I am becoming a bit of a peat geek and have started attending the Peat Café – a series of online lunchtime seminars featuring interdisciplinary perspectives on wetlands. The latest of these included a presentation by Phil Gould, who is now based at the University of Stirling. He presented on his postgraduate research into pollen analysis at Glen Devon in Perthshire, where there is a large-scale peatland restoration project underway. As I have been hoping to walk with someone who takes a more empirical approach to investigating sites like Lenzie Moss, I am pleased when he accepts an invitation to walk with me.
I meet Phil from the train and even though I recently watched his talk, I don’t immediately recognise him. He spots me straight away though and we quickly start our walk. I fire question after question at Phil. He is an archaeologist and a paleoecologist. He has recently completed a Master’s degree at the University of Glasgow and is embarking on a PhD at Stirling as part of the Centre for the Sciences of Place and Memory. He is currently selecting his sites and hopes to spend more time in the field that he has so far been able to. He uses core sampling to build a picture of the layers of history that comprise a peat bog. Phil tells me that he is interested in telling stories of change.
During Phil’s talk, he had shared the results of his analysis of pollen, which offers a precisely datable record of the species of flora present in the landscape at any given time. This helps to inform our understanding of shifting agricultural practices and other uses of the land. Phil talks me through the process, which is surprisingly analogue and manual. It starts with a ‘Russian corer’ – a rudimentary metal device that captures peat within a metal cylinder that turns around an axis to hold the sample in place as it is removed. This means that the peat is left undisturbed and can easily be divided into subsamples for analysis back at the lab. Phil then separates the pollen from other organic matter by sifting, floating and using chemical purification. When he has what he is after, he uses a microscope to identify species.
While Phil has been looking for pollen, there are other ‘proxies’ that can be used to build a picture of changing environments. These include charcoal and also diatoms, which I haven’t heard of before. Phil explains that these are single-celled microscopic algae that exist in almost all watery environments. He now realises that I know very little, but continues to patiently respond to my questions. He tells me that all these indicators are useful for different things, but analysing pollen can reveal a great deal about changing vegetation, which helps us to understand how peatland environments have been used and inhabited.
As we reach the noticeboard at the far end of the northern pathway, we come across Paul, the chair of Friends of Lenzie Moss, who is busy replacing posters. I am pleased to be able to report that I have been on more than twenty walks since he joined me back in July. The more I complete these circles of the Moss, the more likely it becomes that I will bump into people I know. Phil is also interested in the social and cultural stories of the places that he researches, which enhance and expand scientific insight. I ask him about the human side of his practice, and he tells me that negotiating permissions from landowners is an important part of his research.
I ask Phil how he would select a place to take a sample. Looking out across the Moss, he notices the lines of heather crossing the bog. The heather indicates that it might be too dry to get a good sample. Conversely, it can’t be too wet. After a lot of rain, the bog is looking particularly saturated today. In some places, the peat layer can float above bodies of water.
We walk along the path across the bog and follow the old railway embankment a short way so that we are standing in the centre of the Moss. Phil tells me that the deepest (and oldest) core he knows of in Scotland went 9 meters deep and reached back to the end of the last ice age. His have been much shallower but the anoxic bog preserves centuries of slowly accumulating history, which are often close to the surface after peat cutting has taken place.
Phil picks up some sphagnum moss and talks about its properties. He holds a vibrant green clump in his hand and squeezes it to show me how much water it holds (apparently three times its size). Phil says that sphagnum is a ‘bog builder’ and notes its lack of roots.
As we walk through the woodland to return to the train station, Phil talks about the way that the natural world is often forgotten and left out of heritage research. This is partly because a lot has been lost and I see that Phil’s work is about searching for what has been left behind. He tells me about the ways in which moss has been used as a material by humans. In Aberdeen’s Maritime Museum, there is a section of moss rope on display. It was found in an early medieval pit and may have been used for binding thatch on to roofs and for mooring boats. I wonder what traces of human presence at Lenzie Moss might still be discoverable using Phil’s methods.
We return to the station just as a train arrives at the other side of the track. Phil makes the call to try to get that one home, so we say a very quick goodbye. I watch him cross the bridge and step onto the train just in time. This has been a brief but fascinating lesson in a more technical, scientific approach to knowing a place like this. It has been quite different to the slow, meandering wanders that I have shared with artists this year, but this walk has revealed new depths and layers to my understanding of the Moss.
