my second home

John Muir Country Park, 1 August

I can’t believe that I’ve shared nine posts since launching this blog and yet this post, the tenth, is my first about John Muir Country Park in East Lothian. I’ve been wondering why. After all, this place has been my second home for years, our most frequent place to walk. Indeed, referring to this place as my ‘second’ home feels a little off. If home isn’t simply a building but is the place where you feel most at ease, most settled, most yourself, then this would be my first home.

And it is a ‘home’ filled with memories of our times here with Harris and Bracken. Of winter walks with frost clinging to the ground. Of summer evenings, watching the sun glow over Hedderwick Sands, photographing the view a hundred times and more. Of spring days, spotting the first green buds of the ferns as they pushed through the earth, unfurling into the new season. Of autumn, as those same ferns shrunk back and receded from their dense summer glory, carpeting the woodland floor in faded copper.

Of logs we perched on to take in the view towards Links Wood, on the other side of the water. Of favourite logs the lads perched on over the years for photos. Of favourite trees, admired and acknowledged and photographed as we walked. Of windy days when the pines thrashed above us, the woodland full of life; a sound that immediately felt like peace, like a mental cleanse, even though it was so loud.

Storm Arwen decimated Hedderwick Plantation as the storm raged through on the afternoon of Friday 26 November 2021 and overnight into the following day, by which point an estimated 85% of the trees here had been felled and ripped apart and broken by the ferocious winds. But, before Arwen, we would walk here on bright summer days, seeking shade along the winding woodland paths, dappled light sparkling through the canopy above. This was our place of shelter in wild weather, enclosed safely, we always felt, within those trees, or on rainy days, the pine bark blackened by the water, each tree now a tall, dark sentinel as their scent hung heavy in the air.

Although evergreen, this place changed so much between seasons as the woodland floor was transformed with those ferns and as grasses and wildflowers grew lush around the edges of the wood in summer. We’d often spot deer grazing, and there was that one walk in the woods where I spotted a mother and her young fawn, close but surrounded by vegetation, a shaft of sunlight illuminating the fawn’s movement.

I have such distinct memories of walking here, following Richard and the lads along those narrow paths, with birdsong around us. Of evenings when the late, low light would sweep across Hedderwick Sands and land on the curved shoreline where the wood literally meets the beach, the sandy bank and the pine branches above glowing amber in the sunset. Of one evening back in July 2018 when we had a picnic on the beach, perched on a log, watching the sun set, Harris and Bracken paddling in the water. The lads could be tentative about this, but Harris strode in that night, going deeper, the water gleaming, and I photographed him there, holding that memory.

And there was the summer equinox of 2019, when again we packed a picnic and perched on the bench that once sat overlooking Hedderwick Sands, below the four pines that curve in towards each other, their branches entwined. There was no drama to the scene that night as it was low tide and the bay was empty, the sky offering a gentle glow as the sun finally dipped after 10pm. We sat and absorbed the calm of this, Harris on the bench, Bracken in the sand below, the trees wrapping over us.

Harris and Bracken loved this walk, this place, with its fragrant mix of woodland and sand and earth and ferns and grasses and marshland and beach. And after November 2021, when I realised that what I was feeling about this destroyed woodland was grief, grief for my grounding place, I watched the lads as they cantered and sniffed, as they accepted the changed landscape and adapted, and I realised that this was the way forwards. I hadn't lost this grounding place but it had changed, and I would photograph and record those changes over the coming months as my way of processing this. The lads taught me about acceptance.

And now we walk here with Raf, and watch him exploring this place, a place that has changed again this year as the fallen and hanging trees have been cleared, the logs piled feet-high along the wider paths that intersect the wood. I’d have found this clearance harder had the lads still been walking here, but somehow these scenes of chainsawed pines and churned earth have only echoed my own heart and my mind over these months.

And perhaps that’s why I’ve found this place hard to photograph - other than the edge overlooking Hedderwick Sands, where trees still stand - and also harder to write about. Because, where to start? Our last walk here with Harris was on October 17 last year. He was wearing a favourite Alqo Wasi knit and while our walk was slow, because his lungs were finding it harder by this point, he looked so much better than he was in reality. We walked down onto the beach just below that first photo above, to a favourite log, and I captured my last photos of Harris, gazing up towards Richard.

Where to start with a place that holds so much, and so many memories, both shared and unspoken?

I guess the answer is simply to… start. To write. To share these new memories that we’re creating, as on this Thursday evening, the first day of August, walking here as the sun was setting. It was late and we had missed the full drama of the sunset, but caught this gentle light glowing over the sands to the edge of the woods. As you can see from a few of these photos, this really is the edge of the woodland here. The shore just below is scattered with the fallen, trees that have given way to erosion rather than directly through storms, but each of those storms and high tides washes away more of the sandy soil that roots these trees to the earth.

This small corner of East Lothian will keep on evolving as the programme of replanting Hedderwick Plantation begins, and as new trees grow here, in time, while the weather and the water slowly but surely pulls more into the sea.

John Muir Country Park, East Lothian, August 1 2024.

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