Winter

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Island Blog – A Beautiful Share

It’s damn cold here, like freezeballs. A rarety for the West Coast where, to date, and over Sinkturies we have enjoyed endless rainfall, no floods thanks to upthrust rock formations and a very nearby Atlantic, happy to take on the slew and the wild of overexcited burns, rivers, swamps, bogs, lost wellies and various other waterswingles. T’was the island way. My kids made sure one wellie always got oopsed off some boat, some pier. We knew nothing of ocean plastic pollution back then in the 70’s. I wish we had because we met that problem so very often as we tracked and studied marine mammals and the unintended but immense blockages in their natural flow. I do remember the cold back then, but it was wild cold, the one you always meet out at sea when the wild is biting your face off and the swipe of waval spume would threaten your balls, if you had them. Out there, the fishers, they face a supreme cold. There is nought between their boat and the Antarctic blow, the wind snap from the East, North. A load of winds, cold, colluding, dynamic in what they decide. I’m not saying the weather chooses menace. It may sound that I do.

But that all thinks me as I shiver my way into a shower in a cold bathroom, slipping off clothes I don’t really want to slip off. My home is warm, yes. But this cold is new. I remember it and for 15 long winters on Tapselteerie, when ice frosted the insides of all windows with spectacular art and the iced carpet, about 3 feet beyond the frost catch, and when I just wanted to shout a load of abuse at the Winter King. This bit thinks me. The ones who live in places I don’t know, now I am warm. We change our levels of acceptability as we move on. I know it. I lived under a minus 3 all flipping winter. No hot water, mice everywhere, five kids, five vibrant and wild kids, not enough food, a load of making something out of nothing, their laughter, their spin, their don’t care about a lamb in the hypothermic oven, the calf in a nest around the aga, warm lamp lit. They slept through our wakening.

I remember a night, dark, no lights, no warmth. Hallo you, I said. I’d come down to make a cup of tea, sleep too cold for sticking. Me too, he said. I think I lit a candle. We toasted cups. Fuck the cold, I said, and we laughed a beautiful share.

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Island Blog – A Winter and the Unlight

It wasn’t at first, this morning, raining I mean. In fact it was light and brightish, although not the bright of summer. the sky an upload of smurr and cloud blobs looking depressed, buildings braced somehow on hilltops already a slipstick, for me anyway, the grass an already skid. The track potholes, recently filled with nasty grey sharps set the labradors a-shimmie as they navigated safe passage around them to avoid cut pads. We crunch on in protective boots, talking, checking the labs, looking out, looking up. This dimlight of winter, when skies proffer less, we humans miss the light of light. Although many talk of hibernation, we are not hedgehogs. Light is precious, not just a bit of it, but all of it and the intensity matters. It thinks me.

The thing about a lack of light, the rightlight over time, is that we don’t notice the happening of it. One morning, let’s say, we suddenly notice wrinkles, or sunken cheeks, and we astound. What on earth is this me looking back at me, she who for many months looked just fine? Winter is a baring. Winter isn’t the whole truth so don’t believe that. I, without makeup am a lizard right now, a cave dweller. It will pass. Ok, so that given, what do we do with the now of now? As the cold or the rain or both attempt to pound us into sludge creatures, we have a choice. We always do. And, by the way, anyone who says they don’t care about how they look in winter is lying.

I went out today to a Community Orchard Advent Thing. It was marvellous, everyone dressed, not for the Arctic, but for the Wet. Stalls proffering ideas and help on how to make natural decorations, pans frying bacon and sausage for rolls, hot punch provided, so many inventive ideas. I stayed a while, as many more arrived. Community brings a light to the unlight, and it matters. I forget how I look. Turning up, showing up is what matters and, as I left, passing others walking or driving in, umbrellas, waterproofs, it thought me this. Who gives a shit how I look? Answer? Nobody, because I came, and so did all the others living in the Unlight. That’s the way to navigate Winter.

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Island Blog – Everything a Touchstone

Another damn gale. We have many damn gales up here in the pointy end of two countries joined together at Gretna Green. It’s all thanks to the fact that there is nothing but Altantic swell for a gazillion nautical miles, which, let’s be honest, makes for the best playground. However, I took notice of something. It wonders me. Wind, at any level is actually silent. It just blows. But, when it hits something, a building, a person, a mountain, a ship, anything held by gravity, it can shriek, whine, even sing. Think of the rustle of leaves, the melody that comes through cracks, the siren scream around the corners of buildings, the blatter of bamboo wind chimes, and so on. The thwump of a wheelie bin toppled: the sigh and crash of a falling tree.

Power on, power off, power on again. It is island life, life in the land of the Scots, and across other countries in the northern spheres. When I talk with others who don’t live here, they are amazed at our resourcefulness and we have that in spades. We have known saving cows in blizzards. We have known endless winters and even smile at those who are filling flowerbeds in April. Our winter has a greater hold on these beautiful, exposed and rocky lands. Was Englandshire formed by ice age or volcanic eruptive chaos? I don’t know, but we were. Collisions, cosmic fury, undersea upthrusts, the moon in a right stooshie. That’s us, and do you know what? We are tough as nails, but more, so much more. Nails are rigid. We are not. We learn to bend with the winds, we laugh at the rain. It’s just rain, after all. So, when ‘Disaster’ happens, let’s say on social media (and god, those disasters are endless) such as when something isn’t delivered, or the nail surgeon has ruined nails, or the dress isn’t really silk, or Deliveroo didn’t, or the whatever didn’t whatever, I do wonder if a winter on a remote island might be a grand idea. Not in an expensive rental with all accoutrements and a live-in maid, but in one of those wee bothys with the best view you will ever see in your life, the seabirds overhead and the selkie singing you ancient stories: where the ferry may well not run: where the mail arrives when it can: where the skinny roads may not be gritted; where outlying farms and homesteads are way more than a bycyle ride away even on a good day: where the path is not perfectly gravelled, the door sticks a bit and the fire takes a bit to get going and the kindling is damp.

Where, after dark there are a million stars and all of them silent, and where you can hear all those words the wind never got to say.

Everything is a touchstone, or it is lost as nothing.

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Island Blog – Do You Remember?

I walk today in the Tapselteerie woods. After a refresh of rain, after yesterday moving through a thick of tourists and shoppers, there are no Excuse Me’s here, no need. I am alone amongst the hidden faeries, the ground-dwellers, the dripping leaves, alone in the glorious, yet musical silence, even though it isn’t silent at all, not with all this dripping and faerie chatter. There’s a thrum from the soft ground, I can feel its rhythm through my soft shoes, my toes connecting with the gentle buzz of conversation, nature speke. I stand awhile to listen, just stand, to take in the peaty smell, think ‘whisky’, laugh at myself, the sound caught up in the air, held in the massive branches overhead, then released back into silence. I see a broken limb, a huge one, and put my hand on the beech bark, murmer something, a thank you. You are old, you are fallen, I see you. My fingers, gnarled and bent look like my mum’s now. I never saw that coming, but nor did the beech limb, thrust out wide, fighting for light, tangled in it, too far, too high, too ‘out there’ to survive.

I move on and out of the woods, the only sound my rainproof jacket (awful noisy things) and begin my walk home. There’s a mist across the sea-loch, a smokey rub-out, a loss of definition. Everything is lush, green, ebullient, a disguise. In winter everything is clearly defined, the start and the stop, the contours of rocks and hills recognisable like a something laid bare, naked, a woman without make-up, just woken. I slow my pace. The rushing in me is like a burn in spate, a river, even, a tidal flow and this is not always a wonderful thing. I know that my life required a great deal of rushing, but not now, yet still I rush. To slow, to sit, to wander, to ponder, all can feel like anathema even as I see others who can and to wonder why I cannot.

I think back to the fallen limb, to all the fallen limbs I have encountered throughout my years among the Tapselteerie woods, as an islander. I remind myself of all the moments I have calmed and gentled others in turmoil; how many times I have heard said that my bright spirit has uplifted a falling soul, how many I have welcomed in with warmth and light and music and ideas. And then I remember how easy it is to forget the legacy of what I have given, of the who I am, of the how I eased life, of the when I showed up, stood tall, made laughter a bridge of opportunity for another. I did that, and I forget that.

I’m home now, and writing this, but my mind scoots back to the old beech. She gave and gave, proffering her strength for a ‘great place for a kiddies swing’ as she pushed and fought for light within the canopy. She struck out, braved herself, gradually over a long time, silently, determinedly, proudly, independently. I did too.

And so did you. Do your remember?

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Island Blog – From Gimcrack to Newbuild

Arriving back in Scotland was a right shock. From 34 degrees to minus 8, and overnight. Doesn’t seem possible. All those sleepless hours inside a huge metal bird, squashed and fighting for leg room and elbow room as we all hurtled through time and space, over countries we may never set foot in, delude us. We left in shorts, well, I didn’t, still buzzing with holiday flutter and fast departing tans, breathing in many other breaths and emissions, only to land in a cold, dark, very early, winter morning, wishing we’d chosen thermal longs instead of cotton shorts.

Outside the terminal, folk with fast departing tans, shivered, puffing steam like the Hogwarts Express and stamping. I didn’t risk the stamping thing, having only light plimsoles on my feet, one of which threatens a hole. I just stood in awe, watching the excited departees, smiling at the caved in faces of others like me who wanted nothing more than to run back to the plane demanding a return ticket. It’s winter, for goodness sake, I hissed to myself, teeth chattering something I couldn’t catch. Get over yourself. You’ve made it back, after all, no damage done.

Met, as I was, by my daughter and granddaughter and hugged warmly, my shivers abated. The car pulsed heat, the snow was stunning, I was safe. As we drove in lines of traffic, all going somewhere, I presumed, I felt many twinges of sadness at my leaving Africa, the son, the sun, the heat, the music, the warm sea, the ease with which anyone can live in a place that never gets cold at all. Of course, to live there would be a very different thing. Perhaps the heat, sometimes rising into the late 40s, might cause problems with working conditions, with comfortable sleep, with mental alertness. I didn’t have to be alert at all, had a fan blowing me almost out of bed each night, didn’t have to work. that’s not real life, however, that’s a holiday, an adventure every day with company, laughter, games, walks, moments that lifted us almost off our feet and nothing mattered, not even the threatening hole in my shoe.

Slowly I acclimatised, very slowly, and particularly so as I had managed to land with extra baggage – a novovirus bug, always a risk when travelling, when inhaling other breaths and emissions, no matter how clean the recycled air professes to be. The virus is brutal. Don’t catch it. Then I gave it to my daughter who missed her 50th birthday as a result. So unkind of me, but what control do any of us have over the invisible? I am happy to report that, it seems, nobody else in the family caught the devil, and today I begin my journey back to the island in sunshine. It’s still going to be winter for a long while, I know that, but I feel as if I have moved from gimcrack to newbuild. Plans for self-improvement, for more fun, for more adventures, all just waiting for me to press ‘play,’ and I am ready.

Whatever we go through, whatever befalls us, cannot break us if we refuse to break. We may lose confidence, bodily parts, outward beauty and all control over flesh gravity, but this olding generation is a tough cookie. And, all we have to do is to keep getting up, keep looking out like excited children, who just know they will catch a falling star. One day.

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Island Blog – Barefoot and So Very Connected

Shadows are longer now. They surprise me, twisting my eyes towards them, when the sun gets behind this overgrown shrub or the line of my rake, or just me. I am, it seems, the giant. I reach all the way up to the big larch on the rockface, my neck and head lost in the skinning branches. I smile at the thought. Long gone are my days of hiding in trees, of scaling the scarp of an ancient trunk, scratched, bruised and, at times wishing I hadn’t bothered to begin. But the absolute joy of hoiking my butt onto a strong limb, into the hook of a tree mother’s arm, the inevitable wobble and correction and the determination to stay exactly there, completely lost to the eyes of predators, aka, adults or, later, visitors, even my children, is like a fizz in my blood. I like the memory, hold it, recognise it, know that it, once, was mine.

Although the Siskins, Goldfinch, Swallows and House Martins are gone, Robins have returned with a different song. Their Spring ‘Come to Me’ has changed, in timbre, in melody, in regularity. Timely, I guess, but what do they sing for so beautifully? Perhaps they sing for. Autumn, on the cusp of Winter. Perhaps it’s for the superb clarity, the reviresco of light, the copper,gold,fiery sunsets, the way the basalt sharps up, glitters with rain, sparkles with sun, moon, reflecting, as we all do in the autumn of our lives, a new and unexpected brilliance.

There is sudden sun and sudden rain, sudden cold and sudden warmth. The invasion of another seasons is always a fight. Think about it. Summer (so called) has lazed about for months, taking her place, sitting fatly upon her throne, throwing us, this year, a capulet of cloud sneezing and, somehow, she managed to throw into our mix, a. big dose of winter. I suspect, she, fatly lounging upon her throne in the Out Of Work Months, mixed up a laboratory of cold spite, made it work, cackled a lot and then brought her experiment down on our heads. Summer always had a love/hate relationship with the Winter King.

I watch chimney smoke across the sea-loch, early morning, as the stars are still stars and the cold is a thrisk of caught breath. The ground is sharp and fierce to my bare feet, a thrill and a real connection with the earth. It is a mystery to me, this sense of connection. I claim no understanding, and I don’t want to, because I love a mystery. I just know that I am always, ALWAYS uncomfortable in shoes and that my feet are happy bare. I cannot walk barefoot along pitted tracks now, any more than I could heist a larch trunk, nor heft my old butt into a mother curve, but that is ok. I could once, and that is enough.

The mice are coming in. I knew they would. The nights are cold now and they are no fools. Survival is everything. I won’t say I am okay about mouse droppings inside my pots and crockery kitchen cupboards but I honestly feel this is a problem that would arrive me a derisive snort from a woman who has no kitchen left because of the bombing. I sweep them away, wash anything I cook with, hope the wee sweet furry creatures don’t eat through the lagging of my water tank in the loft, and wish them well. I suspect I am fortunate to have met animal invasion on a regular basis in my young wife-life. It helps.

Rowan berries, wild sienna, catch my eyes. One here, heavy with fruit, a wide bloom of branches, over there, one skmming for space t’ween big-ass confers, doing her best. Hazels nut up, cones catch the sunset, way up there atop an ancient fir or spruce, and brambles wink blue-black in their tangle. This is Autumn. The rut will begin soon. I will hear the roar of stags echo across the sea-loch, plaintive, threatening, both. The crisp is coming in, no matter what, and it is beautiful. It is tough. It is upskittling, confusing, sudden, It is as it is. We, who live so very close to nature, are so ready for the tapselteerie of fickle weather changes, and we will adapt, and that is our human skill, if we so choose. I think, sometimes, no, often, of those who live in cities, in controlled (so called) environments, and wonder how they are coping with the strangeness of our new seasons.

I wake in the night sometimes. If the moon is loud, or if I hear swans beeping to each other as they fly over my island home, from the freezing arctic, heading south, I wake. I know why. I cannot miss one single chapter in this extraordinary life journey, even if inconvenient. I rise from bed, fling open the curtains, see the night, see the stars, search for swans, feel connected. So very connected.

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Island Blog – Leave it Out

I notice, as I ding about the island, that folk tend to spread in the Summer, much like the shrubs, although shrubs tend to spread from a single point, whereas humans sprachle. You can look that up. Chaotically, as if in a wild abandonment, the controlled collation of tools, wellies, toys which could be the first landers on Mars, considering our winter storms, just sit out there, all confident and cocky. The weather is kind, or was once, and we still behave Summerly. I know, I know, that the cold winds have dampened our spirits somewhat, if not a lot of what, but we still jump to it whenever there is the chance of light and the length of days. Even beneath clouding, we grab our teeshirts and flowery whatevers, our sandals and flip-flops, our pretty bags and tags, our summerwear. We may love the seasonal changes, but we do, absolutely, need the seasons to remember themselves, instead of becoming a gloop of grey. We want to know where we are with the changes. We allow the endlessly slow shift of the Winter King, him with his frozen jaws and his refusal to release the earth from his grip, but not this long. The man needs therapy.

On the island, we don’t risk leaving much out, beyond cows or sheep, because, out here in the strut of the wild Atlantic, we know what we know. The weather can change in minutes, clouds gathering as if nobody has paid them attention for ages, the mountain and hills colluding, and we can hang washing out at 9 and regret that by 11 as our underpinnings head down the village. However, I do notice a leaving out thing going on, like a challenge. Folk still sport their summer colours, but underneath warm cardies and fleeces. T’is a weird old time. However, and this thinks me somewhat, are we, out here, living with cloud collapso, with cloud sneezes, with winds quite unsure of their origins, North colliding with West, East with South, and all in a dayo , more ready for this particularly weird Summer? Maybe.

And does that mean we are cocky? Oh no. We still want seasons to change in an orderly manner. We still want to sit out on a rock in a flowery frock (and fleece) to eat a seafood bun, or whatever and to watch the sun sink into the sea; to walk to the pub and join friends of an evening, to leave things out, and not just wellies, cows, sheep, toys and so on, but the verbal stuff that serves no purpose. Just to connect no matter what the weather, the politics, the troubles out there. To laugh, to share, to show strong no matter the changes in our world.

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Island Blog – Draggle Days, Twist Ice, Real Life

Ah Winter! Although we know he will come, we turn away at his approach, our longing eyes t’wards Spring as if this season means only draggle days and we try to imagine ourselves out of ourwinterselves, into frocks and shorts and easy light. But Winter is here, these ice twisted streets, the wind like a bully with too many teeth, powerful, pushing us down, slapping our faces with a cruel hand, all but just Winter. We can cow down, submit, falter and become less powerful. We all do this at times, in the dark, in the longing for Spring. Just heading for work is a fight and a soak or a slip. It can make us crabby, shift our saliva into spit, our feet into loud pounding away. Winter can feel like Culloden to me, the oppressor being Winter himself which, if I think about it, is ridiculous. Winter is winter and I am a piddling mortal. So what to do about the darkling ice twist draggle day thinking?

Well, music for me and inside work and more. I get out there with a challenge. I am me Big Winter, and you have no idea how good I am at being me. I pick my sky and I know I am lucky to see the whole of it from my island home, and then I just go, quick, fast, right now because I can see the grey cloudskid laden with hail and more about 20 minutes off. I walk the track, looking up and out at the bone trees the cold stones, the brilliant moss, impervious it seems to any winter bite. I watch a bird flight, hear the geese honk about, catch the flash of low sunlight through a spider web ‘cross dead grasses, see the sky in puddles, crunch last ice and smile at the amoebic snow melts aside the track. All is passing. All always will. Winter included.

I would, in my younger days, begin a Winter Love thingy. I would encourage poetry, song and music, twist ice walks and evenings beside an ebony fire, a gasp of talent only visible in the clarity of winter. Northern lights are wild and not just behind my home but in every one of us. We just got lost in cities and wages and other stuff that has nothing to do with real life.

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Island Blog – Questioner. Answerer.

I walk today through soft air, breaking into it, splitting the atoms then turn to watch them come back together at my back, as if I was never there at all, leaving no evidence of my passing, not even footprints for the track is mostly dry. This is a relief, the dry track I mean, after months of slopping mud, the backlash of mudfreckles peppering the backs of my legs. Larch fronds dangle, long green fingers, the sycamore blossoms buzzing with bees. They sound like tiny airborne motorbikes. Coniferous giants, evergreen through the coldest of months push out just a little, bright lime against the winter-tired needles the colour of wine bottles. Even the fallen trees push out hope, in parts, still working with the sun, still holding on to life. These huge giants, felled in some vindictive gale, remind me of another giant of a man felled a few days ago, gone. Somehow, when a person I know goes down and stays down, one who lived a few doors away from my own, it feels sharp, needle sharp. He was about my age and always out walking, always full of craic and laughter. Although he will not know this Spring, not from this earthly place anyway, I will think of him whenever I walk along the little track, one he loved as well as I do.

I wander on, noticing with my usual gasp of delight followed by a greeting spoken out loud, new buttery primroses along the bank, more leaves coming here and, oh look, over there and even way up there! Violets too, tiny delicate lilac petals peeking out from behind the protection of a rock or a drystone wall, sudden lifts of pastel beauty, wood anemones too, or their foliage at least. Tree ferns fall from on high, way up the bellies of the great old trees, like tiny green waterfalls. They tremble as a luff breeze tickles them. I can almost hear them giggle. Rounding the apex of my walk, I watch for seals hauled out on the rocks, listen for their song, but they are not here this day. I say hallo to a beech tree who began her answer to the questioner sun by pushing out as far as she dared before turning her face upwards. She is a force indeed to be admired for her belly is wide, her backbone strong and she is a fine match for the others who grew straight up from a straight up beginning.

It ponders me.

The sun poses the question. He sends warmth and nourishment. He calls out the bees, the butterflies, the dragonflies and all the other buzzing things of which we are not quite so fond, the answerers. He rises the earth, eats it up, challenges it, is relentless yet life-giving, pulling up life from the nearly dead, just for one more summer, just one more, don’t let go yet, the Mother needs you, you and her little clueless people. And we, too, are answerers. We rise into the new warmth with smiles that need cranking up a bit as Winter finally feels the threat of meltdown and begins his retreat. We change our attitude, become more open like petals, delicate but trusting. We risk vest off, open more windows, sit awhile on a tree stump or a bench to listen as passing talk tells her tales of other lives, other hopes and dreams. We catch moments, moments that didn’t seem to exist behind our winter walls, sounds drowned out by lashing rain, sleet, and witchy winds.

Soft now. Let it be. Let us and others be. Questioner or Answerer, both are we. We can shine light in places without light. We can be curious about how someone else thinks, how they live. We can show that we care, that someone else matters just as we hope we do ourselves.

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Island Blog – Stories on a Backwind

It’s been ten days since I blogged, give or take. I blame my best friend because she and I have been here on the island together and there is much to talk about after a year apart. She hasn’t been able to leave, thank you Dudley, Eunice and Franklin, even as it irks me to buy into this nonsense naming of storms or winds. We were always quite the thing just acknowledging a new storm and for hundreds of years, as if we knew we could never tame, nor name them, so powerful and volatile were/are they. Nowadays they take on bowler hats or the memory of old grumpy great aunts who smelled of things nobody ever wanted to smell outside of a wheelie bin long uncollected.

Moving on.

The winds whip crazy this month, flipping from North to Northwest, to West and back to North. Sometimes the South pulls up her big girl knickers for a wee toot but she is up against the big winterboys so doesn’t get much of a word in. Occasionally I have met her on the Tapselteerie track, a sudden hug of warmth but she is wheeched away in seconds. I might walk backwards a step or two to see if she is still there because she was about to gift me a story, but no. She is gone. So what story did she carry on her back? I caught the first line but no more. That’s ok. She’ll be back soon enough.

However the winterboys carry stories too on their backs. If you look at where the wind is coming from and check out the country in line with the wind, you can hear the stories from Iceland where all the mythical stories began and beyond to Greenland. They know cold as ancient. And stories come from ‘ancient.’ Listen as you clothe up and bend against the hail stones. Listen to the slough-song of the wind. Let it blow through you, feel it on you skin and listen. No, not just listen, hear.

Most of the time I do this listen/hear thing and have no translation. Thing is, it doesn’t bother me at all. I am a tiddler in this walk through time, but I am here, I am a tiddler and I can engage. I might catch an image, see how it was when skinning an Elk was the biggest thing for that day. We, now, Elk free, can fight against the winterboys but we will never win. Nor will we master them with expensive outdoor kit nor giving them ridiculous taming names. The moment we can just thrill to the cold, feel the wind, walk out barefoot (just me I think) and really feel the whole craziness of winter life whilst listening to and hearing the windback stories, we are, at once, at home with the whole gamut of seasons.

Such a freedom.