If you’ve been stuck in a traffic jam on the way in to Edinburgh over the last few weeks, you may have noticed the blackthorn in bloom. It will have given you a show, as it lines many of our motorway and bypass routes.

They plant blackthorn by busy roads because it is thick and prickly. More often it resembles a bush or hedge than a tree and for this reason it is a useful protective boundary.

In the tale of sleeping beauty it was a dense thicket of blackthorn that surrounded the castle, keeping her safe from intruders for 100 years, just as it is used today to keep people away from dangerous roads.

It is usually the first tree to bloom, before winter has truly gone. A ‘blackthorn winter’ is the cold spell that often arrives in mid-March while the Blackthorn is still in bloom. This year’s ‘Blackthorn winter’ is now over, I hope.

I always look forward to the spectacle Blackthorn gives us on the cusp of spring’s arrival. Its vivid white flowers appear before its leaves, and it’s usually the first tree to add colour to a winter weary landscape.

I was walking along the banks of the Tyne a couple of weeks ago when we had that wonderful sunny weather, with clear blue skies and no wind. The blackthorn blossom was amazing, the only tree to have woken from its winter slumber and definitely making the best of its monopoly of splendour.

We sat by its blossom as wee Skye enjoyed her first ever outdoor picnic. Then I remembered a traditional tale in which a human baby is taken by the faeries and hidden in a clump of blackthorn. So I kept a close eye on my youngest daughter, just in case.

But looking back that was unfair on the poor blackthorn. It’s a rather maligned tree, often associated with bad or even evil influences.

It is said it that it made Christ’s crown of thorns, and later it became associated with witchcraft, with many an innocent woman being burned with blackthorn in the terrible days of ‘witch’- hunting.

But much of this comes from a time when woods were seen as places of dark foreboding influences. It was a time when wild nature itself was seen as barbaric and a place to be tamed, exploited and even destroyed and replaced with ‘civilisation’.

So those who loved and understood nature were likewise maligned. People such as ‘herb wives’ were persecuted, and it became dangerous to just walk in the woods because it was regarded as evidence of witchcraft. For example, two women in the 17th century were burned just for their habit of going for walks in Butterdean Wood.

Had John Muir lived in earlier times he would no doubt have been burned at the stake for witchcraft.

His connection with nature was spiritual and passionate, and he spent a good proportion of his life walking in woods and even sleeping in trees.

He famously said: “Going to the woods is going home; for I suppose we came from the woods originally.” The John Muir Festival later this month will celebrate the memory of this most remarkable son of East Lothian by officially opening the new trail.

If you haven’t yet been to his childhood home in Dunbar then maybe the Easter holidays is a good time to go. It’s now a brilliant museum with loads of interactive stuff for children, and fascinating tales about nature and Muir’s life.

I love visiting the house as I got to know John Muir when I was young through his writing. One story from his childhood affected me deeply when I read it. It was the tale of the young robin red-breasts in his back garden.

There were three elm trees in the back yard and in the branches of the tree closest to the house there was a robin’s nest. They were close enough to watch, and Muir no doubt checked on their progress every day.

The young birds were just about able to fly when an incident happened that resonated with me when I read about it.

Muir explains that the Scottish Greys were staying in Dunbar and their stable was being used to accommodate some horses.

One day, one of the soldiers was cleaning his sword and helmet when he suddenly noticed the nest.

The soldier continued his cleaning duties but, when he was finished and just about to leave, his attention returned to the nest.

The sound of a robin’s song was highly valued. It sings sweetly all year round, even in winter. For this reason they were popular pets with soldiers, who would keep them caged and enjoy their singing.

John watched in horror as the soldier suddenly climbed the tree. Many years later he could vividly remember what happened that day, for he wrote about it in his memoirs: “With sore sympathy we watched the young birds as the hard-hearted robber pushed them one by one beneath his jacket – all but two jumped out of the nest and tried to fly, but they were easily caught as they fluttered on the ground, and were hidden away with the rest.

“The distress of the bereaved parents, as they hovered and screamed over the frightened crying children they so long had loved and sheltered and fed, was pitiful to see.

“But the shining soldier rode grandly away on his big grey horse, caring only for the few pennies the young songbirds would bring and the beer they would buy.” This event took place when John was just a young child, but it left a deep impression on him. It was a formative moment in his life, in which he felt empathy and connection with nature and her creatures and outrage at man’s arrogant domination of it.

As he wrote in later years: “I remember, as if it happened this day, how my heart fairly ached and choked me.

“Mother put us to bed and tried to comfort us, telling us that the little birds would be well fed and grow big, and soon learn to sing in pretty cages; but again and again we rehearsed the sad story of the poor bereaved birds and their frightened children, and could not be comforted.

“Father came into the room when we were half asleep and still sobbing, and I heard mother telling him that, ‘a’ the bairns’ hearts were broken over the robbing of the nest in the elm’.” We know that John Muir was a remarkable man, but he must also have been a particularly remarkable child as well.

Even though his childhood was blighted by a harsh, violent upbringing, in which beatings by his father were commonplace, he could still weep for a young robin taken from its nest.

And when I first read this story at the age of nine, it felt like John Muir was speaking to me personally.

You see, I had just found a bird with a damaged wing. One of my friends wanted to use it as target practice for his catapult, but I refused to relinquish it.

We fell out over it, and he called me a “sap” and worse (although we did make up soon afterwards and we are still in touch; he is now a nature lover too).

When I took the bird home I was told not to take it into the house, and so I made a nest for it in the garden hut. My two wee brothers helped, and I decided it needed guarded.

I remember a day of digging worms and placing them by this poor creature, who in reality was probably more scared of me than anything else.

When I checked in the morning, the bird was dead.

I was truly distraught, and felt responsible. I clearly hadn’t done enough, or fed it the right food.

And my friend’s response didn’t help.

“It’s just a stupid bird,” he said to me.

So it was a powerful moment to read Muir’s tale about the robin. Maybe I was given the story deliberately, I can’t remember.

But I do remember that Muir’s tale reassured me that I wasn’t a ‘sap’.

It was, along with Burns’ poem To a Mouse, an early indication that affinity with nature and empathy for animals is not unmanly or being a sap.

Or, as I might put it now, if being a sap means connecting to nature like John Muir, then I will proudly proclaim myself to be one!

And so let’s celebrate Muir’s legacy not just by taking part in the John Muir Festival this month, but by taking time to immerse ourselves in the wonders of nature.

East Lothian is scattered with woods in which the magic of spring will be unfolding during the Easter holidays.

What better accolade to Muir than to appreciate what is on our doorstep, and nurture his wonder of nature in ourselves and our children?