Walking with raindrops
This week's newsletter is written by Stephen Rutt, award-winning naturalist and author who will be the guest in this month's Walking Writers Salon on Tuesday June 16.
As I write, another short, sharp shock of rain is falling over Dumfries. Rain in Scotland is not news: it is a cliché, a summer holiday spent indoors or a flooded high street in winter. But the nature of rain is changing. While the amount of water on Earth remains broadly constant, we are getting drier summers and wetter winters: droughts and floods. Even Galloway gets water stress in some summers – as impossible as that is to believe in summers like this one. And then our relationship with that water is perplexing. Our Victorian sewer system is not fit for purpose in the modern world, spilling its contents into rivers when overwhelmed by heavy rain – the rain that is only getting heavier.
We have lost the reverence that water deserves. Because water is life – essential to all life, its existence a miracle, its traces what we look for when we explore space – but we have a track record of not cherishing life.
So I followed a water droplet as it worked its way through the complex web of the water cycle. I walked into the Southern Uplands, where three great rivers begin. I walked the lochs of Galloway, where time has altered the water from clear to cloudy; abundant to dead (a similar story in the chalk streams of England). I walked beside the vast bogs of the Flow Country and the remnants of England’s fens: two wetlands that were almost completely lost, destroyed by a society that didn’t appreciate them for what they were. As a nature writer (or birdwatcher with a metaphor habit), I see my role as making visible what we can’t see.
I concluded with hope. Because dire though the situation can seem, exciting conservation projects are quietly happening. And on foot, senses tuned into the nature around me, I saw, heard and smelled resurgent life in The Waterlands of Scotland and England.
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2026-06-16 18:00 UTC
· Online
We are excited to have award-winning naturalist and author Stephen Rutt as our Walking Writers Salon guest in June. Too long have we taken water for granted – it is a crucial element that keeps our world alive, without it there is no life. Following the path of a raindrop to the sea, from the Keep reading
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2026-06-24 17:00 UTC
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The Sounding Art Trail project is funded through a grant from the British Council’s Connections through Culture fund and is set to raise awareness of climate change, by sharing soundscape recordings along long distance trails. The project included site-specific productions, sound-focused research and participatory proc... Keep reading
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Upcoming events
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2026-06-16 18:00 UTC
· Online
We are excited to have award-winning naturalist and author Stephen Rutt as our Walking Writers Salon guest in June. Too long have we taken water for granted – it is... Keep reading
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2026-06-24 17:00 UTC
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The Sounding Art Trail project is funded through a grant from the British Council’s Connections through Culture fund and is set to raise awareness of climate change... Keep reading
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2026-06-30 18:00 UTC
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3 - 5 Jul, 2026 UTC
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2026-07-06 21:00 UTC
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