Rain is co-author of our living countryside; it is also a part of our deep internal landscape, […] complain about it as we may, rain is essential to our sense of identity as it is to our soil. (Melissa Harrison, Rain)

I am walking with my mum, Julie, and my puppy, Clyde. Mum has been staying with me this week, helping me with school runs and dog-sitting while I get started with a new academic year at the university, meeting new students and launching new courses. This morning, I am working from home and have time for a walk round the Moss after an online meeting. We head out between downpours, but there is a constant drizzle today, which hangs in the air and frames the town in a thick grey cloud. Because Lenzie Moss is a raised bog, it is sustained by rainwater. While we might grumble about dreich days like this, they bring vital nourishment and keep the wetlands wet. Without precipitation, there would be no Moss. So, with waterproofs and hiking boots on, we embrace the weather conditions and set off to walk through the rain.

It is unquestionably Autumn now. The beech trees at the front of my house are shedding their leaves and Clyde jumps to catch them as they fall. We join the Moss at the end of my road and once again, my anticlockwise route causes a raised eyebrow. Mum has a specific reason for preferring the other direction: as she joins the boardwalk at the southern birchwood, she loves to look out across the bog to see the Campsie Hills. Following this range to the east soon takes you to Kilsyth, where my Great Grandparents had a house on Banton Loch. Mum remembers Sunday drives into the Campsies as a child. I also visited the house as a baby, before my Great Grandmother Aggie passed away. The Campsies connect my family in the other direction, too. When my son is not with me, he lives with his mum in Strathblane, at the west end of the hills. My Great Grandfather spent his childhood summers in the same village. After serving in World War II, he wrote extensively and evocatively about his early holidays. His diaries have a strong sense of nostalgia and loss, but they are full of memorable characters and hilarious stories. When I moved from our family home in Derbyshire to start university in Glasgow at the turn of the millennium, my Mum was happy I would be returning the family to this part of the country. It is a long way from home though, so I am always very grateful for the many trips they make to see us each year.

Mum usually visits with Dad and their black labrador, Henry. But Dad and Henry have stayed back home this week (mainly due to Dad’s busy social life!). As I always task my father with various complex DIY tasks, it is usually Mum who takes Henry on his daily walk. Mum and Henry have walked around the Moss together many times now, which I think gives them both a welcome break from my busy household. Today, Mum takes Clyde on his lead. This frees me up to scribble notes as we chat, but it causes Clyde some confusion as he is used to me walking him and he doesn’t quite know what to make of this change of routine. He stops and checks back frequently, often crossing my path and slowing my progress. He is now used to meeting other dogs along the way and we pause a few times for him to say hello to new friends. Apart from these fellow dog walkers, there aren’t many people out here today. The Moss is quite noisy though: the dense atmosphere sends the excited shrieks of school children across the bog; trains can be heard as they approach from the city; and we are conscious of the line of vans and cars crossing the railway bridge to the west. It feels like we are hemmed in at all sides – including by the ground and the sky.

Before we reach the boardwalk, I point out the holes that I cut in the wire fencing by the neighbouring housing estate – a job I was tasked with when I spent a morning with a group of volunteer conservationists, including Kay. The intention was to make openings for hedgehogs to pass through, but when I told Jill this, she mentioned that hedgehogs are problematic to ground nesting birds, as they love to eat their eggs. Mum and I discuss how every decision that is taken can have unforeseen consequences. She had recently seen a similar problem in New Zealand, where she and Dad had spent three months visiting my sister, Jennie. Areas where kiwis are nesting are heavily protected by traps and fences to prevent stoats and other animals predating on eggs and chicks. Earlier today, we had a family Zoom call for my brother’s birthday. Jennie and her husband Julius joined from Aukland, where they have lived for about the same time as I have been in Lenzie.

Mum says that she likes the Moss in the rain. Over the summer, she walked here on some very hot days when the ground was parched and the peat layer exposed. Mum says the bog ‘wants the rain’ and thinks that it seems ‘happier’ in this weather. She is invested in caring for this place and recognises its ecological importance and fragility.

As we walk along the pathway beside the railway line, we appreciate the way that the Moss has changed as a new season begins. We see lots of birch polypore – a bracket fungus that only grows on birch trees. The bracken is at full height and vibrantly green, even more so against the dull sky and the fading colours of the trees. Blaeberry bushes and deep purple heather remind Mum of their hillside garden, which also reckons with high acidity and elevation above the groundwater. This environment feels familiar to Mum, and she values this sense of connection to home. I hadn’t previously considered how much this is true for me, too. I grew up walking our dogs through the rain, trudging through muddy fields and woods. Now, living by Lenzie Moss means I can give my own children a similar upbringing, fostering a connection to the local environment. Walking on this damp day with Mum has reminded me of how important that is.

Sep 17, 2025

I receive a message from Andy, who has found my blog while searching for information about the recent fire in an old school building, near where he lives on Boghead Road. He tells me that around 35 years ago, he participated in an inquiry along with Bea Ray (who now has one of the paths named after her). This resulted in the preservation order that still protects the Moss from housing developments. Andy now walks his dogs on the Moss most days. He also mentions that he has ‘some views’ on the approach that has been taken to dissuade walkers deviating from the main path. I am keen to hear more, so I gratefully accept his offer to walk with me. We arrange to meet early one Wednesday morning at his home.

Andy invites me inside while he gets ready and I meet a friendly red setter called Juno. Their other red setter, Jimi, is away with Andy’s wife at the moment, so we will be accompanied by the calmer of their dogs. We exit the house through the back door into a cosy garden, which leads directly onto a parcel of grassland adjoining the Moss. We walk past the rugby fields, where a tractor is aerating the pitch. A flock of gulls roosts on the grass. Andy leads me and Juno onto the perimeter path, where I walked with Richard and Caladh a few weeks ago.

Andy tells me about moving to Lenzie in the 1980s. He grew up in the east end of Glasgow and met his wife when they were teenagers. When they first lived together, a series of upsetting incidents, including a break-in, prompted them to look outside the city. They were drawn to Lenzie because of its proximity to nature: its open skies, meadows and woods. As dog owners (they have always had red setters), they needed green space and fresh air. All of this is encapsulated in the Moss. More than once, Andy tells me, ‘this is why I live here’.

In his twenties, recently moved to the area and with a new baby, there was the prospect of major housing development on the section of Moss close to where they now live. Andy attended all the meetings and got to know Bea Ray, who has been mentioned to me several times now as a key figure in the history of the Moss. He found himself acting as witness at an inquiry into the impact of building on the site. Andy told his story to the panel, evoking the connection that local people have to the Moss. As he mentioned that he was a new parent, from the gallery, his baby boy made a well-timed cooing noise. This certainly helped their cause, but in the end, Andy says it was the environmental argument put forward by Bea that won the case. To this day, the site is recognised as ecologically important, with rare species such as bog rosemary and water voles needing special protection. As I learnt from Paul, the threat of new housing developments never goes away, but there have been a series of successes since that early campaign, culminating in 2009 when the site was designated as a Local Nature Reserve.

Andy is deeply invested in the Moss. It is an extension of his home, a place he visits almost every day, and somewhere that is full of stories and family memories. And for all these reasons, he has become quite upset by recent work undertaken. Andy takes me on a tour of the felled and broken trees that line the path round the Moss. As a method of discouraging access, Andy believes this is at best amateurish and at worst dangerous. His grandson recently asked him, ‘who killed all the trees?’ and he didn’t know how to respond. Andy has two major objections to the tree cutting: first, he believes there was ‘zero consultation’ on this specific work and that residents’ views have not been taken into consideration; second, he has researched this approach and has concluded that it is an ineffective, discredited practice. Andy has many unanswered questions about the decision-making and evidence base that led to this work. He is concerned about a lack of transparency and wonders about governance and accountability. He has also had some unpleasant encounters with the contractors undertaking the tree removal. He recounts one incident when an aggressive foreman attempted to block his way as he walked with his dog. I have heard similar stories before. These interactions have done little to bring the community on side with the conservation work here.

As we walk through the southern woodland, I have almost forgotten that Juno is with us. She is quiet and forges her own path. This is what it is like to have a well-trained, intelligent dog who can be trusted to stay close. I tell Andy about my new puppy, Clyde, who is learning quickly and has recently enjoyed his first walks on the Moss. Andy tells me that they recently lost a 30-year-old horse, also called Clyde, whom his wife had for the past 25 years, stabled up at Mugdock Park. I sense that the Moss has helped Andy with the difficult times as well as contributing to the good ones.

We arrive at the apex of the triangle of woodland that reaches out into the bog. This spot seems to draw people to it and others have mentioned it to me as a special place. Andy says that he comes here to write music. He is in a rock covers band called Shardlake and is a multi-instrumentalist and songwriter. Andy comes here with his ear buds in and works on new tunes and arrangements. He invites me to future gigs and kindly offers me a place on the guestlist, which I will accept enthusiastically! As we look out over the bog, Andy points out the conspicuous wooden fencing to the north. There are many such interventions that he feels have been poorly thought through and badly executed.

We return to the main path and pass a line of cycling school children following their instructor. Andy stresses that he is not advocating unlimited access across the bog. He understands the need to protect a sensitive environment and believes that there are ways that this could be achieved more carefully and effectively. This would start with signage and education, rather than barriers and prohibitions: especially not by destroying the trees and causing such a negative visual impact on the nature reserve. Andy also mentions the boardwalk as an example of positive interventions that have opened up access, protecting a fragile section of the site and making safe passage possible.

As we reach the end of our walk, I reflect on the depth of connection to the Moss that Andy and others like him have shown me. I think back to my walk with Ada, when we talked about the need for conservation of the land to include fostering relationships with it. My walk with Andy has helped me understand more about the relational complexity that characterises the Moss. Perhaps this needs to be better understood and considered when decisions are made about the site’s future.

Sep 10, 2025

I leave my house and walk down Kirkintilloch Road to meet Kat at the station. It is early morning, and I join the procession of commuters marching wearily along the pavement. Kat is travelling today too, but she has kindly made time to join me on the Moss before catching her train to Edinburgh, where she runs Action to Protect Rural Scotland (APRS), Scotland’s longest established environmental charity. I met Kat a couple of years ago when I joined a residential for SHARE (Science, Humanities and Arts Research Exchange) at Auchinreoch, where Kat and her husband Ruedi have created a woodland retreat in the foothills to the north of Kirkintilloch. Kat and Ruedi are ecologists and Kat has worked for Scottish Natural Heritage (now NatureScot) and the Royal Society for the Protection of Birds. She recollects doing some work with Friends of Lenzie Moss two decades ago. I am hoping to learn about peatlands and understand more about the importance of this place.

It turns out there is another reason why Kat is an ideal person to walk with. She tells me that she has also written a blog, for which she spent a year exploring Glasgow’s green belt. Over 27 excursions at weekends and on her days off, Kat covered 300 kilometres, skirting the city’s edges and offering a first-hand account of diverse and fragile environments, many of which have been impacted by heavy industry. In one entry, on discovering a bog by a birchwood between the towns of Cumbernauld and Airdrie, Kat calls herself and her walking companion ‘bog-trotting, tussock-hopping peri-urban adventurers’. I very much hope I will come to be described in such terms.

We have lots to talk about and we join the Moss with our conversation in full flow. Initially, we catch up on work and discuss our various projects, with the site itself as a backdrop. Then, in the north birchwood we step off the path and look out across the heather. Kat talks about raised bogland, stressing that this is one of the last remaining fragments of an ecosystem that was once found all over the Scottish Lowlands. She explains how raised bogs are formed by dead plants such as sphagnum moss, which can hold a tremendous amount of water. These layer up on top of each other, filling hollows carved out by ice age glaciers, and eventually the peat rises above the level of the surrounding land. This means that unlike fens, which are fed by mineral rich groundwater, bogs like Lenzie Moss rely on rainwater, which is low on nutrients. In these conditions, the slow decomposition of organic matter makes the bog acidic. Many of the species that I have encountered on these walks – the carnivorous sundews, the spiky bog heather, the rare bog rosemary, various mosses and grasses – are unique to these places. Raised bogs are of vital ecological importance and hold vast amounts of carbon. And yet, peat extraction persists at many sites, often due to irrevocable licenses than counter the government’s commitment to reach net zero by 2045. Kat describes this as ‘a total environmental disaster’.

Kat tells me about some of the bogs that she has encountered on her walks. These include Cardowan Moss, where there is ‘almost nothing left’; and Drumshangie Moss near Greengairs, which has been hit by waves of peat extraction, coal mining, waste incineration and landfill. Kat has spoken with members of local communities, who have experienced these impacts as a series of relentless ecological injustices. We examine the ariel view of some of the bogs on Google maps, and I immediately recognise the striated patterns that evidence a history of commercial peat cutting. During Kat’s wanders around the edgelands of the city, she saw many of these places. She says that the intact raised bogs pose a particular challenge as ‘they are very, very special and unusual, and next to huge quantities of people’. While this dynamic makes some of these greenbelt environments precarious, Kat’s blog also captures unexpected moments of enchantment:

The dry woodland, where the track was marked, made way for bog, and the sturdy 20 foot high birches made way for trees twisted and dwarfed by a lifetime with their roots in peaty sphagnum. We came across a flush full of flowering Bog Asphodel – a field of yellow stars – this gorgeous bog could have been anywhere in the wilds of the Highlands, Finland, or even Canada. But, instead, we were between Airdrie and Cumbernauld with the roar of the dual carriageway only 100m to the East.

I often feel this way about Lenzie Moss: it is so close to the city with the main trainline only meters away, but sometimes it feels that you could be thousands of miles away in some unchartered wilderness.

We sit on David Lee’s bench and take in the view. A kestrel hovers over the boardwalk. I have been troubled by biting midges for much of this walk and they are particularly bothersome now. Kat seems oblivious so I do my best to ignore them. She tells me about her work at APRS, which has become increasingly challenging as the right-wing media have become more adept at shutting down environmental initiatives. Two significant examples of this are the creation of a new National Park in Galloway and a bottle deposit return scheme, both of which have stalled after years of hard work. Kat feels that environmental campaigning will now need to change in an age of reactionary forces and media campaigns waged in bad faith. The charity continues to work on greenbelt protections and community empowerment in environmental projects. Kat has a lot to do and it is time for her to get to work.

As we return to a busy station car park, I have the feeling we could have walked several laps of the Moss this morning and would still have had more to discuss. Kat offers to walk again with me some time and although I still have 88 circles to complete, I will look forward to our next meeting. Kat sets off on her way east and I walk back home feeling energised and inspired. We need people like Kat, I think: people who will walk hundreds of miles to raise awareness about green spaces; people who will take on governments and champion communities; people who will keep going despite adversity, because they care.

Sep 3, 2025

“For there is nothing hidden that will not be disclosed, and nothing concealed that will not be made known and brought to light.” (Luke 8:17)

My plans change, leaving me with a free Wednesday afternoon, so I send an email to a group of people who have been in touch after reading my previous blog posts. I ask whether any of them are available at short notice to walk with me today and soon receive a reply from David. We arrange to meet outside Billington’s. I don’t know David at all, so as I wait, I wonder about everyone who walks towards me. After several people rule themselves out by passing by without making eye contact, one wanders up the hill and identifies himself with a nod. We shake hands and introduce ourselves before we set off, joining the Moss at the station carpark.

David is a fast walker, and I am happy to match his pace. Our conversation moves on quickly, too. He works in insurance, attends a church under the Anabaptist umbrella, and has three children in their twenties, two of whom are still at home. We talk of a shared experience of ‘super commuting’ between Glasgow and London. David used to be a subeditor and for a short time worked on the earliest version of The Guardian website (which I happen to read every day). He is a North Londoner and grew up near Hampstead Heath, so access to greenspaces near urban areas has always been important to him. He says that heaths and parks are the lungs of the city. Like Richard, who I walked with last week, David often looks after his daughter’s dog (theirs is a fox labrador called Psalm) and while she isn’t with him today, they are regularly out on the Moss for exercise. Psalm is a fetcher and spends much of these excursions chasing sticks and bringing them back, covering significantly more distance than whoever is walking her. With a such a busy life, full of work, family commitments, and dog walking, the Moss is a place that David can come to slow down and reset. It means a lot to him.

When we reach the part of the boardwalk where I sat with Cathy watching the roe deer playing in the heather, we look out across the bog. David points out the sections of fencing at the far side. He is unconvinced by the need to manage access in this way. When the fences were being constructed, David spoke with the contractors and they claimed they were for safety, citing an incident many years ago when a child had to be rescued from the bog. This is the first time I have heard this explanation; I was told by Jackie that access was being discouraged to protect the fragile peat layer from erosion. David doubts that there was any real evidence used to justify these interventions. He says that he has always walked across the bog, but that he does so responsibly. With very few walkers diverting from the main pathway, and those who do taking care and sticking to the well-established routes, David doesn’t see why there needs to be such an effort and investment to block off paths and prevent access.

I understand that the barriers and borders can seem excessive, but I have learnt that small amounts of footfall over long periods of time can cause real damage to the bog. My own opinion on this thorny issue changes a little every time I complete a circle. Today, we pass a father with a sleeping toddler in a pushchair, a couple of joggers, teenagers on their way back to school, and several dogwalkers. Almost all of them follow the main pathway round the perimeter of the bog. One walks along the raised bank of the old railway line, his husky leading the way, seeming pure white in the sunshine. David’s internal map of the Moss is a network of interconnected paths, and he rarely follows the same route, but there are places he often returns to.

We turn off the boardwalk and David offers to show me a place that I might not have visited before. We follow the path for a while and then suddenly leave it at a point that he clearly knows well, but which I will struggle to find again. After walking a short way into the birchwood, we reach a clearing marked by a fallen branch. David steps over it and uses it as a seat. He talks about the sense of peace and calm that this part of the Moss offers him. He also encounters it as a spiritual place: it is a part of the Moss that he comes to for silent prayer. When he is walking with Psalm, she anticipates these moments, becoming quiet and still while David gathers his thoughts. David tunes in to the environment, slows down and listens to God. Sometimes, he senses meaning in the wind through the trees and the passage of deer. I tell him that while I am not religious myself, I share a sense of peace that for me arises from a connection to wild places.

As we return to the main path, we say farewell and go our separate ways. I walk the last few feet alone, back towards the turn off to Fern Avenue. While there is nobody else around, I stop for a moment. I breathe in and listen. I have to be aware and in tune; I have to be present. If I can do this, then the world might tell me something. I am searching for a sign. Then, the wind causes a dappled light to move in the bushes, and I turn to see hundreds of pure white flowers turned to where I stand. They are hedge bindweed – moments of light and beauty popping out of the tangle of nettles. If I am looking for meaning, these will do nicely. Later, I read that this plant represents an unyielding spirit – its strong roots and delicate flowers symbolising a connection between strength and fragility. I realise that I walked past this spot already, when David and I passed it by earlier, talking about the Moss rather than being present in it. By breaking from the walk and pausing in the clearing, we have shifted our mode of engagement with the environment. The things that went unnoticed now reveal themselves; those who stop to look will see what was always there.

Aug 20, 2025

Despite warnings of floods and thunderstorms, it is a beautifully calm and sunny Thursday afternoon when I meet Richard. Richard lives a few doors down from me. We have never met before, but he responded generously when I posted a call on my neighbours’ Whatsapp group. Now that the schools have started back (my son Ruairidh had his first day yesterday!), Richard is looking after his daughter’s dog a couple of days a week as she goes back to teaching. The dog needs tons of exercise, he tells me. He is therefore spending a lot of time on the Moss.

I arrive outside Richard’s house at 3pm and my first encounter is with a bright eyed and energetic collie, bounding up to greet me. Richard follows with a lead over his shoulders, used mainly as a visual cue that it is time for a walk rather than being needed. He introduces me to Caladh – named after the Gaelic for shore or harbour – a nod to her journey from a sheep farm on the tiny island of Kerrera, to the mainland, via the port town of Oban. Caladh now lives in the nearby town of Bearsden with Richard’s younger daughter and her family. I wonder if she remembers the sea, and Richard tell me she often goes sailing with them.

Caladh (pronounced Calla) is bright as a button. She walks ahead, stops, checks back – always aware of where Richard is and where he wants to go – anticipating every change of direction. It is clear why this breed makes good sheep dogs. In contrast, as I tell Richard, I have recently welcomed a canine companion of my own. Clyde is a cavapoo puppy who has been living with me and my children for a week now. His name is mainly because his sister (who lives with my friends) is called Bonnie, but also because of the river. Clyde is a firecracker. He runs off in random directions, has very inconsistent recall, sometimes seems to knowingly ignore me, and often steals my shoes. But we are getting there, and I think he will be ready for a walk on the Moss in a few weeks, after his vaccinations and when he is a bit more comfortable with the lead. So, this is a good week for the first dog to circle the Moss with me, and it is encouraging to see Caladh’s independence and reliability.

We turn onto the Moss and Richard is happy to walk my usual anticlockwise route, although he often travels in the other direction. One reason for this is that when his children were young, they would go first to watch the passing trains before heading over the bog. Caladh runs ahead, disappearing into the long grass. Richard has heard about my work in theatre, and he tells me he is from a musical and theatrical family. While he didn’t follow that precarious career path, he is a singer and a member of a local choir. As we walk and talk, we are met by my upstairs neighbour Shirley and her children on their way home after the first day back at school. This is at the exact spot where I met them on my first walk, and the children are in similar spirits after a long hot day. Richard knows Shirley and they chat about the choir, which she is interested in joining. I tell the children that I will be in the garden later with the puppy and I invite them to come and visit, which cheers them up.

We continue on our way and Richard notes that we had stopped at the ‘smelliest’ part of the Moss. He tells me that this corner used to be a rubbish dump and points out the old access road. There is no sign of the dump now but perhaps there are buried treasures here: discarded household items, deep down in the bog. Both Richard and I have discovered lots in our own gardens, both of which border an old lane connecting the Moss to the main road through the town – glass bottles, shards of pottery, toys. My best find was a large red fire extinguisher, probably from the old primary school on the other side of the wall. Richard’s was a Lion Rampant emblem. This is a place of layered histories.

As Caladh does her own thing, Richard guides me round the Moss like it is his back garden. He has an understanding of this place that can only be acquired from decades of regular visits and family memories. These days, Richard walks Caladh, takes a moment on the raised bank of the old railway line, or at the apex of the triangle of woodland that reaches into the bog, and collects deadwood to burn in his log burner. His knowledge of the Moss is seasonal (he notes that the bog cotton is in flower much later than usual), ecological (he thinks that the rewetting of the bog has reduced the occurrence of small fires, which in turn has allowed certain grasses to thrive over other plants, such as orchids), and historical (he points out the old railway sleepers from the peatworks). He tells me that in the early years of living in Lenzie, he attempted to cut some peat for use at home. Apparently, it was a nightmare to handle and filled the house with acrid smoke. It wasn’t an experiment worth repeating.

Richard has had a varied and fascinating career, including a long stint as a Local Government Officer, a few high-octane years in the Scottish Parliament, and roles in events and festival organisation. In the 2000s he was the Maritime Director for Glasgow’s River Festival. Like Caladh, Richard has a connection to the sea. He originally moved to Glasgow in the late sixties to study naval architecture at the University of Glasgow. Timing was bad, however, as his studies coincided with the liquidation of Upper Clyde Shipbuilders – the consortium of the major shipyards on the River Clyde. In the context of large-scale protest and occupation of the shipyards, Richard ignored misguided advice to learn Spanish and look to South America, and instead changed tack.

As we approach the boardwalk, Richard suggests a detour and we veer right to take the wider perimeter path, which I have yet to walk. The route takes us to the edge of the site and Richard points out the old boundary posts. We head through grass and sedge, and Caladh disappears from sight, but by now it is clear that she will always be close by. Richard tells me that he moved to Lenzie with his wife in the late seventies. His first two children were born while they lived in their first house. Just a few years later, the house began to move. Because these new houses were built on boggy ground, they were susceptible to something called ‘frost heave’ – an effect caused by the expansion of frozen soil, which raises the ground. It sounds like it was a stressful time, but in the end the housing company had to buy back the house at a good rate, which allowed them to move to their current home on Fern Avenue, just meters from the pathway onto the Moss.

As we return to the main path, Richard says we should ask Caladh which way she would like to go. She enjoys chasing the trains along the southern path but today she opts for the route across the bog. She leads us across the rougher ground, stepping over exposed tree roots and meandering round the birch trees. We come across a dead tree – standing deadwood – which is the best kind of wood for burning. All Richard has to do is wait for it to fall, then he will have a good supply of firewood. While peat cutting is no longer allowed, and I have not heard of anybody continuing this practice, it is interesting to know that the Moss still provides energy in this way. The ground may have reclaimed Richard’s old house and all those unloved objects that have been dumped or forgotten, but I am finding that there are lots of ways in which it reciprocates.

Aug 14, 2025

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 reluctant commuters nursing their travel mugs. It feels good to be out at this time, but without the pressure of emails and morning meetings. That is the world in which we usually see each other. Cathy 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 she lives here too, and we had once 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 behave 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 rewarding 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 are 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 peat 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 waymarkers 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 area 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 today, 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. They 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