as the site bacame more and more popular as an ideal place for the allocated daily exercise.
For the final section of the walk, our attention drifts away from the Moss again and we talk of our time as students and the meandering pathways that we have taken through our careers; of the competing demands of work and childcare, and our children’s various clubs and activities. I am grateful for the chance to get to know another member of my community better and wonder who else I will have the opportunity to take this journey with. As we walk back towards our neighbouring homes, we exchange greetings with another of our neighbours, setting off on her regular dog walk around the Moss. The circle repeats.
