The heatwave was followed by days of heavy rain, bringing much needed relief to the parched ground and averting the very real risk of fire. I had heard of historic accounts of arson and accidental fires on the Moss and sometimes seen evidence that this was 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 was welcome.
I thought of those fires when Nalini sent 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 reached the main path, Nalini turned to the left and I to the right. These were our habitual routes and for Nalini, the anticlockwise direction was reserved for the school run, while clockwise was for leisure. This was, of course, why we passed each other in opposite directions on my first walk. I shared 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 was, I felt uncomfortable imposing my own preference here, but we nevertheless continued 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 seemed to be breathing out again after a tense few weeks. We fell into a rhythm and took the opportunity to further explore the connections that we had through our work in Scottish theatre. Nalini is an actress and had worked with many of the performers, writers and directors that I had 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 took us away from the Moss but as we passed by notable features, we allowed the site to interrupt our flow.
As we walked along the north path through the birchwood, I pointed out the broken and felled branches that I had noticed on my previous visit. I had since confirmed that this intervention had 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 imparted these fragments of knowledge, which I had held on to for the last week or so, I realised how counterintuitive it seems to protect the site by damaging its established woodland.
I found myself trying to explain these site management policies to Nalini, but I was still underinformed and unsure of the points I was trying to convey. Nalini confessed her lack of knowledge of the ecological importance of the peatland and expressed her surprise that trees would be damaged for this purpose. During her recent misadventure with her bike, she had spoken to a passing walker who had also mentioned this (‘it’s the council’), but she had dismissed it at the time as a local conspiracy theory. I wondered whether this person was, in fact, the perpetrator? Already, I could see that the rationale and aspirations informing the management of the Moss were misaligned with the community’s perception and understanding of these interventions. I wondered 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 would soon take up this discussion with my contact at the council, who had offered to walk with me this summer.
We continued past ‘the climbing tree’ as we approached the start of the boardwalk. Nalini’s geography of the site was marked by her children’s games and exploration. There was also ‘the den’ and ‘the tree swing’, both visible from the main path. Walking with children might reveal an alternative Moss and I planned 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 showed me the place where the makeshift blockade had 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 it together. As we followed the boardwalk, stepping over broken sections and noting replaced planks, Nalini recalled 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 drifted away from the Moss again and we talked of our time as students and the meandering pathways that we had taken through our careers; of the competing demands of work and childcare, and our children’s various clubs and activities. I was grateful for the chance to get to know another member of my community better and wondered who else I would have the opportunity to take this journey with. As we walked back towards our neighbouring homes, we exchanged greetings with another of our neighbours, setting off on her regular dog walk around the Moss. The circle repeats.
