Snapshots: Scots Pine

From a distance, they mark the landscape like a haphazard dot-to-dot, at once tall whilst unerringly fragile. On the ground, their unruly presence dominates the ecosystem, the lifeblood of lichen and tightly clinging raindrops.

Scots pine both populates Scotland's isolated areas whilst telling the story of their destruction and evolution. Perhaps few woodlands can whisper to the wind the way pines can, gifting history to the gusts over their 700 year lifespan.

Needles twist and spike their way from bark to bone, the skeleton of the forest floor. Its evergreen status ensures it's greenery is a year-round feature, offering continual growth and decay.

As a collective: the Caledonian Forest, Scotland's rainforest. Over time, their numbers diminished by human actions. Their might remains, a symbol of the tenacity of the individual removed from the group. An allegory for the outliers, our climate pioneers, the vanguards of behavioural change.

As the new dawn of a 'climate emergency' approaches and 3 billion trees are suggested, pine's purpose purpose shifts from profit-maker to antidote. Scots pines whispers turn to chatter: 'so, in the body of our bark, we are useful after all?'.

Humans, for whom 'use' and simply 'being' are so hard to distinguish.