Walking, writing, healing
It is a late Sunday afternoon. The sun is low and fading, but the day holds the promise of spring. We tracked Figgate burn upstream from it’s final spill into the Forth. It glittered alongside us, disappearing underground, beneath roads and railway bridges, to resurface, leading us to the foot of Figgate Park. It pooled into a reservoir with, at it’s centre, a pond where otters sometimes play and children feed ducks breadcrumbs from their fingertips.
The weather was unkind to us, again. Damp, bitter February, and barely above zero. That was no reason not to venture outdoors. A neighbour had told us that she sometimes runs from our home in Portobello to Musselburgh, then onto the lagoons.
Blue and lush with a jewel-green bottom, and skirted by tropical forests, is what fictional lagoons conjure for me. Places of mystery: the splash of leaping, neon-scaled fish, the silent plummet of a stone. Adventure. Still, winter in Scotland could bring some natural beauty, at least; a retreat, a haven.
