March has arrived with birdsong, sunshine and new shoots. Today I am walking with Carol, who got in touch after hearing about the project through Walk Run Cycle East Dunbartonshire. Carol had originally suggested meeting a couple of weeks ago in the hope that her granddaughter would accompany us during the half term school holidays. But perhaps unsurprisingly, the prospect of a wander round a bog with a random researcher did not appeal to an eight-year-old, so only Carol and I will be circling the Moss this morning.

We set off round the Moss, and we are soon witness to a drama in the skies as crows swoop down to the birch trees to fend off rivals. Their ‘caw-caws’ and screeches reach out across the bog. Smaller birds fly off to safer perches. After the stillness of winter, there is a notable change in the land this week. The tiniest of hawthorn leaf buds are visible. The Moss is charging itself up, ready for the explosion of life that comes with the new season.

Carol is recovering from a broken pelvis, acquired while holidaying on the Isle of Arran, after an encounter with a suitcase in the dark. It has been a long, slow process. Carol has been in a lot of pain and has had to return to hospital over the last few months. She is gradually testing how far she can go and while she is fine for now, she doesn’t know whether the pain will return during our walk.

Halfway up Bea’s Path, we encounter a group of women of a similar age to Carol, kitted up with waterproofs and hiking boots. Among them is a friend of Carol’s, who she knows from the Ramblers. They share a hug and while the rest of the pack continue on their way, the two friends stop for a quick chat. The group are Soroptimists – ‘a global volunteer movement whose mission is to transform the lives and status of women and girls through education, empowerment and enabling opportunities’; they are walking for the upcoming International Women’s Day. Carol introduces me and my project. I learn that there will be a talk on the history of Lenzie Moss on Thursday, delivered by Kay for the Kirkintilloch Antiquaries.

The connections that Carol has made through walking mean a lot to her, but it seems that her injury has made it difficult to maintain these friendships. Carol has only lived in Lenzie for about the same time that I have. She moved here from Lancashire to be close to her daughter and granddaughter. I tell Carol that I made the same move, in a way (I lived in the same county for a couple of years when I was a toddler and my younger brother Phil is a native ‘Lancashire Lad’). Carol is enjoying living here but she is spending more time indoors than she would like to and is watching more television than she is accustomed to.

We dodge the huge puddles on the path and Carol tells me about some of her adventures over the years. She spent most of her career as a maths teacher, which included taking part in an exchange programme that allowed her to live and work in Australia for a year. Later, Carol left her job and travelled to Papua New Guinea, where she also worked as a teacher, and she then spent time as a travel rep in the Swiss Alps. Carol notices a plane fly over the Moss, and she tells me that she is less inclined to travel by air these days.

We pass the great oak on the North Woods Path and stop to admire its twisted branches, which are leafless for now but full of potential. A couple of pigeons are roosting high above us. Carol says that she loves trees and has been known to hug them, too. We examine the shapes against the sky and Carol says that she would like to take up drawing again. I wonder if there are any art groups nearby and can well imagine Carol and the Soroptimist women visiting the Moss with sketchpads and pencils. Walking and drawing are closely related since both are actions that create lines and entanglements. Close by, a new plaque has appeared on a tree stump, commemorating ‘Gus “Wee G” King of the Moss 2010-2026’.

As we emerge from the trees to look out across the bog, Carol asks me about the fencing that has appeared here since her last visit. I explain that it is there to block access, and Carol understands the reasons for this. There has been another development, though. Now several of the fence posts have been painted in a thick black anti-vandal paint, which is visible across the bog. A new sign – already blurred by heavy rain – warns potential transgressors away. The sign that I noticed with Logan is now lying in the mud. So, this is the third sign in just a few weeks, and these have evolved from ‘help make space for nature’ to ‘Please don’t walk on the bog’ to ‘Warning anti-vandal paint’. I worry about how these new physical barriers and the dialling up of rhetoric in the signage will be received.

We follow the path back into the woods and as we reach the narrow wooden bridge that is really part of a dam, something splashes into the water. As we move closer to inspect, we are surprised by a pair of copulating frogs! I photograph them and apologise for invading their privacy, but they seem quite happy and entirely indifferent to our presence. Then we balance as we walk cautiously along the plank (Carol is comfortable to do so) and join the path on the other side.

As we reach the end of our walk, Carol notices that she has been pain free for the last hour. We have made steady progress round the Moss today, stepping over puddles, navigating uneven surfaces and shuffling along a narrow beam. I am delighted that Carol seems to have enjoyed this walk without discomfort. I am sure that she will be out rambling with her friends again soon. Some barriers can be overcome.

Mar 5, 2026

The currency in a gift economy is relationship, which is expressed as gratitude, as interdependence and the ongoing cycles of reciprocity.” (Robin Wall Kimmerer, The Serviceberry. Cited in Feminist Culture House, Windows of Tolerance).

Before we reach the Moss, Kate draws my attention to the pots of primroses outside the flower shop on the main street. They sit unassumingly in what is likely to be sphagnum moss peat. All of the items on display have ‘plant passports’, indicating that they have been imported from the Netherlands, where Kate lives when she is not in Scotland. Kate also suspects that they may be covered in pesticides. Despite passing this spot hundreds – maybe thousands – of times, I have not noticed the proximity of the international peat trade to a protected bog before. So, within seconds of meeting Kate for the first time, she has shown me something new and encouraged me to engage critically with my local environment.

The practice of using peat for commercial horticulture has only been popular for under a century, but today it is as commonplace as it is controversial. Recognising the environmental damage caused by peat extraction, the Scottish government recently ran a public consultation on ending its sale in this country. Promoting their campaign for the UK government to legislate to end peat sales, the Peat Free Partnership explains that ‘the horticulture industry has made encouraging progress in becoming peat-free, reducing usage of peat by over 50%’. However, they note that ‘the pace of change doesn’t match the urgency needed, and progress without legislation is slowing’. With ongoing extraction contracts in place for many years to come and international chains supplying shops like this, more action is needed.

Kate is an environmental artist, who has committed to support peatland restoration in this capacity and has worked on many related projects for over a decade. In a recent biography, she is described as being ‘part of a movement re-imagining connections people can make to peatlands’. Since 2016, Kate has convened Peat Cultures (Veencultuur), an ‘artist’s project highlighting diverse cultural values of peatlands’.

Kate’s artistic process stems from field-drawing and involves studio-based work. Her current projects include a series of ‘Peatland Figures’ that help her explore outmoded peatland paradigms and the process of shifting mindsets. These manifested initially as shadow puppets that inserted cultural considerations into scientific peatland research. More recently she started making glove puppets. For Kate, these figures ‘articulate unwelcome mindsets that I want to move away from, such as self-centredness, romanticism, denial, despair and complicity.’ But importantly, ‘they also make me laugh!’

Kate’s web of connections includes grassroots organisations, research centres and museums. She has worked with the Crichton Carbon Centre and several universities (she has a PhD in Social Policy and an MSc in interdisciplinary Creative Practice) and has campaigned for peat-free futures with Peatland Justice and as an older member of the youth-led collective, RE-PEAT, for whom she recently presented work at a collective show – Limbo – in the Netherlands. Kate knows a great deal about peatlands and how we should care for them, even though she says her knowledge is partial. There is a lot that I can learn from her.

At the top of Bea’s Path, we pause to discuss the ethics of my project. Gently and sensitively, Kate prompts me to consider the dynamic of this exchange. I will find out more about Kate’s work and benefit from her insights into places like the Moss, Kate will widen her experience of peatlands in Central Scotland, and we will both get to meet a new collaborator. But we are not here on an equal footing: I am a salaried academic, conducting these walks as part of my research time at the university where I work; Kate is a visiting freelance artist, who has generously given up her time and covered her own expenses. I have to confess that I have not given enough thought to this power imbalance and I am grateful to Kate for raising the issue. Kate recommends a book by Feminist Culture House, which offers Tools for Ideal Collaborations in an Unideal (Art) World. This introduces the idea that collaborators have different ‘windows of tolerance’ within which they can offer their time, their energies and their emotional investment.

My repeated circling of the Moss with friends, family and neighbours, as well as visiting scientists and artists, has always seemed to me to be a shared rather than an extractive experience – something that both parties will enjoy and benefit from in various ways. Kate agrees with this, saying that she greatly values the introduction to Lenzie Moss and the supportive exchange. But she adds that she and other independent artists, are often invited to contribute their experience or ideas only to find that they are the only unpaid person in the room. This project does not come with a research budget and Kate’s point is not a request for payment, but what are the other ways in which a reciprocal arrangement can be ensured? I carry this open question with me as we walk.

Kate catches sight of what she thinks may be a sparrowhawk. I am too slow to see it but hope that she is correct. Turning off the boardwalk, we encounter three of the roe deer on their morning walk. They stay close to us as we cross the bog and listen in as I tell Kate about the fencing and the pools and the tensions that occasionally arise here. We come across an abundance of scarlet elf cup fungus (Sarcoscypha austriaca), which grow on sticks and branches all along the south woods path. These striking red bowls are nestled on beds of spongy moss. They are the counterpoint to the primroses that are on sale round the corner.

As we circle back to our start point, I share my experiences of walking with people who have very different opinions on how this site should be managed. My approach has been to remain as neutral as I can so that I can listen and learn from others without imposing an agenda. Kate considers this for a while and formulates a response as we return to the main pathway by the station. She then offers a challenge to my neutrality, arguing that sometimes it is important to take a position on ecological injustice and environmental harm when it occurs.

What would I be prepared to say, now that I have come to know this place so well and spent so much time with people who live, work and visit here? Well, I certainly believe that the bog needs to be protected and that this is a shared responsibility. I also feel that there needs to be greater dialogue and more collaboration between those who manage and use the site. I subscribe strongly to the use of creativity and conversation in brokering these connections. And I support Robin Wall Kimmerer’s argument, brought to my attention by Ada, that land restoration also requires relationship building. Perhaps these are things that need to be said.

At the same time, I think that nurturing relationships with places like this happens by listening to each other and being open to alternative perspectives. I am consciously deferring the point when I attempt to speak for the site, or on behalf of those who have walked with me here. Some of the artists I have met, like Ellie and Deirdre, have shared a similar reticence. Kate understands this impulse but also sees it as a moral imperative to take a position on climate justice. We need to listen and move carefully, but also to acknowledge and articulate our starting points.

I feel that what I can offer to Lenzie Moss is my time and a careful attention to its ecology, as I stay so close to it through the seasons and over the years. Part of that is listening to and learning from the people who know this place well, along with those who are sharing my life here and those who visit from elsewhere, bringing new perspectives on peatlands and environmentalism more generally. For me, the gift of these walks is to step outside the institution where I work, to meet new people, encounter different worldviews, and to share experiences of this place. Part of the responsibility that comes with this is to be sensitive to the situations that my collaborators have joined me from – their ‘windows of tolerance’, their values and their contexts.

Feb 23, 2026

I have only a few reasons to keep on running, and a truckload of them to quit. All I can do is keep those few reasons nicely polished. (Haruki Murakami, What I Talk About When I Talk About Running)

My good friend Gary is visiting today and we plan to go for a run, followed by brunch. Gary is organising a 10k for his work colleagues next week and he is behind in his training. A couple of weeks ago, we both set off from my house on my usual 7.5km route. We ran clockwise round the Moss and across the football pitches to Boghead Wood. From there, we followed Christine’s Way to the canal and jogged through the centre of Kirkintilloch to Luggie Park. Passing the leisure centre, we ran down to Whitegates Park and then back along the residential streets to complete the loop. The route has over 100 meters elevation gain, which is equivalent to an extra kilometre of effort. I have been forcing myself to do it every week this year, along with a shorter run such as the 5k parkrun at Drumpellier Park, which I attended for the first time last week. I have also been out with the recently formed Lenzie Running Club, which circles the Moss on occasional Sunday mornings. New year, new me.

Lenzie Moss is perfect for gentle running. It has nice wide paths free of obstacles and no hills. We therefore decide to stick to the Moss today. It has been very cold overnight (Gary sent me a screenshot showing that it was -4°C when he woke up). But it doesn’t feel too bad as we set off, and the pavement is free of ice, which was our main concern. Gary starts his Map my Run app as we leave my house and turn left onto Bea’s Path.

For two laps, we maintain a steady pace. There are several people out running this morning, and we see some of them more than once as they pass us in the opposite direction. There is a certain quality to the greetings exchanged between joggers: an encouraging nod and a half-smile of solidarity.

Neither Gary nor I are natural runners. I don’t think either of us even enjoy it, to be honest. Unlike the marathon-running novelist Haruki Murakami (of whom we are both fans), we don’t run as a habit or a daily ritual. Every outing requires an effort of will. But thankfully, we have enough reasons to keep on running. I suppose that chief most among them is the need to stay healthy as we reach our mid-forties. I may be maintaining a weekly run at the moment, but experience tells me that this pattern is easily broken. If a busy work week or a bad cold or a holiday gets in the way and causes me to miss a week, then the motivation evaporates and I give up on my streak. The trick is to keep doing it, then.

As we run, Gary’s app alerts us to each kilometre that we reach. We agree that we will run continuously until we reach the sixth. This happens just short of the bottom of the boardwalk on the south woods path. At this point, we about-turn and switch to a walk. It feels good to have pushed ourselves and while our pace has not been particularly impressive (even by our standards), we both feel a sense of achievement. Gary checks our distance and time on his phone and restarts the app.

As we switch direction and gait, I sense our attention shift to the landscape around us rather than the pathway ahead. We pass many dog walkers and several families with warmly wrapped children running off to explore the woodland. Magpies hop behind the grasses, which glimmer in the frost.

I tell Gary about the local running club that I have enjoyed being part of. For the last two runs, I have taken Ruairidh with me. The first time, he ran twice round the Moss at a surprising pace, beating most of the adults back to Billington’s for hot chocolate. Last Sunday, he set off even faster, staying in the lead for half of the first lap. At the top of the boardwalk, he looked back to me, red faced and exhausted and not willing to run any further. I think this hard-won lesson about pacing will serve him well for tomorrow’s run.

Gary’s eye is drawn to the silver birch, glinting in the bright winter sun. He notices that some have been felled or damaged in storms and it reminds him of a time in Sri Lanka, when he visited a forest that had apparently been flattened by elephants. My own point of reference is closer to home, and I tell Gary about my visits to a beaver reintroduction project at Bamff Estate in Perthshire, where the water has spread into the woodland, bringing down tens of trees. One summer night, I stayed in a lodge beside the main dam and walked along the river just before midnight, accompanied by beavers swimming alongside me.

We pick up the pace again and jog along the north woods path, only walking again as we leave the path through the trees and look out across the bog. A couple of days ago, the Campsies were covered in snow. Today, there are only remnants on the tops. Gary grew up in the nearby town of Kilsyth, at the foot of these hills, so he knows the geography here. He points out the snow-capped peak of Meikle Bin and tells me that his elderly aunt always used to say that she would climb it one day but never did and is now too frail. I suggest that we should do it on her behalf some time.

Gary and I have climbed far higher than Meikle Bin, although we realise with alarm that we haven’t been hiking together for years. Even longer ago, we started to bag Munros, and managed several, including Beinn na Lap, where Steve recently completed his 282nd mountain adventure. Our best made plans never went very far, diverted as we were – and frequently still are – by travel, pubs and restaurants. Being outside together and looking out to the hills on such a fine winter’s day puts us both back in the mood for adventures and we agree to make time for them this year.

We run for the final section back to my house. This walk-run alternation makes this particular circle the quickest of the 40 that I have done so far (at 24 minutes 17 seconds) and the only one that isn’t entirely walked. But despite the speed with which we have moved along, we have enjoyed being in each others company this morning. Running with a friend is about making time for each other, catching up and hatching plans. It is also about achieving something together and rewarding that achievement, which is another very good reason to keep on running. We head off for our reward now with a visit to Billington’s for a well-earned beer and a breakfast roll.

Feb 14, 2026

A cold breeze accompanies me to the station, where I meet my old friend Logan from the train. Logan and I were at university together in the early 2000s and she is now a Senior Lecturer in Contemporary Literature at the University of Sheffield. After 25 years in the UK, having moved here from Luxembourg, Logan has decided it is about time for her to seek British citizenship. Having spent much of her time in Berlin over the last few years – typically for more than the 90 days that is permitted – she is staying in this country a lot more now and, I’m pleased to say, making more frequent visits to her beloved Glasgow. Logan is currently studying for her Life in the UK Test, and I wonder whether a walk round a centuries old peat bog might help. Probably not, but it should.

Logan writes about techno-cultures – the ways in which our cultural lives are shaped and determined by various technologies. As we walk through the station carpark, we note the cluster of CCTV cameras by the platform, which capture everyone who enters or leaves this corner of the Moss. While it might seem that we are free of surveillance as we take cover in the birchwood, our phones betray our positions, and we may also be visible to satellite technologies, capable of monitoring human activity from hundreds of miles away in low Earth orbit.

Technology is more present in our environments than we might assume. We cannot see the decades of heavy industry that extracted thousands of tonnes of peat from this place. But they have certainly shaped the landscape. Logan also points out that the way we see and understand the world is conditioned by our technological experiences. James L and I considered this as well, as we explored the postdigital bog. We bring a whole host of digital references, visual methods, images and narratives to all our encounters and excursions.

Logan tells me about one of the topics in the citizenship test. She has been learning about English country gardens and the famous landscape architects Lancelot ‘Capability’ Brown and Gertrude Jekyll, who respectively pioneered large-scale ‘naturalistic’ landscapes in the eighteenth century and Arts-and-Crafts-inspired horticultural aesthetics in the late nineteenth and early twentieth. Logan tells me that this is about the extent of the content on nature and environments. While the tests do also cover national parks and countryside care and responsibilities, the problem is that this rote learnt knowledge does nothing to create active, engaged citizens. Even if the environmental content was significantly increased, it is not clear how this would lead to ecological responsibility and sustainability action.

Some of the topics in the test have led Logan into further research. She has been reading T. M. Devine’s The Scottish Clearances and learning about the history of dispossessed people and radically altered countryside. Logan has discovered that sheep are not indigenous to this island. They were introduced by early Neolithic farmers, shipped in from the Near East as agriculture spread into Britain. Could there be anything more quintessentially British than sheep grazing on rolling green hills? Neither the livestock nor the fields were here 6000 years ago.

We look over to the Campsies and reflect on the lack of tree cover. Land has been cleared for farming and fuel, leaving only a few patches of woodland in the valleys and lower hillsides. This is another example of how our landscape has been shaped by technologies that have created a legacy of absence. The historical clearing of the Scottish lowlands might be considered as an extension of the great British gardening tradition. Our landscapes have been dominated and curated in various ways for longer than we have the capacity to remember.

We take the path across the bog and detour onto the central embankment to inspect the new sections of fencing. We can only go as far as the first, which effectively blocks the way with tall wooden slats. A few days ago I came here with Iona and Clyde and read a notice pinned to the fence:

help make space for nature
Please note – conservation works are ongoing in this area

A QR code directed us to NatureScot’s Pollinator Strategy for Scotland 2017-2027. It was not clear who the information was intended for, or what function it had here.

This sign has now been replaced with one that reads:

HELP PROTECT OUR PRECIOUS PEATLAND
We are working here to save the wildlife of Lenzie Moss
Please don’t walk on the bog

There are cartoon pictures of a skylark and a sundew. We are told that the bog is ‘crucial for ground nesting birds’ and ‘an important habitat for insect eating plants’. I hope that these facts and explanations will be enough to convince people of the necessity of these barriers, but I have seen evidence to the contrary in disgruntled posts on social media in recent days. We turn back to the main path, and I see the original sign – water damaged, ripped into pieces and discarded in the mud. I can’t be sure, but the action seems deliberate. I pick it up and we continue on our way.

We walk through the birchwood and come across another discarded item. A soggy notebook is leaning against a tree in such a way as to suggest it has been carefully placed there. On closer inspection, it is a child’s journal. There is a Komodo dragon on the front cover, rain-smudged pictures of mice and puppies inside, and a list of ‘things you can see’ in pencil on the back page: dogs, bird nests, tree stump, robin, fairy door, mushrooms, ruins. And the name Lily. Perhaps we have discovered a handbook for ecological citizenship.

I deliberate as to whether to leave the book in its place to be reunited with its owner, or to bring it with me to clear the site of more rubbish. Logan is ruthless in her recommendation to bin it, but I decide to keep it with the torn and blurred sign in my pocket. I will return with souvenirs from this walk (but if anyone reads this who lost a notebook in February 2026 and would like it back, I’d be most happy to return it!). Maybe we could check the CCTV for a little girl entering the Moss with a book in hand and returning an hour or so later without it.

Feb 6, 2026

A couple of months ago, as I was busy reprimanding Clyde for something or other, I was greeted by a couple at the end of my street on their way onto the Moss. They introduced themselves as Tony and Julia and they recognised Clyde from my blog, so surmised that I must be David. Apart from my delight at this moment of very local fame, I was pleased to meet more of my neighbours. Of course, I opportunistically asked if they would be interested in joining me on a walk, and they agreed.

*

We meet on a cloudy Friday morning outside Julia and Tony’s home. I will walk with Julia later in the year, but today is Tony’s turn. Tony is a widely published haiku poet, who often takes his inspiration from very regular ‘orbits’ of Lenzie Moss. He soon corrects my commonly held misconception that haiku always use the five-seven-five syllable format. Tony will read some of his poems as we walk, and I will learn that there is leniency in the length (most poets now average 10-12 syllables). But there are still rules. Haiku are brief impressions of the world, grounded in direct observation, they use cuts or shifts in perception, rather than continuous sentences, and they avoid similes and metaphors. But to use a metaphor, haiku are pebbles cast into the reader’s mind.

I think about the rules that have emerged for my walks, such as traveling in the same direction and only walking with one person at a time. I am breaking one of these today, for a particular reason, and learning that rules are not always appropriate. Julia will accompany us on this walk. This is because Tony has been sight-impaired since birth and is now certified legally blind. He tells me that like about 90% of blind people, he has some sight, but that ‘life is a veritable blur!’ Julia will look out for any obstacles. She says she will let Tony do most of the talking, but I am also hoping to benefit from her keen interest in the birdlife here, which has become very active in recent weeks. And I will look forward to talking more with Julia on another occasion.

As we turn onto the Moss, I check it’s okay to walk anticlockwise and, because of Tony’s reliance on regular patterns and features of the landscape, he says that we really have to. Tony tells me that his blindness is not only limiting: it heightens his perception and focusses his attention to other ways of knowing and being in the world. He feels the earth with his feet, attends closely to the sounds of the birds, and leans into the wind. Perhaps the haiku is the best way to capture and share this experience, creating intense encounters that reward careful attention. We turn off Bea’s Path and pause by the pools that I saw were dried out on my first walk, but which are now full of water. Tony reads the first haiku of the morning (they are typically read twice):

midsummer
neither a tadpole
nor a frog

Caught in an in-between state, like we are at the end of January as the first tentative shoots start to appear, and the birds test their voices. Tony writes many, many haiku – a few every day. These are often in response to a specific location, so they will structure our walk round the Moss today.

We walk along the north woods path and listen for the birds. Julia lists those that they have encountered here, and many of them I have yet to see: swallows, swifts, cuckoos, treecreepers, linnets, skylarks… The latter I had been told were no longer here, but Julia says she saw them last summer. Tony has written about almost all of the birds that Julia mentions.

On the boardwalk, Tony reads another poem:

barely light
   breaking ice
   on the boardwalk

This resonates with my walks here. I remember the ‘barely light’ 6am visit with Cathy and ‘breaking ice’ with Minnie. Tony likes this part of the Moss for its openness and exposure to the elements, and for the cottongrass:

the wind
in every fibre
cottongrass

The white seedheads of the bog cotton, which I noticed in May with Ruairidh, won’t be back for a few months now. There has been a new addition to the bog today, though. A couple of conspicuous sections of fencing have appeared in the centre of the Moss, standing out against the subtle colours of the mire. I wonder whether these are to protect bog rosemary, which is rare and precious here, and could quite easily be snapped up by the resident roes. All three of us feel ambivalent about this intervention and I am sure that there will be others who are strongly opposed. I suspect that they won’t be intact for long.

Having lived in Lenzie for almost three decades and learnt about the history of peat cutting on the Moss, Tony is conscious of the damage that has been done here:

peatland
after fifty years
the scars still show

These scars are there in the striation of the landscape, the fragility of the ground, and the shallowness of the peat. When I walked with Kat, the satellite images that we looked at showed these marks very clearly. Julia and Tony are very supportive of the need to protect a place like this, but they also feel that the right balance has to be found and suggest that it is easy to over-manage the land.

We walk back along the pathway that runs alongside the railway line. Moss grows up the birch trees:

moss…
the quietest
of revolutions

I tell Tony and Julia that I am the chair of the board of trustees for James O’s Humanist charity, which happens to be called A Quiet Revolution. One of their key charitable activities is tree planting, so they are creating more habitats for the birds and the moss:

treecreeper
helter-skelter
        up the mossy trunk

We pass the tree that I noticed with Linsey, which was decorated for Christmas. The tinsel has been dislodged, and nobody has returned to tidy up. But the other visible icon of the festive season still grows strong:

holly leaves
as if this winter
never happened

In haiku, I am told, flora, fauna and seasonal references ‘do the heavy lifting’. But haiku are only complete in the moment of listening or reading. They are the opening of a conversation, an act of co-creation. I have written about performance in similar terms and through this project, have come to think about walking in the same way, too.

We return to our street and spend some time chatting, then Tony and Julia return home and I head back to my desk for the rest of the day. I find it hard to switch back into office mode. Little sparks of verse fire around my head. The Moss has been rendered in a new light for me today. From the shapes and the brightness, something very clear has emerged.

Jan 30, 2026

Since Clyde joined my family, I have been out on the Moss most days and have become a part of the disparate community of dog walkers that repeatedly follows its paths. My neighbour-across-the-street, Ann, and her 14-year-old dog, Sophie, are among my most regular encounters. I met Ann in my pre-dog-owning days, shortly after I moved here in 2023. But we hadn’t chatted properly and our exchanges were brief. Now that I take a walk early most mornings, in all sorts of weather, Ann and I have spoken for longer and more often. When I told Ann about this project, she kindly offered to join me for a walk.

The dogs are staying at home today and we set off on a cold and overcast afternoon to the sound of a robin singing its heart out. Ann has lived in Lenzie for over 50 years and says she is the longest resident of our street. She started exploring the Moss when it was overgrown and mostly inaccessible for her children’s prams, and now she is out here with her dog (and occasionally also her son’s, who now lives on the next street) very often – usually twice a day and regularly timed to avoid the school traffic. Ann doesn’t tend to walk all the way round now as it is too far for Sophie. I actually saw them earlier today when I walked with Clyde. Poor Sophie was limping a little, with what the vet later confirmed as an abscess on her paw. Ann also has a 20-year-old cat at home, who no longer ventures outside.

My seven months of dog walking have introduced me to a new kind of connection to this place and to the people who frequent it. I have realised that some – like Ann – are delighted to see energetic puppies bouncing up to them to say hello. Often, dogs run around the paths off their lead and excitedly chase each other when they meet. Ann says that lots of people, and also their dogs, know her well now. In conditions like this, she wears a weather and muddy paw resistant coat, which has dog treats secreted in its deep pockets. Dog walking brings warm smiles of recognition and enthusiastic greetings. Conversely, others are bothered by the unwanted attention and sometimes there are nervous, old or aggressive dogs that have to be avoided. You develop a sense for it.

We pass the grassland by Heather drive and Ann says she is concerned about the pools here, which could be dangerous for children and small dogs. As I saw when I walked with James L, there have been additional ponds dug in key locations around the site. Ann is not convinced about these and wonders what they are meant for. She has been walking here for decades and remembers a time when the mire was left to its own devices. She questions the necessity of the more recent flurry of fences, barriers, banks and ditches. Since the site was designated as a Local Nature Reserve and access was increased with new paths and the board walk, the added footfall perhaps makes more management inevitable. But through these walks, I now understand some of the reasons why the conservation work has not always been well received.

Ann has a lot of memories of this place. She tells me about an occasion when her son and his primary school friend went off to play on the Moss. When the agreed 5pm dinner time passed, Ann set off to find them and came across their abandoned bikes. She says she was never worried and soon found them hanging out up a tree, oblivious to the time. Ann recalls other times when she has had close encounters with the bog. She remembers a walk to the far side of the Moss many years ago, during which her husband momentarily lost a welly; and another when she stepped onto a grassy bank and found that it was far less stable than it appeared.

I tell Ann about one of my very first visits to the Moss, when I made a similar mistake. I remember it vividly. Thinking I would be able to hop between clods of earth, I brought my foot down to test the stability of a tuft of grass. My boot passed through the surface like a stone into water, and I immediately missed my footing. Losing my balance, my right leg swung instinctively forward to brace for the impact and it, too, sunk into the mud without resistance. I managed to quickly turn my full body and lifted my right leg up and out of the ground again. I ended up on all fours, covered in mud with my heart racing. Ann and I remember the feeling of embarrassment and the hard-earned lesson that this place can be treacherous for those who underestimate it.

We pass the old benches in the south woods path – one broken and the other removed. Ann says that the missing bench used to have a plaque in memory of a regular Moss visitor, David Lee. When I walked with Paul, I learnt that the newer benches were paid for with a bequest left by David. Ann remembers him and says that he used to enthusiastically predict the next train to pass, sharing his knowledge about the engine and the carriages. On cue, a train passes by on its way to Glasgow. Ann tells me that her father was a railway policeman and inspector, and that her childhood in Fife was enhanced by free first-class travel around the country and beyond.

As we arrive back on our street, Ann tells me about my house. Like Steve, she also remembers the wedding that took place in our garden. She also mentions an old stable block at the back of the property. The large pile of bricks in the corner of my garden is all that is left of this now. Ann also backs Clare’s theory that the corridor of land beyond was originally where the railway line transported cut peat from the bog to the town. My upstairs neighbour told me that they have seen the deer using this land as a passageway behind the gardens.

My walk with Ann has taught me about the ways in which the Moss has changed over the last decades. It is a marvellous thing: to have a long connection to a place and to have lived in the same area for so long. As a new member of this community, I am grateful to have learned more about what was here before me. Today’s walk and conversation have made me feel more connected to these memories and histories, and I am now creating my own. Perhaps I will still be living here in 50 years, still walking around the Moss.

Jan 23, 2026

The first place you ever knew was warm and wild and wet
And in that dark womb you grew
We are all bog born.
(Karine Polwart, ‘We are all bog born’)

It has rained heavily overnight but this morning the sun is shining brightly through the clouds and the whole place sparkles. It feels like a good day for my second chance to walk with Ruby. She should have been the 19th walker to circle the Moss with me, but as I confessed to Ellie, who took that place instead, I missed my appointment earlier that morning. This cost Ruby a wasted trip all the way from her home near the Pentlands, just south of Edinburgh. Graciously, Ruby has returned today, and I couldn’t be more thankful. I meet her by her car at the far end of the station carpark. As we set off, I notice that a fairy door has appeared in a birch tree.

This isn’t quite Ruby’s first visit to Lenzie Moss, then. When she made the trip to meet me back in October, having realised that I wasn’t going to show up, she ventured some way onto the Moss. This will be her first full circle though. One major difference from three months ago is the birdsong that we encounter. Today, there are robins, great and blue tits, jackdaws, dunnocks and goldfinches soundtracking our walk. It feels like a spring morning, although we are still in the middle of winter.

Ruby recently returned to higher education after a decade working for NGOs, first in human rights and aid, and more recently in climate. She continues to work as a fundraiser for Friends of the Earth Scotland, but is now in the final stage of her MSc in Environment, Culture and Society at the University of Edinburgh. Ruby tells me of a recent fieldtrip with her class to Fala Moor in Midlothian, where they met the Scottish folk artist Karine Polwart. They explored soundscapes and field recordings and responded creatively to the bog.

I have seen Karine Polwart perform as part of the Spell Songs ensemble, a musical response to Robert Macfarlane and Jackie Morris’s book, The Lost Words, which conjures up ‘acrostic spell-poems’ by Macfarlane, illustrated by Morris. These poems are a way of rescuing words about the natural world, which are slowly disappearing from our children’s vocabularies. I have a print of Morris’ goldfinches on my bedroom wall and their gilded flight is the first thing I see each day. The spell songs are like stepping through an enchanted portal into the world that was already around us.

Ruby tells me that she has had a tough week in her studies. Her coursemates are at the stage of pitching and refining their dissertation projects and Ruby has experienced something of an awakening to the scale and scope of research that is achievable. She is having to redesign her project and let go of some of the aspirations and ideas that had made it feel exciting. Ruby understands that this is part of the process and recognises that her master’s dissertation is the start of something that she can continue to develop in other places and contexts. But nevertheless, it is a difficult moment. Ruby values the opportunity to explore Lenzie Moss today and says ‘it will help me get out of my head’. A flock of pink-footed geese arches overhead.

Ruby has always had a strong connection to landscapes and environments. She grew up in Ecuador, moving to Speyside in Scotland at the age of ten. Her father was a geologist in the Ecuadorian mining industry. Ruby learned to snorkel when she was two and has always felt drawn to watery worlds. She says that all her formative memories are bound up in the places she has lived. At the same time, Ruby is concerned with extractive relationships with places. There is a clear connection between her childhood experiences and the work she is now doing.

All these concerns have informed Ruby’s research plans. She has been inspired by the More-Than-Human Life (MOTH) Program, the ‘interdisciplinary initiative advancing rights and well-being for humans, nonhumans, and the web of life that sustains us all’. The MOTH Program is informed by Ecuador’s pioneering rights of nature legal framework – especially the landmark 2021 Constitutional Court ruling that established legal rights for the Los Cedros cloud forest. They have also contributed to collaborative projects with Ecuadorian Indigenous communities, such as the Sarayaku people of the Amazon, whose activism has been central to these new laws. One of the key members of the collective is Robert Macfarlane, whose latest book, Is a River Alive? asks whether a rivers are living entities, which should be recognised as such, legally and imaginatively.

Ruby’s connections with this collective have led her to seek out other examples of rights of nature projects, such as the Embassy of the North Sea, an initiative based in the Netherlands that aims to listen to and act on behalf of the sea. Their mission statement is ‘to emancipate the North Sea in all its diversity as a fully fledged political player, via collectives of humans and non-humans’. Ruby has been inspired by the activism and creativity of organisations such as this. She now wants to explore the possibility of such a project in Scottish waters. Could the seabed have legal rights? Could human and more-than-human communities work together to protect the environment? How could we build sustainable futures for all? These are big questions and I now understand how Ruby’s plans for a masters dissertation may have been too ambitious.

As we walk, Ruby collects litter. I notice her almost unconsciously picking up a coffee cup lid and a crisp packet. When I ask her about this, she says that she does it all the time. She recently purchased a grabber stick, which she uses to tidy the woodland area behind her flat. Ruby says that removing litter is a way of caring for the land, which for her is vital. I tell her about Kyriaki’s artistic practice and recall retrieving a discarded drinks can from the Moss, which she planned to use in an artwork. I wonder what became of that found aluminium – whether it was melted down and recast.

As we complete our circle, we spend some time balancing on the foundations of the old peat plant. Ruby says this is what she would have done as a child. She notes the mature birch trees that are growing from the centre of the building. They have the right to do that, I think. And thanks to the work of Macfarlane and others, we now have the language to assert that right. I recall some other words that Karine Polwart sang:

Enter the wild with care, my love, and speak the things you see
Let new names take and root and thrive and grow.
(Spell Songs ensemble, ‘Lost Words Blessing’)

Jan 17, 2026

For the first walk of 2026, I am joined by Eddie, an engagement officer at Archaeology Scotland. Eddie is preparing to lead some fieldtrips at Lenzie Moss with pupils at the local secondary school, Lenzie Academy. He has studied maps of the area, searched the archives, and planned locations for augering (a method of core sampling, similar to the coring method that Phil G told me about). But this is Eddie’s first visit to the site. It is a valuable opportunity for him to plan the visits for later in the year, when the weather will hopefully be more agreeable than this cold, wet day.

Eddie is working on a large-scale project known as the Clyde Valley Archaeological Research Framework (CVARF). Eddie’s job is to work with the local authorities in the Clyde River catchment to ensure public engagement with the project. Lenzie is part of East Dunbartonshire, but there will also be workshops and fieldtrips exploring the archaeology of the Clyde in East Renfrewshire, Glasgow City, Inverclyde, North Lanarkshire, Renfrewshire, South Lanarkshire and West Dunbartonshire. Together, over a third of Scotland’s population live in these areas.

As we walk from the station up Bea’s Path, Eddie tells me what he has discovered so far. He mentions the Roy Military Survey of Scotland, an extensive survey of Scotland’s landscape between 1747-1755. A hundred years or so before the modern Lenzie was built, it is possible to see that the bog reached further and connected with other wetland areas. The trainline was constructed in the 1830s and 40s, cutting through the landscape and soon bringing further building (including my house on the new Fern Avenue some time around 1870, when Jane Vary Campbell and David Sinclair Campbell may have been the first occupants). Lenzie Moss became demarcated, boxed in, and separated.

Eddie will share this mapping exercise with S3 pupils – fourteen- and fifteen-year-old’s in their third year of Scottish secondary education. Prior to their fieldtrip to the Moss, they will also learn about some of the things that have been found in local bogs. These include the Cambusnethan bog body, found in North Lanarkshire in 1932, and initially believed to be a 17th-century Presbyterian Covenanter; and the Peelhill horde, the discovery of Late Bronze Age weapons at a site in South Lanarkshire in 1961, which were most likely buried ritualistically after a battle. While the bog body may in fact have been a murder victim, who died some years later than originally thought, both cases raise questions about the ways that bogs have been used throughout history as spaces of transition, between life and death, our world and the next.

I tell Eddie what I know about a gruesome discovery on Lenzie Moss, recounted in Bill Black’s excellent history of ‘Peat Extraction on Lenzie Moss’:

[Colin Graham] was on the moss about 400 yards west of Moncrieff Avenue on Wednesday [7th] July 1880. He had dug down about 4 feet when, suddenly, he exposed a human head, partially preserved, including the hair. When it was extracted it was identified as that of a female but further exploration around the area by the police failed to produce the remainder of the body. The victim was never identified, although it was suggested it might be that of a domestic servant, employed some years earlier by Mr Lang at Gallowhill House. She had disappeared without explanation, a fact confirmed by Lang, but in circumstances that were described as ‘suspicious.’

I imagine myself in the position of a teenager learning all this and then being invited to explore the local peatland. Perhaps they will hope to make a discovery of their own, whether grisly or golden.

When Eddie and the school groups extract samples from this site, they will look at the different layers and see how the differences in the peat indicate how long the bog has been forming, whether accumulation has slowed due to drainage and extraction, and how the site has been used for fuel, grazing, or industrial use. They will consider the different proxies that can be measured, such as Phil’s pollen analysis and Meike’s data on elemental composition. Eddie has a real passion for ‘weird watery places’ like this, and I can see how this enthusiasm makes him the ideal person to inspire young people about our local peatlands. Eddie reminds me that Lenzie Moss is a tiny fragment of what was once a wide-reaching area of lowland bogs.

We head onto the bog path and walk a short way into the centre of the Moss. Eddie tells me about the survey he is currently undertaking of Rannoch Moor in the Scottish Highlands. He spends days poring over satellite images of the site, identifying evidence of different activities and infrastructure, such as grazing, sheilings, and charcoal burning platforms. Eddie wants to counter the idea that places like this are ‘wicked wild wastes’, by developing archaeological narratives about moors and bogs. Rannoch Moor has been mentioned a few times on these walks. Like Michael, I think of Lenzie Moss as a miniature landscape that recalls the vast expanse of Rannoch. Despite the difference in scale, both places have complex histories of use and inhabitation.

We reach the southeast woodland and make our way through the trees to the ruins. I’m sure that Eddie will have some thoughts about the old buildings. I have always assumed that the concrete platform that I have explored with Meike and others, was part of the light railway that was used for the peat extraction industry. Eddie agrees that this is likely and says it would be easy to confirm that by checking the plans for the site. While he is careful to frame his response as purely speculative, Eddie offers an alternative theory. He tells me that during the Second World War, a number of fake townships were created by positioning lights in rural areas away from major urban centres, in an effort to trick the Luftwaffe into wasting their bombs. Whenever large concrete platforms are located in places like this, that is always a possibility. Alternatively, as the Moss was an important location for fuel and close to the railway line, this could be the base of a barrage balloon, the gas-filled deterrents of low-flying aircraft, which could be brought down by the steel cabling tethering them to their concrete bases. While these theories might not be accurate in this case, I will now be on the search for such structures on future walks.

We exit the Moss into the station carpark and pass the Nature Reserve notice board, with the Friends of Lenzie Moss map of the site. After walking through history with Eddie, I am reminded that the current layout is only a snapshot in time. Bogs are often thought of archives of past events, whose traces are preserved for generations. Pollen, metals, artefacts and the dead are buried deep in the ground and are later discovered by farmers, peat cutters and archaeologists. But bogs have futures too. If we can teach young people about them now, then there will be people to care about them, visit them and stay close to them as they change along with the next generation.

Jan 16, 2026

It is the last day of the year, and I am walking with four-year-old Minnie and her mum, Jenni. Jenni and I were in the same tutorial group when we started university in 2000, and we have stayed close friends ever since. We have been in each other’s lives for quarter of a century now, which is both amazing and alarming. We are all spending Hogmanay with James and Annabel and their family in Bishopbriggs, but there is just enough time for a walk round the Moss before the festivities begin.

We would have had longer, but shortly after Minnie and Jenni left their home in Galashiels in the Scottish Borders, their car broke down. Thankfully, after the AA and Jenni’s mum came to the rescue, they made it to Lenzie shortly before sunset. We set off quickly, keen to complete our circle while we can still see the paths. Minnie loves being outside and she is full of energy and excitement, which seems only to have increased after four hours in the car (much of which was spent happily watching films on her mum’s phone).

As we walk up Bea’s Path, Minnie sets the pace. She alternates between slow motion and hyperspeed, as only a preschooler can. I am called to action, ‘Come on, Uncle Dave!’ While 95% of people in my life now call me David, there is a small proportion of my oldest friends, who have resolutely stuck with Dave. These people indoctrinate their children so that I will never be fully free of my diminutive past.

I teach Minnie Ruairidh’s ‘Moss animal game’ and she enjoys picking out the imposters from our sets of bog inhabitants: a fox, a hedgehog and a giraffe; a pigeon, a hippopotamus and a deer. We don’t see the latter today, but there are plenty of pigeons nesting in the bare branches, which Minnie is keen for me to photograph. Minnie stops to crunch the ice with her wellies.

Next week, Minnie will start full time at nursery, where she will spend two full days of each week outside. I tell Jenni how much Iona got out of her time at an outdoor nursery, and I remember my recent chat with Brian about the Residential Outdoor Education Bill. As a primary head teacher, Jenni is well versed in the shifts and turns of Scottish education policy. It has been interesting to discover that there are connections in our work on interdisciplinary learning and teaching.

Minnie wants to race, so I sprint alongside her on the north woods path, maintaining a strategic second place. The race evolves and Jenni joins in too. We hop, jump and skip along. Each time we pass a bench, Minnie demonstrates her gymnastic skills and uses them as balance beams. We pass the bin by Heather Drive, which is overflowing with coffee cups and dog poo bags. The service has paused for the holiday, which highlights how regularly this site needs to be cleared, and how well-looked after it usually is. Minnie asks me why I am photographing a bin.

Minnie picks moor-grass and pokes me with it. I retaliate and we battle with grass swords. In the final moments of daylight, an otherworldly atmosphere descends on the Moss. The moon shines brightly above the mire and shadows move in amongst the trees. Minnie picks up on this and says she is scared, but an encouraging word from her mum soon sets her mind at ease. We watch the lights appear on the urban horizon to the west and we look out across the heather, and I think how ideal the conditions would be for a sighting of the ghostly lights of a will-o’-the-wisp, dancing across the bog.

And then, Minnie falls over. I am leading the way along the muddy path, and I miss the moment it happens. When I turn back, she is being lifted out of a puddle, and her hands and knees are covered in black muck. Minnie is not happy. The next ten minutes are focussed on consoling her. We follow the meandering pathway through the trees, and Jenni has to carry her distraught child. I lead the way, directing her round boggy areas and looking for the easiest route back to the main path.

Jenni finally has some success when she tells Minnie that she can wipe her hands on her mum. I also offer up my hat, which is refused at first, but later it helps to lift her spirits again. Little by little, Minnie cheers up. But she is upset that she will have to change her favourite dress, chosen specifically for the new year’s celebrations. As we emerge from the woodland, Jenni has mud smeared across her face like a camouflaged soldier.

Back at my house, Jenni gets Minnie cleaned up and changed, while I load the car with bottles and boxes. Tonight, we will eat together, play games with the children, watch television, drink champagne, welcome in the new year in good company.

Last Hogmanay, Jenni and Minnie joined me and my children in the Lake District, and we jumped into the new year together – a Danish tradition that I learned from my brother-in-law, which requires standing on chairs and leaping off into a prosperous future. Jenni and I have decided we will do this every year. I like the positivity, the energy, and the action of meeting any new experiences that the coming year might bring.

Since I leapt into 2025 with Jenni, the year has brought me many things, and among the most valuable have been the 34 walks that I have completed round Lenzie Moss. I have walked with friends, family, neighbours, ecologists, scientists, artists, writers, and I have met several new people from the local area. I have circled the Moss in summer, autumn and winter; early in the morning and late at night. I have come to know this place well and I have learnt a lot from its pathways and its peat bog, and from the stories of the people who live and work here. I am happy to be bringing this year to an end by sharing this place with my old friend and her wonderful little girl.

Dec 31, 2025

From shared beginnings, my younger brother Phil and I have taken quite different paths through life. Phil went to university in Sheffield, as did my sister, so they were always closer to our family home in Derbyshire. Since I moved to Scotland 25 years ago, we have not spent huge amounts of time together, and when we have it has generally been during gatherings with the rest of the family. Phil now works as a finance director for a large outsourcing company in London, where he recently relocated. He has a very busy social life and travels a lot with friends and through work (recent trips include India, South America and Svalbard). There have been very few times when it has just been the two of us, but as Phil is the first to arrive to Lenzie for Christmas this year, we have a few hours together on the morning of Christmas Eve. He is keen to join me for a walk round the Moss before the rest of the family start to appear.

Phil arrived by train from London late last night and we shared some cheese and wine and caught up before bed. He is not yet officially on holiday and today he has ‘a big deal to tie up’ before he can switch off from work. He is receiving emails from the second he wakes up. Our walk will have to be early and relatively quick, and then we will set up an office space for him in his nephew’s bedroom. By tomorrow, there will be several people and dogs here.

We join the Moss at the end of Fern Avenue, and I notice the smell of gas once again. I phoned the National Gas Emergency Service when I walked by yesterday morning and there were engineers in and out of my neighbours’ houses for the rest of the day. I can’t help but feel guilty that one of them is now without a working boiler, meaning that they might be missing heating or an oven over Christmas. But as my brother rightly points out, I would feel a lot worse if I hadn’t called it in and there had been an accident.

We step away from domestic infrastructure, and into the darkness of Bea’s Path. It is strikingly quiet and we talk with hushed voices. But it is also busier than expected and we encounter a parade of walkers, some presumably commuting to the station and others with dogs. We see the blinding torchlight first, moving unpredictably through the blackness and difficult to gauge for speed or distance. Then a mumbled or nodded greeting as they pass. When I took an early morning walk with Cathy, it was midsummer and the sun had risen long before we set off. Greetings were much warmer then, but now it seems that nobody is ready or able to connect.

Along the north woods path, the lights from the houses remind us that we are never far from human inhabitations. Phil has recently moved to Putney, and he is close to a number of large green spaces – Putney Common, Richmond Park and Wimbledon Common. These spaces are important to him and offer a valuable escape from a frenetic urban life. He walks and runs in these parks and says that in places, it feels like you are in the middle of the Peak District. He mentions Richmond’s red and fallow deer, and I tell him about Lenzie’s roes.

My brother knows a lot about deer. His friend is a professional deer stalker, and Phil has often joined him on shoots. Phil even completed a qualification last year, so has a lot of current knowledge of deer management and ecology. His friend has recently taken a new post at Kielder Forest in Northumberland and is busy culling twenty per cent of the herds there. Phil hopes to join him there in the next few weeks.

I have been entirely convinced of the need to manage deer in this way. Deer have huge impacts on the environment, preventing the regeneration of woodland and limiting biodiversity. In the absence of natural predators such as wolves or lynx, their numbers have to be controlled by shooting, which is the only viable way of managing populations at scale. I am very sure that Phil practices deer stalking with the utmost care and responsibility. I am equally sure that it is something I will never choose to do.

Phil talks about the quality of time he now spends in the outdoors through this hobby. He says that looking for something in the landscape means slowing down and attending to the environment in a different way. He talks about sitting and waiting at dawn or dusk, alert to the slightest change and witness to birds and animals’ movements in time and space. These are the things that matter to him. I think of what Jill told me about peat cutting on Lewis: that people who extract peat there know how to do it sustainably and maintain a deep respect for the land. These ostensibly violent practices of rural life – cutting, shooting, culling – can foster a much greater sense of care and responsibility than is usually found in urban and peri-urban green spaces.

Phil has not come prepared for a muddy walk round the Moss (he has travelled light as his next stop is Marrakesh). He opts for the south wood path rather than trekking across the bog. As the sky lightens, we watch the trains speeding past on their way to Edinburgh, notably emptier than usual but still transporting those busy professionals who need to tie up their various deals on Christmas Eve. Phil also needs to get back to the laptop. I will prepare for my parents and children arriving while he works, and we will all be sitting round the kitchen table before the day returns to darkness.

While we have circled the Moss more quickly than I am accustomed to on these walks, it hasn’t felt rushed. We have still been able to slow down, attune to the environment, and take notice of the changing light. It strikes me that what I am doing through this project is deepening my connection with this place, getting to know it better, learning to read the landscape and know its patterns and cycles. Phil and I might do things differently sometimes, and our journeys might take us in different directions, and play out at different speeds and scales, but as I complete my early morning walk with my brother on Christmas Eve, I am reminded, and reassured, that we share the same values.

Dec 24, 2025