Scotland and the Russian Doll
4 days after arriving on Arran I left again – briefly – to attend the conference: Imagining Natural Scotland. The first speaker Colin Tudge warned of the dangers of imagining Scotland in isolation, instead he suggested we see it as a microcosm, a ‘stand in’ for the planet. Having just witnessed first-hand how Arran appears to be a ‘Scotland in miniature’, there emerged a vision – rather like the Russian nesting dolls – of Scotland as stand-in for ‘planet’, Arran for Scotland, The NTS estate on Arran, with its blend of shoreline, formal gardens, woodlands and fell as ‘stand-in’ for Arran; so that in turn I began to envisage the residency process becoming yet a further nesting doll in the sequence. Which could be considered a pretty tall order, however – again at the conference – we were reminded to: Think global, Act local.
“… pine woods have a strange habit of wandering…”
I love that sentence Sara Maitland’s “Gossip from the Forest”. Her explanation is that you cannot coppice or pollard Scots pines. Cut they are killed, they will not regenerate on their old roots and the seeds tend not to grow under the canopy of the parent tree: “… pine woods crawl across the hill sides, changing the shape of the land.”
Nothing stays the same.
In the gardens of Brodick, Tree Ferns – native of New Zealand – have self-seeded wherever they like… and they like it here.
First day – first beguiling walk – I’m standing at the foot of a giant sequoia (Sequoiadendron giganteum); one of the largest, most peculiar trees on the planet, there tucked at its base I spot a wee native oak, unplanned and shocking in its fragility and familiarity of form. I pull out my notebook and write ‘nature of change’.
