The Night Before I Depart (Giants in the Forest, chapter 1.1)

The night before I depart, I spend a few hours looking over maps and my schedule. The first week is going to be spent in a part of Scotland that is unfamiliar – the phrase I’ll hear, and begin to use, is ‘underrated.’ The Borders conjures up ideas of conflict – I am sure that 7.84 did a play about it in the 1990s at Tramway. Since my main guide to the Scottish landscape, a battered copy of Julian Cope’s Modern Antiquarian, seems not to have a section dedicated to Peebles and Galashiels, I am stepping into the unknown.

My intention for this week is to travel light. Unfortunately, I am breaking my travels at Falkland for a weekend of camping. My rucksack will contain my tent but, realising that I have plotted a couple of long walks (long by my lazy fitness levels), I dump the sleeping bag for a cotton slip. I take a single book – Nietzsche’s Birth of Tragedy. I’ve been meaning to read it for years, it’s slim enough and doesn’t have all those distracting proclamations about God’s mortality that I don’t understand. In retrospect, a water bottle would have been a good idea.

The Giants in the Forest are an intriguing project: they have been placed around Scotland in collaboration with local groups, designed by Vision Mechanics – a company I know as one of the imaginative contemporary puppet masters that Scotland is breeding. I have an outline of their purpose – once in place, they become both a focus for local activity and a nice surprise for unsuspecting walkers. My own purpose, a blogger travelling between the sites, is less clear. I am part of the documentation, at least. I’m winding myself up to bring something more dramatic to my responses.

I’m more used to cities, and theatres, and art galleries.  I relate the locations to pop up versions of an art space – although most of the Giants were put in place last year and have already seen a summer and winter, I am focused on them as sculptures. Going out into the countryside, I am worrying about long walks and how well my choice of suit will hold up in what appears to be the height of summer. Having decided that I would risk hitching for certain sections of the journey, I’ve gone with a natty pin stripe. It does clash with the red rucksack.

I check the schedule. I am looking at the first three days out, ignoring later excursions – my brain gets confused at the complexity of different transports over the month. It’s Bowhill first, and a long journey. It starts on the train, then goes to a series of buses. Finally, I am going to walk from Selkirk to the Estate. I am hoping that the final stage, down to the Giants, isn’t going to be a problem for my smart shoes.

I have a look at the introduction of The Birth. This copy has some useless notes, and seems to clarify the entire idea in two pages. Its vision of nature – wild, untamed and probably hostile – doesn’t cheer me up.