Nature – Kirsteen Bell

All day we have been under an oppression of heavy grey cloud, and beneath it the gusting eastern wind has turned the usually clear loch into a tempest. One thing I am learning though, as I pay more attention, as I read more, is that the ravens love the wind; so, despite being scunnered and tired, at the back of 5 I don boots and trudge up the back of the croft, heading westwards towards the neighbouring crofts where I suspect the ravens are roosting.

Perhaps it’s the day it’s been, but I am not soothed by my footsteps as I usually am. Insecurity as to what direction my writing should go in, fights with wee Lawrie about sitting in a different car seat, about what boots to wear, Keir breaking half a dozen eggs all over the kitchen (Lawrie is allergic to raw egg) and subsequently pulling the shower off the wall, toy throwing, nipping, screaming (them, not me), forgetting to buy milk – all of these things accumulate like the purple bruise of sky sagging over the pale blue-gold sunset faraway in the west. The winds have brought litter: caught in the net of birch, willow and hazel that grow along the banking are marge tubs, poly bags, takeaway packaging, bottles, cartons, shredded letters… I video a trail of blue plastic, American Beauty style, caught on a branch and twisting in the wind.

I am really only half-heartedly looking for the ravens; in truth I am just trying to get away from my mood. Nonetheless, I bother to scrawl a few notes as the ravens register me, a group of twelve taking turns to swoop round silently and pull up short in the sky above my head, held there in the wind, until they disappear as one, issuing a single croak as they go. I spook the group again as I tramp about the undergrowth, as well as a couple of roe deer, feeling the thud of their escape through the ground and hearing their warning bark in the distance, but I still can’t pinpoint where the birds might settle. Eventually the failing light sends me homewards (and the knowledge that I should really go and help with the bedtime routine), the grump in me as heavy as the leaden skies that contrast so sharply with the white hilltops to the south. I cross the fence at a point where it has been knocked down, and there is my gift. A single black feather. I have to double back over the fence to pick it up, but I know now that I am on the right path. I walk home clutching my feather like Dumbo, suddenly lighter. Just write about the ravens.

The sea is awake here, breathing deeply, in and out, pitching towards and away from the rocks that tumble below my feet. Above the black rim of the mountains the waning gibbous moon is clear and high (97% illumination, according to my phone); its uninterrupted light touches everything like snow, revealing unexpected shapes and lines in the shadowy landscape. Pinholes of water gleam in an outline of hazel branches; the hazel, if indeed that’s what it is, interrupts what would otherwise be a perfect composition of glittering inky waves and luminescent stone – but the camera on my phone isn’t capable of seeing this light anyway. I try to take a photo out of habit, but realise that if I want to capture this moment, the scene around me, then I will need to write it.

Behind me the moonlight lies on a great slab of rock, which has been blasted and exposed to make space for this road I stand by; the light runs along the edge of glistening black tarmac. Posed along the shim of rock-face there is a still assembly of muted-grey birch.

Beyond the islands that lie veiled and dense upon the quiet deep of sea, and the dark sleeping back of the peninsula, my eye finds the familiar pattern of Orion. My pal Orion used to watch, from his spot above the hill behind my parent’s house, as I bolted home before – or after – my 10pm curfew. Twenty years later and 150 miles north he still reassures me with his infinitely non-judgemental presence. I tilt my head back further though and deliberately gaze at the unknown constellations visible in the limpid sky; at this angle the vastness of indigo is accentuated by a darkening fisheye warp at the edges of my vision. In this radiant darkness I can see the shape of the air and this rock I stand upon.