“…pine woods have a strange habit of wandering…”

I love that sentence from 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’.