Sea of grass

The sea of grass in the wind.

The end of observation.

And a new mast.

This is the remains of the Kincraig Gun Battery overlooking the Firth of Forth (and MacDuff's Cave). These gun emplacements or pillboxes have unusually in my experience been deliberately demolished.

In addition to remaking these concrete jigsaws, there are other pleasures in store on the terraced ridges where the barracks themselves would have stood in the past.

You can find out more here at Canmore https://canmore.org.uk/site/55122/kincraig-battery

PS the video at the beginning gives you a little taste of what it must have been like being stationed here and keeping a lonely watch over the Forth.

Creative walks

Found myself walking round in unexpected places on the way to events, readings, plays and other more routine visits to the supermarket or dropping off the kids. A carpark in Newcastle, outside an old nightclub in Dumfries, randoming on the Glasgow subway and Galashiels late on a workday evening.

I like these spaces. The fruitful time I can spend between here and there. The commute. The unengaged freedom.

The way the streetlight might suddenly hit a mundane object. And make things quite curious.

The combination, the presentation, the hit of surprise. The stop I didn't expect to make.

A road that suddenly becomes a slab of light. Or a field becomes a pathway.

As you can probably guess I am in a writing phase. Right now.

wetlands, flow, and questions of scale

I am off to Dumfries tomorrow to take part in Borderlands 2 - a gathering that takes us first to the reserve Kirkconnell Flow to learn how to take a geological core sample. I will be bringing my binoculars too for this part. Good place for warblers I think. And then for a workshop in Dumfries the following day.

Looking at the peat layers in the sample feels to me like a very grounding activity. But I hope to be bumping into some different people and ideas too. Which likely will have the opposite effect.

These kind of days feel a little like an open door. And I am looking forward to walking through.

Borderlands describes its genesis:

For a number of years now, a few of us from northern England and Scotland have been making the trek into the deep south to attend an annual conference/symposium type of event, which brings together scientists, artists, writers and other creative oddjobs, to meet, share ideas and enthusiasms, learn and generally network. The common ground is nature, in the broadest sense – (without getting into questions of what is or isn’t natural!).
More information on this ongoing project led by environmental artist Kate Foster, Geoff Sample and Malcolm Green is available here https://borderlandsnetwork.wordpress.com/borderlands-2/

And will necessarily be also seeking out a bit of Burns once in Dumfriesshire too...of which more later

#doingthingsdifferently

Had a minibus trip round the Borders today with a difference - en route encountered just about every kind of arts space and practitioner imaginable.

In the Scottish Borders, there certainly is a dreamlike quality to the arts scene.

More to come on this: tour, stravaig or walk...