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out on the breakwater

A few gulls call, Spanish or French fishermen drop fish crates into their rusty boat, the bulging moon rises. Suilven and Canisp rise beside it, and on either side of me, long lumpy heathered lands reach out into a rippling glassy sea.

Although I have no permanent abode, I am here.

I look around, and glance back to our boat, which is rolling gently beside the floating docks, secured by woven ropes wound onto cleats by my lover’s hands.

We are always held by something.

Lochinver harbour, Assynt, Scotland
19th May 2014

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Suilven

Suilven is looking at me, or at least that how it feels lately. Everywhere I look, I see it. Each morning when I poke my head out of the hatch, from our boat on the floating docks in Lochinver harbour, there it is; in sunshine, green dome gleaming; other times swathed in summit-crawling mist. Often its domed top is sliced off completely by cloud but it’s even more ominous then, its threatened presence looming larger than its actual visual spectre.

I stalk it back, from the safe distance of this far end of the harbour, preparing myself for the day I will climb it. From this side it looks impossibly steep – pillar mountain, Sula Bheinn – a rock hard phallus of vertical ascent. Locals assure me that it’s the long walk in rather than the climb up that is the hard part. However, this afternoon when I looked at it through binoculars I was actually frightened.

I was slowly scanning the horizon above the village, my eyes grazing, leisurely following the patches of light which were moving sensuously over the tilted scree slopes of Canisp, and then onto the lumpy moors with their little woodlands and clearings of soft grass, all greenly idyllic. And then suddenly Suilven – filling the view, filling the world.

I have to admit, my belly shuddered a little, my heart quickened and quailed. Suilven so close. And I am to scale it…

Lochinver harbour, Assynt, Scotland
17th May 2014

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change

We mustn’t take it for granted though – the heart and the belly of it, the pulse and thrust – all this careless, determined change. The world moves, quivering and quickening, and we do: back and forward, forth and on. It’s so easy to forget.

In The Living Mountain, Nan Shepherd writes of dwelling “in pure intimacy with the tangible world”. She notes that, consciously, such contact comes only in rare moments, such as when we’re waking from sleep or preoccupation, our habitual selves temporarily shed.

But it’s there all the time whether we choose to feel it or not: a low continuity beating in the belly; a green weaving, a breathing red thread.

Pontycymer, Cwm Garw, South Wales
26th April 2014

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motion

snail on window

The season is on the move. Brambles sneak out their long thorny feelers, green fern heads unwind and the catkins on the alder give way to fresh folds of leaves, thrusting through like small fingers, grasping at the air. In the pulsing world too, things are on the go. Tortoiseshell butterflies drift on gentle gusts around the garden; jackdaws congregate in ragged black crowds to ride up and down the air currents above the rooftops; the white doves from the next village batter up and down the valley more energetically than ever; and high up on the hilltop moors, a red kite slowly circles.

Under the sun, all these layers of life reaching skyward. But none impress me so much as the visitor on our windowpane, who, with resolve and audacity, is quietly going for it, at a snail’s pace, climbing infinitesimally up.

Pontycymer, South Wales
6th April 2014

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equinox

     finally
           we tilt sweetly
        towards the sun

Pontycymer, Cwm Garw, South Wales
20th March 2014