The SCL Project

When I remember Arran as a child, I do not remember a list of approved experiences. I remember the Pirnmill sandbank and how shallow the water became at low tide; spoutfish, flounders, dogfish, lugworm, ragworm, sand eels, “clammy doos,” cockles, welks, and mussels. I remember practical knowledge travelling through family: tide tables and seabed maps, where cod or ling might be found, fish coming back in the rowing boat up to our knees, then moving outward through relatives and neighbours.

I remember watching swallows move from eggs to hatchlings, flight, and an empty nest; seahorses appearing through a first snorkel mask near Machrie Bay jetty; learning the ecology of rockpools along Machrie shore; eels in the burn; the farm near Machrie Moor, Auchagallon stone circle, the cairn, King’s Caves, the family shop, tearoom and garage, and Grampa’s glass-plate photographs now held in the heritage museum.

But Arran was never only the shore. I spent long stretches playing and camping among the hazel trees running up from the start of the burn in Pirnmill. I remember enough of the hills with Grampa, and of farm life more generally, to understand different terrain: knowing where the boggy ground was so you did not get stuck, and learning to catch rabbits by recognising their tracks. I remember looking for deer and buzzards and always hoping an eagle might appear. I saw my first dragonfly there when I was very young and was astounded by it; the next time I saw one was in China in 2008. They still mesmerise me.

None of those memories is only scenery. They contain names, attention, patience, practical competence, family history, ecological rhythm, community exchange, and the feeling of being inside a place rather than merely visiting it.