Ellie is sitting outside Billington’s with her partner and one-year-old daughter when I meet her for our walk. They are visiting from their home in the Scottish borders and haven’t been to Lenzie before. I have spoken with Ellie online and exchanged a few emails over the years, but this is the first time that we have met in person. Ellie is an artist, currently working in Scotland’s temperate rainforests – the ancient woodlands of the west coast. She makes sound recordings, films, photographs and sculptures, which respond to the textures and changes in different landscapes. Ellie is interested in questions about time and has been particularly drawn to the microworlds of lichen and bryophytes. She is enthusiastic about my project and the opportunity of a walk round Lenzie Moss. The plan is for the two of us to walk one way and for her family to walk the other, so at some point we will meet.
As we set off, I tell Ellie about an awful mistake that I made earlier. I had arranged a walk with someone else at the start of the day. Somehow, I had neglected to add this to my calendar, and it had completely slipped my mind. Later, when I checked my computer, I had received a couple of emails, ‘I’m here in the station car park’, then ‘I’m going to head off now’. They had driven quite far to meet me. Feeling terrible, I replied with a huge apology and expressed my hope that we still might be able to arrange a walk. I will completely understand if they decide against it now. For me, this project is about making time for people and taking a careful and ethical approach to walking and talking. I tell Ellie that I am upset with myself for having compromised these principles and wasted somebody’s time like this.
Ellie says all the right things, and we talk about our varied experiences of walking interviews, which both of us see as an important part of our creative practice. Ellie is studying for a PhD at Edinburgh College of Art. She is researching the different timescales of the forests where she works and searching for appropriate artistic responses to these complex places. She talks about the challenge of artists being ‘parachuted’ into a new site and the slow, sensitive time that it takes to make connections with the people who live and work there, before any artwork can be made. I recognise this from previous projects but realise that this one at Lenzie Moss has been quite different because I am part of the same community as many of the people I am walking with. For Ellie, there are more barriers and a greater distance to bridge before she feels ready to create artworks at her chosen sites. She is therefore conducting many interviews with people who know and understand the forest. Ellie records and transcribes her conversations as part of her research process. I tell her that I rely on written notes and memory, which inevitably means that I will miss or forget some things.
We look closely at the trees as we walk and Ellie regrets leaving her magnifying lens behind. Nevertheless, we attend to the intricate patterns of the lichen and identify Xanthoria parietina, commonly known as common orange or golden shield. I know very little about lichens, beyond the fact that they form through a symbiotic partnership between fungi and algae. Ellie tells me about the lichens and liverworts that she has encountered in her fieldwork. They are key indicator species whose presence suggests that you are likely within temperate rainforest. The location, age and diversity of lichen can tell us a lot about an ecosystem’s health and resilience. Because of Ellie’s interest in the temporalities of her field sites, she has been drawn to lichen after her initial interest in rhododendron and ash trees, as they require close attention and slow, mindful observation. The problem, which Ellie is now grappling with, is that institutional time is something quite different and she feels under pressure from the university to move from observing and learning to making and creating.
As we walk down the boardwalk, Ellie spots her partner and daughter coming the other way. We stop and chat for a while. They are interested in community ownership, and they mention Leadburn Community Woodland between Edinburgh and Peebles, a former conifer plantation that was purchased from Forestry Scotland in 2007. I wonder whether Lenzie Moss could ever be owned and managed by the community, and what benefits that might afford. On previous walks, I have heard about and gained an insight into the disconnect between the Moss and some local people, and the challenges of community perception of council management. Perhaps a different model of ownership would make a positive difference in this regard, encouraging more engagement and creating a greater sense of agency.
The two pairs continue in opposite directions, and Ellie and I turn off the boardwalk onto the path across the bog. We spend some time in the middle of the site, conscious of the exposed peat and the need to tread carefully. We stop to examine the healthy carpet of sphagnum moss and watch the cottongrass dancing in the breeze. When we look up, Ellie spots two deer running along the central raised area that used to be an internal railway line. Their white tails are easy to spot but otherwise they are well camouflaged against the heather.
Our route back to the town takes us through the south-east section of woodland and we see various fungi and lichen clinging to the birch trees. We walk slowly and lean into slower timescales. This puts us in a reflective mood, and we wonder about the role that artists can have in places like this. Ellie says that we are conduits between experts, publics and places, and she believes that site-based art can help people think differently about their environments. But for Ellie, it is so important for us to spend time learning, listening and getting to know the places where we work. She wonders what language she can use to argue for this as an essential part of a creative process. She also says that it is important for artists to understand what people want from them. I suppose the very bare minimum would be to turn up on time and not forget an appointment. From there, we can build towards a shared sense of belonging, a sensitive relationship with the environment, and artworks that really mean something to the people we meet, and matter to the places we visit.
