“The land knows you, even when you are lost.” Robin Wall Kimmerer
“Until we understand what the land is, we are at odds with everything we touch.” Wendell Berry
We are in trouble, deep trouble.
I am losing track of records broken this year, that it is dizzying me. There has been an acceleration in warming and breakdown of our earth’s vital systems.
We live in an unreality of what is happening to us, to our planet. It is not reflected in our everyday. We jump in a car. We go to the supermarket. Everything seems normal. There is no panic. The sky has not fallen in
Yet we are on the edge of disaster and it is hard to know what to do. Given the scale and the enormity of the cascade of problems coming down the road we should be sprung into full and beautiful action. But we are not. There are a lot of other things to worry about. It is hard to know what to do. Sometimes it all feels a bit futile, out of reach, pointless. Deep down, we know inside, we know the way we are living is not right. However, our culture is not screaming back at us that we are in an emergency. Very little at national or local level gives validity to this naked truth.
I am uncertain how to tackle it. How to talk about it. I can’t look away. I have to try. I have to go in.
There seems no better place to start than with the land. To have the land as my teacher and get to know Paisley and its surroundings.
I have to ground myself back in some tangible reality.
The start of the residency is exciting. There is so much to learn and map out as I try to hold the big picture in my mind’s eye. An overwhelming jumble where you have to trust that the important research points will naturally sink in when it all settles down.
I have been finding it very useful to think about it within the frame of the concept of the bioregion from https://bioregion.org.uk/:
A bioregion invites us to inhabit a place in a way that is full of relationship. Seeing where the natural boundaries of our bioregion are, we can then see the many eco-systems and human systems alive within it. All of these systems like fresh water and biodiversity or transport and health are connected. Bioregioning is the collective practice of bringing vitality to these connections, angling the systems towards regeneration, and taking actions for a climate resilient and biodiverse future.
Bioregioning is a way of understanding the land as a connected whole, with all the layers that make it up from soil, rock, plant, people, culture, animal and weather. A bioregion can often be typified by the catchment of its rivers. We are part of the Clyde bioregion that stretches from the Southern Uplands all the way to the Firth of Clyde. Within that, w can consider the rivers that flow through Paisley such as the Black and White Cart and their tributaries as one bioregional unit.
It is with that I jumped on my bike and followed the White cart as it runs through town, charting it to where it enters the Clyde. Much to my embarrassment I have never been inside the Abbey so that felt the right place to start.
And yes! As it turns out, the monks had considerable power over the land from the moment it was founded. They owned huge swathes not only around Renfrewshire but as far away as the Ayrshire and the borders. They had control over local game, forests, fisheries, mills, mining activity, farmland and an orchard. They would have collected rent from local farmers and had rules in how it was managed.
Startling to consider that up to this point the river is tidal. Is this one of the reasons why the monks chose this spot? There is a silty and muddy tinge to everything on the river bank.
The river feels forgotten and wild from here down as it cuts through the town. It feels like it sits down below; forgotten, abandoned bikes, shopping trolleys, an oily film on the surface, an occasional rat. Hints of the old industrial port. A good chunk of it is buried under the shopping centre. A jungle of native and invasive plants. Chaotic and opportunistic river ecologies. I try to avoid getting jagged by the towers of hogweed springing up avoiding their highly poisonous sap. What pollutants present/past linger in the sediments of the river bed?
Out towards the airport under the motorway. Hard to ignore its magnetic pull and all the business operations clustered around it. The offer of progress, growth, all kinds of services and jobs. Flying has a glamorous image, it is addictive, it is seductive. None of it has any hope of being sustainable. Could Paisley learn to live without it?
I am reminded of a recent article of the dangers to the human body of exposure to Ultra fine particles for those that live near airports. They penetrate through the barriers of the lungs:
https://web.archive.org/web/20240625200737/https://www.independent.co.uk/travel/news-and-advice/airports-planes-particles-air-health-b2568340.html
Moving out into the fields and farms. Can see Paisley from the outsid,e sitting amongst the background braes and the flat carse lands. Abundant wildflowers at the side of roads – planted by human hand. A farmer spraying winter wheat with fungicides disturbs a darting hare. A dead end but past the sewage works I find a way to the river’s edge. The grasses change, sculpted in shapes by wind and tide. The water table starts to creep up. Bubbling gas from the salt marsh – is this trapped air or methane?
I stop for a while to watch.
An oil tanker comes in, buffeted along on either side by barges. A sea of buttercups and the Erskine bridge. Two lads sitting on rubble on the Clydebank side take it all in.
Burdock, Mugwort, Elderflower, Hawthorn
Meadowsweet, Wild Rose, Valerian, Japanese knotweed
A fleet of blue tit babies sweeps in. What a sound they make!
I get out my recorder. Another farmer is spraying his crops. He challenges me on what I am doing. “You know there are cows in there?” There aren’t any. He has every right to ask but I feel I should not be standing here, witnessing this honest scene, that it is not my space.
There is a tension between the town and countryside – a competition for space and for ideas. City folk should stay where they belong in the city and not venture out. We don’t get a say. It is not our space, we don’t know what the land needs, we don’t grow food, it is not our territory and we should stick to the town life that we know. These two worlds could not be more apart and divisive sometimes.
Those who own the land get to decide what to do with it . The farmer feels he has no choice but to spray his crops for economic reasons or no crops and no food! for the town but at the same time this year has seen another crash in insect population. The flowers have been especially bare.
Is there some kind of bridge? Can there be a compromise?
I find out later the community in Inchinnan were effective in a community buyout, saving Teucheen Wood from private development. They are now managing the wood in the interests of locals and biodiversity. https://www.inchinnandt.com/teucheen-wood
In a digital art residency, I could easily lose sight of where I am placed and forget what I am trying to make work about. I have to keep the dialogue open and venture out.
