At the far end of the station car park, marking the entrance to the Moss, an old signpost is hidden by the trees. The metal surface has dulled and the information it displays can only be seen from certain angles. The sign points walkers to the canal and tells them how far away it is. Halfway up the pole, two brackets are attached, but whatever they once secured has long since been removed. These empty fixtures are a trace of something that happened here several years ago.
In 2017, an arts organisation called Art Walk Projects worked with East Dunbartonshire Council and the transport charity Sustrans (now known as Walk Wheel Cycle Trust) to develop artworks for the Lenzie area. The project – Inside Lane – brought several artists together to develop interventions that would bring the community into a dialogue about routes, links, transport and places. The project was part of a wider exploration of ways to develop the connection between the town’s roads, carparks and pedestrian areas.
One of the artists was Deirdre Macleod and I am walking with her today. I know Deirdre through her work at the University of Edinburgh, where she is a Lecturer in Art at the Centre for Open Learning. Like Ali, she is also a PhD candidate in geography. When I advised on her research at an early stage, I was impressed by Deirdre’s exploratory drawing and urban fieldwork, through which she works with the unknown and cultivates an openness to unexpected events. Our walk today will be framed by these concerns and will help me to think about what I am discovering, as I continue to walk these 100 circles.
I meet Deirdre at the train station and as we join the Moss, we stop to notice the signpost. Deirdre’s contribution to the Inside Lane project was Common Ground, a collection of 50 colourful paintings on aluminium plaques, which were placed around the town and on the Moss. These were conceived as a playful game of spotting the designs in various places, making connections between them and with their surrounding environment, and attending differently to the town and the Moss. It is interesting that almost a decade later, they still have a kind of agency here. Now I will look out for any that are still present, and I will seek out other evidence of their past presence.
We walk slowly, talking about noticing and attending carefully to the environment as we go. It has been freezing overnight and there is now a sharp chill in the air. We look at strange formations of ice on the pools that cover the woodland floor. A submerged branch is surrounded by spikey needles, reaching out across the surface of the water. We enjoy the crunch of our footsteps as we tread on frozen ground.
As we make our slow, chilly way along the northern path, we pass a smartly dressed woman, fixated on her phone and dragging a wheeled suitcase. She is in a rush and looks like she has been transported from an airport concourse. It is a moment of dissonance with the surroundings and the pace of our own journey, but it shows that the Moss hosts many different types of people, all of whom have their own needs and intentions.
We turn onto the boardwalk and enjoy an encounter with a flock of long-tailed tits, bouncing from tree to tree and filling the air with high-pitched shrills and playful flight. These sounds and movements are made all the more noticeable by the stillness of the wintery atmosphere, which also amplifies the traffic sounds from the nearby roads. There are lots of people walking their dogs today, taking in the sights and sounds of a beautiful cold day.
As we walk, Deirdre reflects on walking, slowing down, and the making of time and space. In her work, she spends a lot of time in the places she is responding to. Through sketches, diagrams, photos and text, Deirdre connects her own rhythms and actions to those of the site. Slowly and tentatively, these lead to gentle interventions in the landscape, which sometimes involve inviting people to come together in a movement or gathering. The work is unassuming and sensitive to existing patterns and connections. We talk about artistic process, and we are both convinced that the considered, patient methods that Deirdre uses have value in and of themselves. When I walked with Ellie, we talked about this as well. Sometimes it is difficult to resist the expectation that artists’ work will lead to specific outcomes. What artists can also do is encourage different ways of relating to the world.
Deirdre has taken some time away from work recently and she took the opportunity to focus on her allotment. She visited regularly and immersed herself in reorganising, creating meandering paths and taking the apparently controversial decision to plant flowers – cornflowers, marigolds and nasturtiums. Deirdre talks about the value of tending to a plot in this way. She says it is sometimes important to take the long way round.
We turn onto the path across the bog. An exposed root system offers a metaphor for the kind of meandering, entangled ways of being that Deirdre is promoting. We examine bracket fungus on the trees and different types of moss. We crouch down and use our phones (a technological accompaniment that I now feel much more relaxed about using so often, thanks to James) to identify haircap and plait mosses. Our conversation about noticing has shifted us into a different way of being here (an effect that I also experienced with David, some months ago). Past walks entangle with this one and I imagine a complex root structure, holding it all together.
We return to the station a few minutes before the next train departs. After I say farewell to Deirdre and thank her for making time and space to return to Lenzie for this walk, I turn and walk up the hill towards home. I check every lamppost and fence for signs of the artworks, but I don’t see anything. I will keep looking though. I will keep noticing.
