nature

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Island Blog – Ebb, Flow, On and On.

There are diamonds on the water, an incoming tide speckled with sunlight where the luff of water rises like hope. I watch a carder bee on the cornflowers, not many left now, as birds flip and flutter through the sweet peas, mostly pods now but still lifting blooms to the sky. Tangled clouds overhead, a conversation up there. The grey ones push along, but the white wins through, holding place, giving way a bit, but just a bit. They hold the sky and I admire their flexibility. They’re like good friends. Okay, I will allow you to be grey today, but not for long. I watch them, the white, flex around the grey, even as they hold the ground, or sky in their case. Sun beams in between all these cloudal shenanigans, the ultimate smile. I feel its warmth on my skin and it smiles me. A young robin jinks on the fence, the result of a second sitting, singing pure and strong. Go to the fatballs, I tell him/her. The bird twists at my voice, eyes me from the shoulder of my garden bench as if I am a right twit not speaking ‘robin’. I don’t put out seed in the summer months, much as I am tempted to, only fat balls and mealworms and I am out of the latter for now. I hear, just now the screech of angry gulls and ditto crows and just know there is a sea-eagle out and about. Then I hear the yip and see him and her lift into the now flat sky, a grey and white collusion. They soar as if it’s nothing. There is only sky for them, no wind to tilter, no other bird that high for now. The gulls splinter off, bored, the crows too and here comes the rain. I catch a white tail as they redesign the sky. They are at home up there, rain a notbother, hecklers left way behind, for now. The vista mists, the hills beyond smokey and indistinct. I love this place, this place of seasonal change, of sudden disruptions and community strength; of good people with pockets full of smiles and who are always there with a hug when the grey comes in. I see the definition of the far hills now, the shower albegone, the sky still holding shut but that could change in a heartbeat much like tunes on a playlist, shuffled.

I light the fire. I like the flames, safe inside the wood burner doors. Change again. The day is slipping away, the night-push stilling the roses, the flowers, the trees. Not yet though, but for me, the change is coming. I wake early, go to bed as others head out for dinner. It suits my situation. I like to hear the walk and chat of those walking by my closed curtains as I read, coming back from the pub or a walk. They are like night flowers, life living itself on and on, soaring, claiming space, lifting. Laughter rises like hope, just below my window, sparkling diamonds on an incoming tide. And the tide will continue thus. Ebb, flow, on and on and on.

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Island Blog – What we Give

I walked today, a bit wobbly, a bit sore, a bit doubtful. After a stupid fall, a small one ,the capital of which can make all subsequent letters lower case. It was a bump, just that, but the old of me denies a quick revival, as it might not a ten year old. I walked today, a small one and decided I would notice everything along the way. I had to get out and the sun was warm and the sky kind and my thoughts were doing me no service at all.

I started out on the Tapselteerie track, unsure, just me. Well, it is always just me so that’s not unusual. I turned at the fork and headed up the track, the original for the grand guests back in the day, and stopped to watch Painted Lady butterflies on the wild Scabious. I stood awhile, unmoving, just watching as they sipped the nectar. It thinks me. Oh I know it is instinct but go with me here.

We teach out children. Most of us think it through. Most of us us want them to learn the stuff which will help them even though we know that their generation is a somewhere we will never have the language for. Did I know that in the 70s/80s when I was mum to five? No. Even though I had the taste of the 60s, I went blind into motherhood, as if nothing would change. How incredibly stupid.

I look, now and then, at photos of me as a young mother. I don’t recognise her. I was so so young. And yet, this very day, one of my kids recognised his childhood and how we taught him. He had been through a challenging time and was so thankful for what we had taught about survival, about a can-do positive attitude, even in fear, especially in fear.

And I remembered myself, that young mother in a wild place and thought this. We don’t know what we give.

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Island Blog – That Cafe and Today

I see gulls flip over the ebbing tide, the copper seaweed in brazen exposure, the sea-loch quietly grey and slightly wind-skiffed. I see the sweet pea pods waggle, the old rose holding tight in its last pink shout to a greyling sky, cloudbacked. I see the grass peppered heavily with clover leaves. Perhaps the blooms will come, perhaps it’s too late now for Autumn is definitely here. I know it because the fire has been on all day and I am fast running out of wood. this running out thing comes so quick. It seems that one day it’s…. what light stuff to wear and the next there’s a shiver and an opening of sweater drawers, much to the surprise and subsequent skitter of spiders. They’ve been safe for months now after all. I pause to let them go safe. It doesn’t bother me, the change of a season. In fact I welcome it. If we never accept and adapt to change, we just get some resistance issue like bad temper or a skin condition.

The Best Cafe Ever was gey busy last week. A gazillion lunches, endless coffees and cake, teas and allergies, dogs and wee ones, rain and shine. We welcome them all. In fact, someone said to me today, someone who isn’t afraid to speak their feelings, ‘That Cafe has just got it so right.’ And it’s true. There is something about hearing laughter all around, folk feeling welcome and well fed, served with smiles and can-do, which speaks volumes about any place of hospitality. And I love being part of the small team, as do my co-workers. It tells me that, although this place is only two seasons old, the idea of it, the walking it out, the risk involved has got it ‘just right’. We are small but dynamic. We are ready for whatever comes no matter the bizarre thunderstorms, no matter the craziness of the world, no matter the rainshift, the snaggle-toothed roads, the ferry issues, the lack of parking because there just isn’t enough rock to park on. No matter any of it. Still the gulls wheel and shriek under a louring cloud bank; still there is a humbacked whale just out there; still there are hills brocaded with a turning green; still there are wild birds lifting and hovering, floating on updrafts. Still the tides ebb and flow, still the night comes and there is no pollutive light.

A dot on the map, yes, but a dot worth a visit.

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Island Blog – Confusoball

I flip on a light as I head for a shower. That’s a first. It’s been light for months and now light is shifting. I don’t need the light, but I choose it, I want it. As I curve, like the staircase up to the next floor I choose that warm glow. I almost heard the light, the wee thing, chuckle. I am back. Yes, I said, and paused and by the way you will be pivotal for endless months because Spring is like a teenager who never wants to get out of bed. I’m not sure she got that, but we do. We can bow down to the unknown, to fears, to olding pains or to the sense of living in a world we don’t know, nor understand. I am very aware of the bow-down capitulation. It gets me every single day, no, doesn’t get me, but it rises like a rising thing and I am very aware very aware that it is just me against it. And I am, against it.

Most people I know about live on the surface, paddling like mad, looking for shore. Think about it. How often have you actually have a real deep conversation with anyone? Quick hallos on the school run, eyes checking for how you look as ‘mum’, the quality of your clothes, boots, makeup. For men, the whole ‘right way’ to look, to impress, regardless of financial constraints. Surface paddle. I see that it is important, but it is only sustainable if a person decides to be owned.

I am with those tho swim against the current because that is where something happens. It is never about money, nor greed. It is singular. One person just swimming the other way, brave enough to risk, wild enough to break out. As long as we bow down, as long as we believe what ‘they’ say, we will be safe for a while, but not for long.

Buying, social media, all of it, can consume a soul.

It isn’t real. What is real is connecting with granny, lighting a light on the stairs, minding the chickens, covering the bee hives in a storm, sensing that storm, forming a cupola. However, I completely get that I would have wanted the best high-top sandals, the lowest cut skinny shimmy of a dress. Such a confusing time.

I’m a confusoball.

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Island Blog – What is real

The sgurr of Canna rises in rockjag, granite layered with larval basalt and dressed partly in a lush green. The late and welcome sunshine lifts it into a story, People have lived here for thousands of years, working with what they had. They climbed these cliffs, fed their sheep, their cattle, themselves. They had boats or didn’t but either way the only connection to ‘civilised’ life was over the water, the oftentimes complicata of tidal conflict, of adverse weather. They didn’t run out of milk because someone had a milk cow. They made butter, cheese, curds and more. They didn’t run out of green because they collected ‘green’ and made something healthy. They kept pigs, those who could afford one, and sheep and they shared. They had wool for carding and spinning, clearing off the lanolin in stored barrels of urine, and then washing the fleeces in fresh spring water from rushing burns, drying them on hillsides. They had clothes. All around them moved healthy air, sea blown, pure, unpolluted. Even today, this day, in times of human foolery and folly, this place breathes clean and clear. The island has a strong community ethic. We can feel it. Unlike so many ‘civilised’ places, with instant everything and an uber a quick call away, this place, like so many Hebridean islands has so much more to offer.

I watch those who live an island life with interest. Although I do live on one such island and have done for over 4 decades, these remote places, inhabitants from a mere 40 to perhaps 400, I notice things. No woman is bothered with her eyebrows, the shape of her nose, nor what she ought to be wearing. When life is paired down to what is actually important, such fricking nonsense is just fricking nonsense. It teaches me. Although the ‘patriarchal’ control is supposedly diminishing, it seems to me that women still uphold it, maintain it.

Where life is truly lived, engaged with fully and is tough, challenging and deeply fulfilling, may well lie well outside and beyond ‘civilised’ lies. I watch the sun light up a curve of cove on Rum, its tail fire dancing over the stacs of Canna and then gone in a cloudsnap. I see salt peppering the windows of the boat as we swing and sway at anchor in this bay. I feel stories, ancient stories flow in and out of me, words in gaelic, auld scots, and understand not one word even as I understand it all.

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Island Blog – Shift

I smell Autumn. It happens around this time of year, every year. The thing about living so close to nature is that senses align in ways they never could in Urbia. The tensual connection with the light, the way the wind flexes, shifting from this to that direction , even momentarily, the tap of cold on bare ankles, the way the distant hills turn grey sooner than before. It would have been survival back in the day. The grasses, left long and now all seeded out, bend like dancers but take longer to straighten up. Seeds and down fly everywhere to the last resort. It doesn’t upset me at all, although I do pull a warmer jersey from the mix today after work.

Thing about Summer is that she is a spirit, short-lived and a cavel, supremely wonderful, providing ridonculous temperatures for a while and then, after giving out all she has, gets weary. Autumn, a very different strength, also female but much older, rises like a grandmother with the promise of a gentle and long-term handover. That’s what I have observed over almost 50 years here in the cup of nature. I felt her nudge today as I got out of my mini, arriving home from working in the Best Cafe Ever, and even though my fed is thoroughly up about my olding limitations, sore thumbs, hips, I still love my membership in the dynamic team. As I arrived home, felt the shift, saw it in the ‘might need lights’ thing (not yet) and I smiled. I love the seasons, the way they don’t give a thought to what we daft humans plan. They are the power and our power, and if we want to connect, the way to do this is to engage. Autumn isn’t July? It is here, and, if you read books and stories and actually want to get how it really is beyond the falsehood of Urbia, this change will not upset at all.

I remember my mum packing up our summer kit in a huge ottoman. Teeshirts, frocks, shorts, all of that. The winter kit came out. Jumpers, warm breeks, thicker socks, long-sleeved underpinnings. It was (and I am guessing) around October. Not now. The survivors will just go with it. My suggestion, if it is possible for you, is to check the stars, to feel the slicker breeze, to see what can only be seen in Autumn light. Clarity. To shift away from how it was because the was of that is long gone.

I smelled Autumn today. I smelled her as I opened my car door, arriving home. I felt it in my house. lit my fire, noticed deer on the far side of the sea-loch, sensed a crisping of air beneath a dense camp of clouds.

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Island Blog – All the Way to Whales

I know that I am still a rebel. Against what? Good question. The thing is that ‘most of us grow out of it’, supposedly and politely and concomitantly and absolutely fitting in to lives so very far from our dreams. So reads the manuscript. I am at the steam spout end of my kettle life and with not one regret. I know that without the grounding, or sea-going strength of the man who saved me, I would have gone to some dive somewhere and died of over-ness. I would. I know it. He, the older-than-me, wild, foolish, closed up man, held me. He did and for decades, through the utter chaos of children, the strife of in-laws, well, just one, actually, through the fears and the choices we made, the walking out of that crazy. The first whale watching business in the UK, benign research, the first. I bought in, was right there, in the rain, boots on, helping the first intrepids aboard, handing over sumptuous packed lunches, thermoses, just knowing they would be coughing their way through engine fumes all the way to whales and that I would be there at the end to collect them, dry them off, feed them scones and jam and tea and, more, to laugh with them about the bounce and tricuncular shitski of the Atlantic, god bless her, around rocks and other irritations.

I think I found an outlet for my red, rebel. To be honest, I think rebel is born, within a child. I have one or two of my own supporting that. Thing is, what do you do with this red thing for yourself, when you just know life isn’t as it might be, when confines and controls and mysogyny and religion divides and sadly conquers. How can you see this at 7 years old without the language to process, let alone explain? My theory is this. Many of us are here in this uncomfortable playground. Many pull away, home to the familiar, the compromise and live with it for decades, never mind minutes and nights. I am a pull away, although some might say I compromised, settled, and to a degree, they are right, although I twist at their conclusion. I loved full time, moved into wife. I loved that. Things shifted, changed, the moment a child was born. I changed. I grew fierce, defensive, powerful. That modem operandi never changed with four more birthings. I never loved as I loved them, never. Maybe that was a troubling thing.

See that red rebel? She is wild and bothers not about doorways nor invitations, nor stupid rules, nor old past judgements. Atlantic thinking. I remember on a warm evening, way back, after feeding three courses to 16 guests, seeing them right, warm fire, help to bed. Alone in the corridor of clearing up, ironing the tomorrows, letting out the collies, watching the big kitchen sink to rest as I wouldn’t. I remember the wild excitement of seeing whales out there, the out there which billowed into the farmhouse kitchen, way beyond food time, but I will always provide food. I saw them, briefly, the whale-watching ones, saw their smiles, the twinkle in catched eyes, the long hold goodbye. I smiled at the rebel connection. There are many of us in the wings.

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Island Blog – Thinks

I did that thinks thing this morning at 0500, my favourite hour. Birds are up already, but I like to be in their slipstream as they just get on with living. After the usual catastrophe of doubt and fear on waking, all the blame on me (always) and then my leap from bed as if the before was a collaboration of bedbugs. I land floor level, barefoot. I always know the light when I wake. I know when it is 0300, a captious and taunting skinny light lemon, cautious, like a new student. I know when the buttermellow trickles in, when the sun is doing his rise thingy, tendrils slipping over hills and horizons. I huff, roll my eyes. Finally you big showoff. Even with cloud cover he speaks.

I downstairs myself in my awful dressing gown and sit, and watch. Birds are lining my fence, They know I will fatball and mealworm them into their day and they are waiting. I wait too, watching their dance and bounce and lift. When I go out barefoot into the clover of my grass ( not mine, just borrowed) they dive and skitter around me, waiting. I fill the fatball feeders (RSPB of course) and tip some mealworms into the sieve bowl. All the while I am doing the thinks. The guilt I woke with didn’t stay back upstairs with my pyjamas. I make coffee and sit to gongoozle. Being in the present is something I know is pivotal. To just watch, to stop, to pause, to breathe, to notice and to reflect. I don’t find it easy, but I want it.

\We had crazy weather last night, thunder and lightning and colours and magic. Astonishing and brilliant and scary and flooding and scary and the whole sky alight with anger and spectacular. It is calm now. Up here, way north of the heat and the confines and the lack of sleep and the burning fear, we are the lucky ones.

It is the weather now. It is. We should think about that.

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Island Blog – Tinkle Rain

Today begun massively soggy. I heard the grass groan, I swear I did, it woke me at 5. Pelting wetness as if anyone or anything needs that, at least here. Africa might. Thing is we are within the mercy of mercies here, standing under awnings, umbrellas, bus shelters, trees and buildings because there’s too much of this wet thing…..and everyone is bored with repetition. I need to decide my decisions. It matters as I am no control freak, whatever the hec that means beyond being a judgement from someone who just feels better making that judgement. However I do want to exert some control over that which I can, or could, within certain circumstances, exert said control. Not rain, unfortunately.

I decide this is the way it is up here. I remind myself that Australia, Africa and other dry zones now face wild fires and drought. Drought? What does that even mean, feel like? In this wetzone, I cannot imagine, although I do recall weeny droughts here, like a few piddly days, maybe a week, ten days and the flapdoodle of local gardeners. I remember hose bans and those out at midnight watering. The Facebook illumination of these gentle gardeners, the pointing fingers. Didn’t like that. Sometimes a garden is all we have in a life of loneliness.

I feel the caution alone and trapped inside the soggy. It was cold. Preventative, a shuck, a go-away. Awake at five, the usual, and happy with the dawn blackbird and the light. Coffee, strong, black, music on. I am all about music. Like blood flow for me. And looking out. Early birds, the lift of geese, jeez the noise of them, as if every time they lift there is confusion, or so it hears me, a mere human.

I worked on a tapestry today, a half cut not much, boring elevation of colours with no direction. I am so crap at hobbies. I worked once on huge canvases with wild brushes, wild and unthought thinking, inspiration in my fingers, my heart red pulse, sensing everything, every sound, even a creak on the stairs, the call of geese, the sudden of single seconds. It’s quite hard to tamp down. But it’s ok. So back to the rain, and there’s a relevance.

It rained, pelting, unremitting, wet. I watched dog walkers in full waterproofs walk by. Nobody else had to do this wet walk thing. Around 4, the rain got bored of itself, turned into a smurr. I sensed a weakening and pulled on my boots and stepped out. It was glorious. The rain, still falling, was soft and gentle on my face, like a spar treatment. All branches were lowered, so dipping was required. The raindrops shivering on leaves, on the tiny fronds of woodland flowers, the sparkle of hope on fallen trees, beautified my walk. And the rain on my face. I lifted myself to that gentle caress, the cold of it, the knowing that this came from far beyond my knowing, carrying stories I will never know but have inadvertently absorbed. Felt like a tinkle, gentle fingers.

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Island Blog – The Wild

I remember the shout. Reef in the mainsail, now! I didn’t hesitate because with him at the helm, there was only me and that me was down below hooking a Moses basket onto a gimballed hook with a baby nestled within. I was fast, no hesitation. As I scooted up the steps onto the deck, I could see why this reefing mainsail thing was not something to be considered, nor questioned. There was a black cloud threat and building. Grabbing and affixing my safety harness and with rain already slicing the wind in two, I got to work. He risked a tilt into the quiet space between the was-wind and the now-wind, two very different creatures for sure and the huge mainsail flapped and crackled, bucked and heaved. I had never felt so alive, so valued, so very the It of the situation. Skidding, sliding, grabbing, holding, I used all my strength to crank the crank thing, bringing the huge mainsail down to the boom. I remember watching the sky appear above each reef. I remember my arms aching, my fingers flexing, turning, holding and that moment when all was safe, that massive sail contained and that sky glowering at me like she just lost at checkmate. I slid on my butt back to him, grin wide, eyes full of rain, and unclipped.

I remember the wild. The buzz of being so essential, so needed, so valued. He smiled me in. Well done, lass, he said and those words meant everything. The hanging baby slept on. The storm was nothing of the sort, just a teenage tantrum. The sky cleared, the night began and stars came out. Ha. I said, as I looked up at the wide expanse of a gazillion constellations. I got there before you all, and I did. It remembers me and I don’t say that lightly because even when we forget the feeling of such wild times, our body remembers. Water has a memory and we might do well to accept this as we, those of us whose wild times might seem beige and back then and of no import and no longer possible in the shape of what is. I have to challenge this, in myself for starters. If there is wild, was there once, it does not die. We will eventually die but the wild is like a fire within, a sparkle, a crackle, an opportunity, a magic. I don’t like to see it allowed to fade in someone’s eyes once health limits barrage in. However I also get it and it is so easy to believe that the wild was then and now I am compromised and afraid and kind of stuck with a stick and all I have are the memories of me doing crazy things I couldn’t do now.

Where’s that wild? Where’s that dancer, the one who was spontaneous when others dithered and who danced me till I was dizzy and on fire? Where’s the one who said yes we can do this, who made the fire on the beach, the one who said ‘ just lie here and see the stars’, the one who sang, who told stories, who always made something happen, no matter where nor what, nor when, nor who(m)? The wilders who always caught the magic, grabbed it, reefed it in at times and then let it fly. They still do and you don’t have to be young to grab the ties of that kite. T’is only fear that makes us pedants.

The wild is in you. Keep her fired up.