To wake in the quiet moments when the day inhales and the night fails. Just you and the stuff that surrounds you. To be extra alive in a way that near silence allows, sensitive to minute moments of change. To be able to gather yourself, your thoughts and feelings, whether it is to sit, to write, to walk, to read, to be inside or outside, to be sowing seed, to garden, to be saturated in experience.
(Allan Jenkins, Morning)

Towards the end of a working day, I email Cathy to tell her about this project, and she replies enthusiastically. I send some possible dates, including the following day, and this works for her. And she has a suggestion. Cathy tells me that she is in the habit of walking round the Moss at 6am – a routine that started during lockdown but that she has kept up from time to time in the years that followed. She wonders if I would be up for joining her at such a ‘bonkers’ time in the morning. I am.

I wake minutes before my alarm and hurry out of the house to join Cathy on time. There is no traffic on Kirkintilloch Road. Not a single car. We meet outside Euphoria Salon by the station carpark, just as a train departs with a handful of tired commuters nursing their coffees. It feels good to be out at this time, but without the pressure of emails and morning meetings. That is the world in which I usually see Cathy. She is my colleague at the University of Edinburgh – a professor in student engagement in higher education. When I first moved to Lenzie, I was pleased to discover that Cathy lives here too, and we had met in Billington’s to chat about work projects. This time the conversation will steer clear of academic business, and I will ask her about her connection with the Moss.

Like me, Cathy always walks anticlockwise, so we set off up Bea’s Path. Cathy says she is a ‘perimeter girl’ and we agree to stick to the main route on this occasion. The Moss is quiet and I am struck by the absence of traffic noise, which I hadn’t even noticed before it was gone. The air is fragrant with pollen and it is warm for this time of day. We peer through the trees as Cathy says this is a great time to see the deer, but they don’t reveal themselves, for now. I photograph meadow geraniums and miss a thrush flying close by. A few people pass us, some walking some running, one sprinting at an impressive rate. All of them share a warm good morning greeting that is quite different to the type of nodded acknowledgement that is more typical on these walks. There is a sense of solidarity with the other early risers.

Cathy tells me that she is a huge advocate for peatlands and knows how much they do for the environment. She is sure that this site needs to be protected and worries about dogs being allowed to run off their leads through the bog. But she is also considerate of the different ways in which people use the site. Cathy tells me that in the early days of the lockdown, ‘road closed’ signs appeared at either end of boardwalk, which was in a state of disrepair at the time. Very soon, the signs had been removed, and the walkway had been patched up – perhaps by a local carpenter. People will always find ways to do what they want to do here.

As we turn onto the boardwalk, a dog walker stops to chat. He has noticed me making notes on the folded sheet of A4 that I always bring with me on these walks. This simple incongruity in the way that people walk here has signalled to him that there is something going on, and he asks what I’m writing. I tell him about the project, and he shares his experience. He has lived in Lenzie his whole life, remembers peat cutting as late as the 80s (long after the commercial operation had ended). And he is very strongly opposed to the way that the council manage the site. His main concern is the ‘weed wiping’ (a method of targeted herbicide application) that I have heard about before. I have been told that this is to control the encroachment of the birch wood into the peat bog. He worries that it affects the deer. I give him my email address and ask him to get in touch, and we shake hands. I hope I will get to walk with him one day and will look out for him on future visits. The fastest of the joggers passes us again.

Cathy and I take a moment to sit on one of the benches that line the boardwalk, and we are immediately rewarded by a pair of energetic roe deer bouncing through the heather. We hear one of them before we see them. A deep raspy breath breaking through the silence of the morning. Then we watch them playing on the raised mound, chasing each other and jumping into the air with abandon. I have seen these deer numerous times on the Moss, but I have never seen them move like this. This is their time – before the people arrive with more dogs. Meadow pipets join the dance: rising and falling in the stillness.

The Moss is truly beautiful in this light. We look out to the Campsies, which have a thin cloud layer balancing on their peaks. We take photographs and try to do justice to the gentle glow of sunrise, framing the church spire and the trees around the part of the town where I live. Cathy loves this time of year, when it is possible to be out so early. In winter, it feels more remote, and the darkness is not so welcoming. I am looking forward to walking with others in different seasons and at different times. This morning’s walk has shown me that the Moss has a different character in the first hours of daylight, so I wonder what it will be like in the nighttime. We walk on to the pathway bordering the trainline and the jogger passes us for the third time.

As we emerge into the carpark again, the atmosphere is entirely different. People are filling the parking spaces or locking up their bikes at the station. There are conversations, drop offs, arrivals and departures. Everyone is more awake. We say our goodbyes and I thank Cathy for a very enjoyable start to the day. As I walk back up the main road, there are tens of vehicles moving in both directions. The estate agents and cafe are setting up and a bin lorry turns into the residential areas. The day has begun.

Jul 29, 2025

A few months ago, I received an invitation from one of the rangers who works at Lenzie Moss to join a group of volunteers doing conservation work. At various points throughout the year, this group gives up their Saturday mornings to help with maintenance and repair jobs across various sites in the large council area of East Dunbartonshire. At the Moss, this has involved cutting back the birch wood, reinstating barriers over grassland water vole areas, and creating pools to attract dragonflies and amphibians. I signed up and looked forward to the opportunity for a hands-on contribution and a chance to meet people who care enough about this place to come out here in their wellies at the weekend.

When the day came, it was very, very rainy. I met the ranger by her van at the Heather Drive carpark and was immediately handed a hack saw and lopper, and introduced to the other volunteers: a group of six committed conservationists, spanning a wide age range and all with their own reasons for being involved. All of them had travelled from outside Lenzie and were regular volunteers. While it was understandable that the rain had discouraged wider attendance, I was surprised to find that I was the only one from the immediate local area to have joined the group. Then, just as we were about to get started, Kay arrived [1].

Kay was representing the Friends of Lenzie Moss (FOLM), and I had been introduced to her previously at one of their meetings. She is a board member for the organisation and often walks here. After we had said our good mornings, we got straight to work. Some members of the group cut down birch saplings while others, including Kay, blocked pathways onto the bog, or carried them over to the water vole habitat to construct barriers to block access. I chose not to cut any trees and instead worked with two of the other volunteers to extend a barrier near the road. Later, I was tasked with cutting small holes in a wire fence to allow hedgehogs to pass. It was a good experience, and I returned home later drenched to the skin but very satisfied to have been part of the conservation efforts.

When I meet Kay to walk round the Moss some time later, I am keen to ask her about something that happened during the volunteer morning. She had been drawn into an altercation with a dog walker, who had taken issue with the work that she was doing, asserting his right to walk wherever he chose. Kay stayed calm, explaining the reasons behind the interventions and attempting to persuade him of the need to protect the fragile peat layer. But it was clear that his mind was already made up. I stood close by as the exchange ended in disagreement and the walker stormed past the group of volunteers, cursing under his breath. Kay was left frustrated, and I spoke with her then about the tensions that she has met with on occasion here. It was the only time that I have witnessed one of these disputes first hand, although I have now heard a lot more about them. I looked forward to a future conversation.

In much more pleasant weather and in lighter spirits, I meet Kay outside Billington’s, and we enter the Moss through the station car park. It is blaeberry season, and Kay tells me that she loves gathering them to add to gin (like sloe gin). Over the course of the walk, we pick a few blaeberries, raspberries and blackcurrants. I worry about which birds and insects we might be depriving of their food sources but allow myself to make the most of the harvest on this occasion (we only picked about a dozen berries!). The blaeberries are particularly sweet and delicious, with bright red juices that stain our fingers. Kay says that she often ‘disappears into the undergrowth’. She is generously sharing the secrets of the Moss with me, and I am grateful for her lessons in where to look and what to look for.

Kay is from Edinburgh but moved to Lenzie over twenty years ago now, when her son was a baby. She joined FOLM early on after meeting members at a local play-group. Kay is a retired scientist (she was a researcher and lecturer in optometry at a local university), a keen naturalist, and an active member of Lenzie Ladies Curling Club. When there is enough snow, she enjoys cross-country skiing on the Moss. It seems that Kay is out here in all weathers (except rain, usually), and has a strong relationship with this place, which she finds many ways to connect to.

As we walk, Kay points out several wild flowers bordering the path. Sometimes she identifies these easily. Occasionally she uses the iNaturalist app on her phone to confirm a species. I try to join in, but as I recognise relatively little, I defer to Google Images. We note ragged robin, tormentil, lesser stitchwort, broad-leaved and great willowherb, and most pleasingly (since it wasn’t there when I searched with Jackie a few weeks ago), bog rosemary. Crouching down on the boardwalk, we see plenty of polytrichum (commonly called haircap moss or hair moss) and sphagnum (or bog) mosses. In the distance, a line of pink on the other side of the trainline is rosebay willowherb. Kay tells me that her grandmother used to pick sphagnum and send it to be used as a softer alternative to cotton wool when treating wounds during World War I. This reminds her of an older wartime association: apparently, the raised mound of heather beside the boardwalk was used in the eighteenth century for soldiers to train with their muskets. Perhaps there will always be a story of conflict here.

Our conversation turns to the incident during the conservation session earlier in the year. For Kay, it is clear that the bog needs protection and important that nature is given priority here. She doesn’t understand why people can’t appreciate the Moss from the pathways. She bemoans the sense of entitlement that many seem to have here. Kay recounts another time when she came across a dog chasing a deer while its teenage owner stood back and watched. She tried to intervene, to implore the walker to call the dog off, but says it didn’t make any difference. Kay also shares a deeper ecological sadness that all this connects to. She says that ‘nature has worked out a system and we have ruined it’. I think that Kay feels a responsibility to help to keep that system working here.

By now, we walking south along the boardwalk. We see some small birds at a distance, perched on the very tops of spindly saplings. At first, we are not sure what they are, but I open the Merlin app which immediately identifies their song. And then they are airborne, the silhouettes of their forked tails confirming they are swallows. We pick more blaeberries and raspberries. We listen to the silence between passing trains. And then we are back in the station car park, for now leaving the Moss for others to enjoy, however they might choose to do that.

 

[1] Kay is a pseudonym, used here on her request.

Jul 23, 2025

Ada is the first person I have walked with for this project who has never visited Lenzie before. In fact, she is relatively new to Scotland, having spent most of her life in Michigan. After a year in St Andrews to complete her Master’s degree in social anthropology, Ada moved to Glasgow at the start of this year to begin a PhD at the University of Glasgow, supervised by Professor Jill Robbie, who walked with me last week. Her project explores the role and function of law in the Anthropocene – our current, contested geological epoch, in which human activity has changed the planet. The focus is, of course, peatlands (Ada says that she didn’t know anything about law or peatlands before she started her doctoral research and I am impressed by her willingness to embrace the unknown). I have never met Ada before, although we have been in touch by email. I am keen to know what impression this place makes on her.

We meet at the station on a sunny Thursday afternoon. Lenzie feels quiet and lazy now, without the usual traffic of children on their way home from school. This is how the summer holidays are supposed to be. After we have picked each other out from the small crowd leaving the train here, we wander slowly through the car park to join the Moss. We soon find a shared interest in creative methods for place-based research. Ada tells me about a reading group that she led, which worked only with chapters of Robin Wall Kimmerer’s 2013 book Braiding Sweetgrass. I admit that a copy sits unfinished on my shelf, and I resolve to go back to it. Ada reminds me of Kimmerer’s argument that any efforts to restore land without also restoring our relationship to land are wasted. As we walk up Bea’s Path, I enjoy nurturing a new relationship with the Moss, and I can’t help but fall into tour guide mode – pointing out the things that I have learnt about on previous walks.

As we reach the end of the birchwood, we pass a septuagenarian walking group, beaming in baseball caps and striped t-shirts. People seem happy here today and there is a carefree quality brought about by the weather and the time of year. The Moss is looking its best. Ada tells me that it took her quite a long time to adjust to the Scottish weather (despite the severity of Michigan winters). She recalls a moment when something shifted. Out trail running in the Fife hills, the landscape opened up before her, with the city of Edinburgh in the distance, and the idea of living here suddenly seemed possible. We talk about the lessons that the natural environment has for us. We share a wish to be affected by the world, to adapt and adjust according to what our surroundings are telling us. What are the lessons of the bog? We agree that they are about transition, queerness, layers and time.

Ada talks about the transition from the Holocene to the Anthropocene as stepping into ‘a moment of uncertainty’. While we stick to the main path, I think about my recent experience of walking across the bog – tentatively stretching out a foot, placing it down somewhere that seems like it might hold, transferring weight. We are moving through metaphors. We talk about bogs as transitional places and I tell Ada about a performance I attended here last year, in which three contemporary artists, Belladonna Paloma, Oren Shoesmith and Rabindranath X Bhose (who refer to themselves as a ‘boggy trans crip collective’) took an audience on a journey round the Moss, exploring the connections between trans bodies and boglands. I hope to walk with one of the group as part of this project and will reach out to them soon. As we walk, we also note the subtle public artworks – the ‘stacks’ by Toby Paterson, Dug Macleod and Simon Whatley. Ada immediately recognises the shape of peat stacks in these sculptures, which are positioned as way markers at points where pathways come together, also providing resting places for those who might need them.

On the boardwalk, we look out to the Campsie Fells and pause to take in this place. We are joined by a flock of stonechats – flashes of white, orange and black dancing about the heather. I ask Ada what she makes of it. She is struck by how far away it feels from Glasgow. She notes the lack of trees (something she misses from home). But she is taken by this place, and shares that the proximity of a mysterious wild place to the city that she now calls her home is reassuring. Urban Glasgow feels like the centre of the world to Ada at the moment and she values being able to move to the periphery so easily. We watch a train speed by to the east as we walk back to the station. In a matter of minutes, Ada will be travelling in the other direction.

When I walked with Paul earlier, he had expressed an aspiration to connect with people beyond the town, to engage new visitors with the Moss. I think he would approve of my project achieving this already, in its own small way. Ada and I take up the other part of that earlier conversation: the challenge of connecting local people with the peatlands, of healing the land by nurturing the relationships that comprise it. We discuss artistic methods – poetry, art, creative writing. We imagine a community arts event that invites people to come together in recognition and celebration of the diverse perspectives and experiences of the Moss. Then we walk along to the station, and I see Ada onto the train and watch it depart, carrying her back to the city again after her brief visit to an older, slower place. I am very grateful that she has taken the time to come and meet me here and I hope that we will stay in touch. It will be fascinating to find out where else her research will take her.

Later, I seek out my copy of Braiding Sweetgrass and find the relevant section on page 338:

Restoring land without restoring relationship is an empty exercise. It is relationship that will endure and relationship that will sustain the restored land. Therefore, reconnecting people and the landscape is as essential as reestablishing proper hydrology or cleaning up contaminants. It is medicine for the earth.

Jul 10, 2025

I meet Paul Dudman outside Billington’s cafe on Kirkintilloch Road, and we enter the Moss at Heath Avenue. Paul is the chair of Friends of Lenzie Moss (FOLM), the association dedicated to conservation of the site ‘for the benefit of present and future generations’. Paul grew up in Lenzie and has memories of playing on the Moss as a child, before the boardwalk, when the paths were rough tracks through the woods and the commercial peatworks had not long ground to a halt. After living elsewhere for several years, he returned to Lenzie almost thirty years ago to start a family and gradually took on a more active role in the community. Paul is a physics teacher, now looking forward to retirement, and he devotes much of his spare time to Lenzie Moss. The group has had a huge impact in the area, not least by preventing significant housing developments from going ahead.

I have noticed how the people I have walked with so far all see different things here, as individual geographies determine diverse experiences of the site. For Jackie it is the patchwork habitats of specific flora and fauna; for Nalini it is the places and features of her children’s play. Paul’s geography is defined by ownership and rights. He points out borders and boundaries as we walk: here the Rugby Club exchanged land to allow the Local Nature Reserve to be formed; here, access to Lenzie Meadow Primary is being negotiated; here, the original open grassland adjacent to a housing estate has been rewilded and now offers a habitat for fossorial water voles. Paul tells me that the threat of housing development is constant and always returns in cycles of speculative proposals, community consultation, meetings and objections, which are usually upheld. Paul sees the voles as great allies in this battle, thanks to their protected status. He tells me that these elusive rodents may do much to prevent future development on the Moss.

Another major part of FOLM’s work is education. The organise several guided walks each year (I attended an enjoyable one last summer, when we learnt about the vole population). Members of FOLM have worked with the local primary schools, and they also maintain the information boards on the Moss. After a popular workshop for children, making Harry Potter style brooms from the birch trees that had been cut back from the bog, Paul took some of the brooms home and stored them beside his garage. Several years later, a new tree had taken root from the fallen seeds. It seems that the Moss is unwilling to be contained within the borders that we construct for it. Paul tells me that the woodland to the north of the site used to be three times the size it is now. He recalls getting lost once, with his new baby in a carrier. In the early days of mobile telephones, he was able to call his wife to tell her that he was fairly confident that he would get home, but that it might take a bit longer than planned.

Paul charts a local history of lobbying, protesting and campaigning, with groups like Save Lenzie Moss and Lenzie Flood Prevention Group taking up specific causes at different times. Sometimes these have been aligned with FOLM’s priorities and aspirations, but occasionally they have been in direct opposition. One major example of this was the proposals by some members of the community to have the entire site drained to prevent flooding in other areas of Lenzie. FOLM is far from neutral in the various debates and disagreements that play out around the edges of the site. The group is broadly aligned with the council’s agenda to protect the peatlands and while they don’t want to police use of the site, they do understand the ecological value of limiting access beyond the main pathways. They are concerned with protecting external borders and opposed to any infringement that compromises the natural habitats here. However, Paul stresses that they do not own or control the site. This is not always understood and a lot of the complaints about the way that the Moss is managed come directly to FOLM. These are invariably forwarded to the council.

Paul and I follow the main path round the Moss and we only leave the boardwalk for the briefest of moments, to admire one of the benches that FOLM have commissioned with a bequest left by a former member, David Lee. I photograph it while Paul chats to an old school friend as he cycles by. These hand-carved elmwood seats are the most conspicuous things on the site, which is no accident. Paul is against the Moss ‘becoming a park’, which is not to say that he doesn’t want people to visit, to walk and play here. Rather, that the primacy of the natural environment is vital. This means being able to walk round the site on well-maintained paths, but for the Moss to maintain its wild, unruly nature. This seems to be about upholding the integrity of Lenzie Moss, which is both a subjective idea, and a noble cause.

What kinds of wildness are permitted to exist here, and on whose terms? I am coming to realise that every corner of this place – every path and every border – is determined by people. In the peri-urban zone between Bishopbriggs and Kirkintilloch, no square meter goes unnoticed: someone owns it; someone else wants to use it. Paul points out the land by the football pitches at Boghead Wood, which is held by a private real estate company. Every decision about what happens here, and every purchase or development around the edges of the site, is hashed out in a board room somewhere, by people who have possibly never seen the meadow pipets parachuting over the heather. This is not a revelation, but it feels particularly acute here in such a small place with so many stakeholders with competing visions and agendas.

My walk with Paul has shown me a highly political place, which is largely determined by human-scale priorities and timescales. But this lesson has been gently troubled by his stories of losing his way in the woods and stowaway birch seeds. When the latest development proposals come along, I think Paul has these moments in mind. They are what matters to him. This is conservation at its best: an effort to make space for wilful forces, strange encounters, and unexpected outcomes. These are the things that are worth fighting for.

Jul 10, 2025

My friend Jill Robbie steps off a busy train at Lenzie station on an overcast Saturday afternoon. Jill is Professor of Property Law and the Natural Environment in the School of Law at the University of Glasgow. She is leading an ambitious research project that works with landowners, managers and farmers to build new tools and methods for large-scale peatland restoration. Jill is not (yet) an expert on peat, but she has a deep investment in the natural world and a conviction that we need to work together across disciplinary boundaries to understand how to manage conflicting land use and work towards net zero climate targets. I am learning a lot from her.

We set off from the station carpark and join the Moss in the southern birchwood. Jill has very recently returned from the Isle of Lewis, where she was attending a conference on sustainable island communities. She tells me about the practice of peat cutting there and shows me photographs of the extraction process, which is mainly carried out by local people who maintain a connection to the cultures and histories of the island. I had never considered that the extractive use of peatlands (which, after all, irreplaceably removes peat that has formed over thousands of years) might be the very relationship with the land that allows a level of respect, care and understanding to endure. Lenzie Moss is tiny compared to mòinteach Leòdhais, which is one of the largest peatlands in Europe. The resumption of extraction here would be highly unlikely and profoundly destructive. Nevertheless, the Lewis example highlights the comparative disconnection that many in Lenzie seem to have from the peatlands.

As we walk up the east pathway (Bea’s Path, named after Bea Rae, one of the founders of the Friends of Lenzie Moss), we pick the first raspberries of the season. I point out the birch barriers that line this section of the Moss, discouraging access to a place where water voles are living. I tell Jill what I know about the tensions between conservation and recreation – the ongoing tussle over the use of pathways across the bog. Jill is instinctively troubled by the idea of conservation at the expense of human access. I offer to show her some of the areas where walkers and their dogs have damaged the peat layer.

We step off the main path to the north of the site. After walking with Jackie from East Dunbartonshire Council the previous week, this immediately feels transgressive. We are greeted by a roe deer, standing very close to us, and we hold each other’s gaze for a minute, before it turns and disappears into the heather. Jill needs to get this close to the bog to understand it. She remarks that this is an unusual impulse for lawyers, who usually work in offices and engage with landscapes through regulations, legal proceedings and protections. Law is not usually practised in the field, but Jill is concerned with lived experience and an embodied understanding of the environment.

It is significant that Jill is currently reading the new materialists – Donna Haraway and Anna Lowenhaupt Tsing – who advocate a situated knowledge that doesn’t seek quick fixes, learning from feminist and Indigenous ways of understanding and being in the world. The title of Haraway’s 2016 book is Staying with the Trouble. This poses a challenge to a legal mind accustomed to solving problems and overcoming complexity. What would it look like to stay with the trouble of peatlands in different, plural and entangled ways? For Jill, the answer lies in engaging with multiple perspectives and ways of being in a place. Her concern about conservation policies that keep people out is that however well-intentioned and ecologically justified, any dominant narrative or single use of the site can counter the collaborative, co-creative approaches that are necessary for humans to live with and within an already compromised and degraded ecosystem.

What non-extractive practices and processes might strengthen the relationship between people and the earth? Jill is asking that question in her work as a researcher in sustainability law and through her role on the board of NatureScot, Scotland’s national nature agency. She has been inspired by global examples of largescale legal paradigm shifts, such as that in the Ecuadorian cloud forest, where legal rights have been granted to the natural ecosystem, preventing large scale mining operations and protecting the Los Cedros region (a place visited by Robert Macfarlane for his latest book, Is a River Alive?). In these cases, there have been significant constitutional amendments that have afforded real legal powers to protect the environment. Could this level of change happen in Scotland?

We take an exploratory, meandering route across the site as I ask Jill about her research. When she began her peatlands project, Jill wondered whether a framework could be developed for ‘Rapid Engagement with Stressed Peatland Environments and Communities in Transformation’ (forming the acronymic call to RESPECT shifting ecosystems). The rapidity of this project is now being reassessed. Peatlands pose a challenge to the timeframes, rhythms and pace of human legal processes. Jill is discovering that rapid change and quick results may not be possible – or indeed desirable – in these slow changing, transitional landscapes. As we plot our course through the bog, carefully placing one foot after the other to reach more solid ground, the speed of our progress becomes a lesson in engagement. We need to proceed cautiously and sensitively, attentive to the dynamic and often contested entanglements of people and landscape, nature and culture.

I had been moved by the strength of Jackie’s conviction about how to manage Lenzie Moss, and the strong moral imperative that drives her on in her work. But Jill’s critical questioning of some of the assumed benefits of conservation practices prompts me to reflect on whether there might be alternative models that could be worth trying here. We talk about ways to bring the community and the landowners and managers into a more productive dialogue. I have heard of effective initiatives to build trust and find common ground in ostensibly polarised ecological contexts. Perhaps something similar could be developed here? But there would have to be a willingness to engage in such a process, and a commitment to respectful communication and undetermined outcomes. From what Jackie has told me, it does not sound like this would always come easily.

At the far side of the Moss, near where I pushed Ruairidh on the tree swing, we reach a simple wooden fence, part of a small exclosure that I had recently learnt was constructed to protect the rare bog rosemary. In the last couple of weeks, the fence has been pulled down and laid across the boggy ground as an effective pathway across a marshy area. Attached to the fence is a ripped sign, stamped into the mud:

Give the bog a chance to recover: This raised bog is 8000 years in making. Please stay on the main paths to limit erosion from trampling and help give this sensitive habitat time and space to grow back. Thank you.

Jul 5, 2025