Scotland and the Russian Doll
4 days after arriving on Arran I left again – briefly – to attend the conference: Imagining Natural Scotland. The first speaker Colin Tudge warned of the dangers of imagining Scotland in isolation, instead he suggested we see it as a microcosm, a ‘stand in’ for the planet. Having just witnessed first-hand how Arran appears to be a ‘Scotland in miniature’, there emerged a vision – rather like the Russian nesting dolls – of Scotland as stand-in for ‘planet’, Arran for Scotland, The NTS estate on Arran, with its blend of shoreline, formal gardens, woodlands and fell as ‘stand-in’ for Arran; so that in turn I began to envisage the residency process becoming yet a further nesting doll in the sequence. Which could be considered a pretty tall order, however – again at the conference – we were reminded to: Think global, Act local.
