I am of the Scottish persuasion.

I’ve lived here my whole life and love it. I love its landscapes, even if they leave a lot to be desired sometimes. However, there are moments you get in Scotland when you’re standing in a truly healthy, living ecosystem. Moments where you feel how right it is at some level and you can’t help but smile. These places I’ve come across are a large part of the reason I write.

I can’t promise what I choose to write will be interesting. As things stand at the moment, I’m mostly just writing for myself because I enjoy writing. It gives me an excuse to re-read all my favorite nature books and really take them in by putting down what I’ve read in words.

That being said, I’ll probably focus on writing about the natural world. What’s in it, how each thing fits into the whole, and how you can protect it. And most importantly, why you should protect it. Though I guess the why comes naturally after you begin to learn more.

Moving on though, I’ll do a little bit about me then and we can draw this one to a close.

One of my strongest memories as a kid was sitting looking out the window at the birds in the garden. Hours would go by and you genuinely get absorbed with what’s going on. The first 10 minutes nothing would really happen, but if you happened to sit a little longer everything would kind of come alive. There was so much more happening in my garden than I realized, and it was sitting at that window that really fired my curiosity.

I began to learn the names of all the birds in my garden, and then seeing the genuine pleasure my parents and grandmother would take in my knowledge made me want to learn more. I moved beyond the garden and learned the names of all the Scottish birds I could. From there I expanded onto plants and mammals and a bit of everything really.

My love of the natural world grew.

Fast forwards a few years and I finished my degree in Conservation Biology and started working in the conservation industry. Working on sites all across Scotland I got to see some of the best and worst when it comes to Scotland’s natural world. These experiences definitely built in me a desire to help expand the best bits and show people what Scotland can become. But mostly it started to drive me to show more and more people that appearances can be deceiving. What you might assume is healthy may actually be a degrading landscape that focuses on looking pretty over being functional.

I want to help people realise that nature labeled as ‘scruffy‘, ‘overgrown‘ or ‘messy‘ is not actually a bad thing. Nature is complex and chaotic, its not always going to be pretty.

Credits:

(Top picture) Photo by Pixabay on Pexels.com

(Birdy) Photo by Aaron J Hill on Pexels.com