Related
100 Circles
Lenzie Moss is a designated Local Nature Reserve in East Dunbartonshire, near the city of Glasgow, UK. It is a boggy and marshy area with a history of peat extraction. The Moss now serves as a vital habitat for diverse wildlife, including water vole and bog rosemary, and the green hairstreak butterfly, alongside areas of silver birch woodland. My name is David Overend. I moved to the edge of Lenzie Moss in the summer of 2023 and began to regularly take the 25 minute walk round its border, sometimes daily. I have walked with friends, my children, and once with an expert on water vole habitats. Mainly I have walked alone: as a break from work; to start the day with some fresh air; in search of kestrels and deer. Every time I complete the circle, I notice, learn or experience something new. The walk has become something of a ritual, a way of marking the change in the seasons. Since I started to follow this route, I have had the feeling that there is more to discover and that this repeated circular walk might lead me somewhere. So, I am walking it 100 more times, each time with a different person from the local community, or a visiting artist or researcher with some interest in peatlands. As I share these encounters on this blog, I hope that a co-authored text will emerge, bringing a series of walked dialogues to a wider readership, and perhaps finding a way for the Moss to tell its stories. If you would like to be part of this project and join me for a walk round Lenzie Moss, please get in touch.
Related
100 Circles
Lenzie Moss is a designated Local Nature Reserve in East Dunbartonshire, near the city of Glasgow, UK. It is a boggy and marshy area with a history of peat extraction. The Moss now serves as a vital habitat for diverse wildlife, including water vole and bog rosemary, and the green hairstreak butterfly, alongside areas of silver birch woodland. My name is David Overend. I moved to the edge of Lenzie Moss in the summer of 2023 and began to regularly take the 25 minute walk round its border, sometimes daily. I have walked with friends, my children, and once with an expert on water vole habitats. Mainly I have walked alone: as a break from work; to start the day with some fresh air; in search of kestrels and deer. Every time I complete the circle, I notice, learn or experience something new. The walk has become something of a ritual, a way of marking the change in the seasons. Since I started to follow this route, I have had the feeling that there is more to discover and that this repeated circular walk might lead me somewhere. So, I am walking it 100 more times, each time with a different person from the local community, or a visiting artist or researcher with some interest in peatlands. As I share these encounters on this blog, I hope that a co-authored text will emerge, bringing a series of walked dialogues to a wider readership, and perhaps finding a way for the Moss to tell its stories. If you would like to be part of this project and join me for a walk round Lenzie Moss, please get in touch.
What does the city sound like in extreme heat? Water misters spray onto patios and sidewalk restaurants. Cars and trains continue to fill and pervade the streets. People walk to work where they spend their days in air-conditioned buildings, and others labor beneath makeshift canopies and under the cover of hard hats. These are but a few aspects of the urban ambiance of a desert city. This project was built up from recordings made over the course of the 100 days of over 100-degree Fahrenheit temperatures in the summer of 2024 in Phoenix, Arizona. With each passing year, new record temperatures are recorded in the city. But what of the sounds? Already walking every few days in the city as part of a research project to understand the urban atmosphere under these conditions, I began making field recordings to further combine with my ethnographic writing and photographs. The result is a composite, and indeed, another kind of “image” of the city. This soundwalk accompanies “Issue One: Devices” of my research-based zine project, co-authored with human geographer Anne-Lise Boyer, entitled Heat Diary: Visualizing the City in Extreme Heat.
Heat Walk
CC-BY-NC: Brian F. O'Neill
|
Credits
Brian F. O'Neill
Colleague Annelise Boyer (https://www.anneliseboyer.com) contributed writing to the non-aural aspect of the project

You must be logged in to post a comment.