“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’s 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 old 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 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 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 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. 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

When I started this project, I requested permission from East Dunbartonshire Council, who own and manage the site. I took the opportunity of an online meeting with Jackie Gillespie, the officer responsible for the conservation and maintenance of Lenzie Moss. Her job incudes monitoring species and collecting data on the environment, employing contractors, as well as managing a ranger, and coordinating many civic and corporate volunteers. This network conserves the peatlands and prevents the woodland from taking over the bog. It is probably fair to say that nobody knows the Moss like Jackie does. Over the course of an hour, I learnt about ‘unimproved’ grasslands, hydrological surveys, peat core sampling, butterfly and dragonfly conservation, fen vegetation, missing skylark, water vole habitats, and much, much more. My head was buzzing with information and my notebook covered in frantic scribbles. I was delighted, then, when Jackie offered to join me for a walk.

It is starting to rain when we meet in the small car park at Heather Drive, on the far side of the Moss from my home. This is the place where the birchwood meets the boardwalk. Jackie shows me ragged robin and common valerian, both of which have been planted by local school children and are now thriving. She tells me that during World War II, valerian tea was taken for its calming effect, during a time of air raids. On this walk, I will learn a lot from Jackie’s cultural, botanical and historical knowledge about the flora and fauna of this place. It is immediately clear that I will be guided on this journey, and I am more than happy to listen, learn and follow, but there are also some questions that I would like to ask.

I am keen to find out more about the tensions that are being revealed, between the different users and uses of the site. During our call, Jackie had mentioned an article in the Kirkintilloch Herald that had referred to the tree management works as the ‘great chainsaw massacre’, criticising her personally for the council’s approach. It seems that over the years, she has been on the receiving end of some fairly vitriolic complaints. A lot of time and energy has gone into talks, responses, explanations, events – an attempt to communicate the reasons and present the evidence. Nevertheless, a small number of local residents have been unwilling to engage and have persistently demanded their ‘right to roam’ wherever they wish. But Scottish law only supports the right to responsible access. Jackie will show me the damage that is being done to the bog by repeated footfall. It is clear that the conflict has taken its toll at times – she admits that she doesn’t have the same energy for it all anymore – but her commitment to restoring and protecting the Moss is impressive, and she remains dedicated to this work in the few years that are left before her retirement. I ask what kind of relationship she might have with this place after the job has been handed over to somebody else, and she says that it would be difficult to dissociate. This is way more than a job for Jackie: it is a deep and enduring love of place.

My assumption that my 100 walks round Lenzie Moss would each follow the same route is soon abandoned. Jackie leads me off the main path at the bottom of the boardwalk and we head into the bog. I learn about the process of rewetting, which began with a nine-tonne digger carefully brought in over ‘bog mats’ to infill the channels used for peat extraction. The living layer was removed for this work and then replaced on a reprofiled landscape. Traversing the site, I see the lines of bog heather (preferable to the dry-soil-loving ling heather that is prominent in other places here), which betray the patterns of the peat industry. The grid-like topography persists.

Another major part of the work here is the complex process of holding back and redirecting water across the site. Damming in this marshy ground is not an easy process, and the barriers are unsubstantial constructions of corrugated metal and wooden planks. The latter give the impression of bridges and may not help in the efforts to discourage people from making paths across the bog. As if to test their effectiveness, the rain falls heavier now. My old hiking boots and Jackie’s walking trainers do not stand a chance, and we get wetter and wetter. We keep checking in with each other that we are happy to push on through the elements. Both of us are. It strikes me that Jackie’s job is often about anticipating and directing different movements through and across the site. Jackie is a Flow Manager, of water and of people.

And then the weather and the scale shift, and we are close to the ground examining sundews – hopeful signs of the successful regeneration of the site. These plants are insectivorous, and Jackie points out their spiky tentacles, which have a dew-like sticky gland at the tip to trap their prey, before they enclose and digest it. We watch male meadow pipits ‘parachuting’ as a skilful mating display. Jackie is convinced she has heard a grasshopper warbler – a rare visitor to this site and an exciting return. We are sensing life in every direction. What a wonderful thing: to know this place at all scales, in all depths, and in all its bio-complexity.

I ask about a deep pool cut into the bog, and I learn that it serves a dual purpose: as a habitat for dragonflies and amphibians; and as an impassable barrier for walkers. But there are signs of meandering paths around the ponds and across the exposed and damaged peat layer – deep footprints and holes excavated by dogs. I realise that the work of the managers and educators and rangers employed by the council is never ending. Jackie stresses the precarity of this environment. Without these interventions, homes would flood, the bog would dry out, trees would move in, meadow pipets and sundew and grasshopper warblers would disappear, and all this life – all this wonder – would fade. I think that Jackie knows that despite the complaints and the negative media, her work is validated by this place, and even as the local community relate to the conservation practices in a variety of ways – including occasional hostility – so many people enjoy and appreciate the Moss and benefit from it in all sorts of ways. As Jackie looks out over the changing landscape, she expresses a combined sense of weariness and pride.

After this walk, I reflect on the different levels of knowledge that people have about the Moss. Many – Nalini, certainly Ruairidh, myself until relatively recently – have little to no knowledge about peatlands and their importance and fragility. The community who use this site rely on those who know and understand a unique environment and have the power to make decisions about how it is managed. But sometimes those projects and practices directly impact the way we want to walk, play, and study, and we can feel disempowered. This is a problem that I suspect cannot simply be solved by the community acquiring more knowledge. Perhaps more creative, alternative – maybe even provocative and disruptive – modes are required to tell these stories and raise these questions. I am also sure that there is huge potential and lasting value in the experience of walking and talking: inviting different types of conversation about the Moss; spending time with the birds and the weather, encouraging shared experiences here.

Jun 24, 2025

I have walked many, many miles with my children over the years, and both of them will make excellent companions on this journey. My son, Ruairidh (usually Ru), joins me for the next of these walks. He is five years old and not yet at school. I am excited to find out what strange and unpredictable things he will tell me about the Moss, and where his curiosity will take us. Unlike his city-loving older sister, Ru is in his element on outdoor expeditions and one of his favourite activities is when we head off on our ‘Ru walks’. On these trips – often taken between dinner and bedtime – Ru gets to choose which way we go (more or less). Often, we have ended up in unfamiliar housing estates or overgrown pathways through unexplored woodland. I plant gentle suggestions rather than setting our direction. The trick is to make him think it is his idea. ‘Where shall we go on our next Ru walk?’ ‘Did you know there’s a tree swing on the Moss?’

We set off between rain showers on a warm Saturday evening. I tell Ru about a deer I encountered in our garden the previous morning. This was only the second time this had happened; the first was during the winter storms. Wandering bleary eyed into the garden to dispose of coffee grounds in the undergrowth, I became aware of something large in the bushes at the far side of the lawn. I stepped towards the noise and suddenly a flighty doe bolted over the wall onto the street and off down towards the Moss. I watched her as she wondered about entering a couple of my neighbours’ gardens, but she seemed to know how to get home and eventually made her way back along the pathway to the woods. Ru is thrilled to hear of this event, and we are now on a mission to find the herd.

As we walk, multiple distractions interrupt our progress. We collect leaves, imagine crocodiles in the now waterlogged woodland, throw stones into the pools, and peer between the trees for signs of the deer. We also have a repertoire of games for the Moss and we go through them as we follow the main path. A favourite is ‘the Moss animal game’, when we take it in turns to say three animals (or sometimes trees) and then guess which are the true inhabitants of the Moss. ‘A holly tree, an oak tree, and a lemon tree’, then getting sillier, ‘a fire vole, an earth vole and a water vole?’ We are revelling in each other’s company.

Ru is keen to follow some of the desire lines that lead off into the Moss, or through the waters of the carr on the other side of the main pathway. I have to explain to him that the land is fragile and that we can’t walk too much where there isn’t a proper path. I also explain the dangers involved, particularly on a day like this when the land is so sodden and marshy. Ru listens carefully and understands what I am saying, but he has not forgotten about the tree swing and assure him that a detour will be permissible when we reach the other side of the Moss.

Another thing that we do every time we visit this place together is to open the Merlin app on my phone and identify the various bird calls. There are many now: great tit, robin, goldfinch, pigeon, starling, magpie, willow warbler, jackdaw, wren – all of these we have heard before. Then, as we pass an ancient oak tree halfway along the northern border, a picture of a long-eared owl appears! We look up into the canopy and I wonder if the technology is correct on this one. At this moment, a couple walk by and one of them asks what we have seen. She is very excited by my answer and tells me that she has seen owls here before. She also has Merlin on her phone and shows Ru what her phone has detected. They plan to return at dusk to listen again, and as they continue on their way, Ru and I hang back until he hurries me along to find the swing.

We turn onto the boardwalk and the open grassland to the west is covered in bog cotton, the fluffy white heads dancing in the light breeze. Ru is intrigued by their ability to grow out of the muddy water, and he lies down with his head over the edge of the path to get as close as he can. This prompts another regular routine, when I hold him upside down and pretend to drop him over the edge: ‘throw me in the bog, Dad!’. As we playfully make our way towards the southern woodland, we pass several walkers, some with dogs, and they all smile to see a happy little boy and his dad enjoying nature. We watch meadow pipits and use the app once more to identify their high piping call.

Ru not only has a talent for rhyme, he also knows how to use it to get what he wants. As we approach the end of the boardwalk, he launches into a funny little song:

I’m really, really tired.
My hands and knees are weak.
Daddy, will you carry me?
Otherwise, I’ll shriek!

I am unable to resist a request delivered so inventively, so I lift him up and we walk for a while with him clinging onto me. But we are now close to the spot where the tree swing was pointed out to me, so we step over tree routes and climb down a muddy bank. The swing is a stick hanging by a rope from an overhanging branch. Ru holds onto it, and I push him for a while. He is delighted.

Ru is keen to continue along the woodland trail at the edge of the bog, but I have to insist on returning to the main path. Trains pass by and we hear shouting at the other side of the track – a football game, perhaps. As we reach the ruined peat processing station, we explore the area around it and discover a disused metal train track buried in the mud. Ru asks me if it is ‘dead’ and I say that it is, in a way. But he is keen to get home now, and he once again leads the walk, calling for me to catch up, setting the pace. I reflect on how independent my little boy is becoming and wonder about our future journeys and all the detours and distractions that we will enjoy along the way.

May 31, 2025

The heatwave is followed by days of heavy rain, bringing much needed relief to the parched ground and averting the very real risk of fire. I have heard of historic accounts of arson and accidental fires on the Moss and sometimes seen evidence that this is an ongoing problem – charred branches surrounded by empty bottles and discarded rubbish. Last month, an extreme wildfire warning was issued and a grassland fire burned for days in the hills above the nearby town of Cumbernauld, with properties evacuated. A blaze could easily take hold on a dried-out peatland and would quickly damage this fragile ecosystem, polluting the air and endangering all manner of lives. So, in that sense, at least, the rain is welcome.

I thought of those fires when Nalini sent me a voice note a few days before our walk. On an evening cycle round the Moss, she had been stopped in her tracks by an inaccessible barrier of birch branches that had been dragged across the boardwalk. She only reached the halfway point before being forced to return. Nalini called the Moss a place of beauty but while she laughed about it, she was clearly frustrated by this unexpected disruption. By telling me about what had happened, I think she was saying something about the possibility that my project would bring me into contact with some of the tensions and competing uses of the site. ‘I hope you like a challenge’, she said. I do.

Taking advantage of a break in the rain and the extra hour gifted by after school club, we set off together on a Tuesday afternoon. As we reach the main path, Nalini turns to the left and I to the right. These are our habitual routes and for Nalini, the anticlockwise direction is reserved for the school run, while clockwise is for leisure. This is, of course, why we passed each other in opposite directions on my first walk. I share that there is something important to me about following the same path in the same direction for each of these walks and I hadn’t considered that this might not be the way that my co-walkers would choose to go. As well received as it is, I feel uncomfortable imposing my own preference here, but we nevertheless continue in my chosen direction. I will have to be careful about who is leading who on these walks, even when we appear to be travelling side by side.

The Moss seems to be breathing out again after a tense few weeks. We fall into a rhythm and take the opportunity to further explore the connections that we have through our work in Scottish theatre. Nalini is an actress and has worked with many of the performers, writers and directors that I have known. I even saw her on stage in her first performance, almost twenty years ago now, but we had never met before I moved to Lenzie. Our conversation takes us away from the Moss but as we pass by notable features, we allow the site to interrupt our flow.

As we walk along the north path through the birchwood, I point out the broken and felled branches that I noticed on my previous visit. I have since confirmed that this intervention has been instructed by East Dunbartonshire Council to allow the bog to recover, by discouraging walkers from leaving the main path and thereby damaging the peatland through repeated footfall. At the same time, the thirsty birch can overwhelm the bog, and the trees have to be frequently cut back to prevent encroachment. The branch barrier was an act of protest, then. As I impart these fragments of knowledge, which I have held on to for the last week or so, I realise how counterintuitive it seems to protect the site by damaging its established woodland.

I find myself trying to explain these site management policies to Nalini, but I am still underinformed and unsure of the points I am trying to convey. Nalini confesses her lack of knowledge of the ecological importance of the peatland and expresses her surprise that trees would be damaged for this purpose. During her recent misadventure with her bike, she spoke to a passing walker who also mentioned this (‘it’s the council’), but she dismissed it at the time as a local conspiracy theory. I wonder whether this person was, in fact, the perpetrator? Already, I can see that the rationale and aspirations informing the management of the Moss are misaligned with the community’s perception and understanding of these interventions. I wonder if there could be a new initiative to encourage peatland literacy, and whether scientific knowledge of the site should be shared more widely across the town. I will soon take up this discussion with my contact at the council, who has offered to walk with me this summer.

We continue past ‘the climbing tree’ as we approach the start of the boardwalk. Nalini’s geography of the site is marked by her children’s games and exploration. There are also ‘the den’ and ‘the tree swing’, both visible from the main path. Walking with children might reveal an alternative Moss and I plan to complete a circle with one of my own children next, letting them lead me through the detours and delays that typically characterise their progress. Nalini shows me the place where the makeshift blockade has been cleared to the side of the boardwalk.

Nalini moved to Lenzie with her family a couple of years before the COVID-19 lockdown. Her sister already lived in the town and the alure of a slower life away from the city brought them here too. Caught up in the upheaval of the move and a busy work schedule, it was nine months before Nalini visited the Moss. Today, she walks it very regularly, sometimes more than once a day. She is part of a ‘mums’ group’, who often walk together. As we follow the boardwalk, stepping over broken sections and noting replaced planks, Nalini recalls the lockdown days in 2020 and 2021, when the old path was narrower and it was often necessary to step onto the boggy ground to maintain social distancing as the site bacame more and more popular as an ideal place for the allocated daily exercise.

For the final section of the walk, our attention drifts away from the Moss again and we talk of our time as students and the meandering pathways that we have taken through our careers; of the competing demands of work and childcare, and our children’s various clubs and activities. I am grateful for the chance to get to know another member of my community better and wonder who else I will have the opportunity to take this journey with. As we walk back towards our neighbouring homes, we exchange greetings with another of our neighbours, setting off on her regular dog walk around the Moss. The circle repeats.

May 27, 2025