Hazel

Image Above: Bringing Home The Hazel.
Location: The Narrows, Erraid
\Hazel, 26th January 2011

The tide is ebbing and draining a rivulet from the sands of the narrows; the strip of sand that keeps us anchored to Mull. I wade through, shuffling my feet to avoid a bow wave topping my Wellingtons. Despite the expanse of sand this is a trench cut between faces of rock, it is here Erraid lays claim to its island status, emerging from the sand to present a toothy grin to its larger brother. The sea only makes good on the bargain for a few days a month when spring tides race to fill the gap. Between times it becomes a highway of sorts for cows, sheep, otters, deer and on rare occasions wild goats. I place my own prints into the wet cement and join the list of other stars.

As I walk my eyes follow the contours of the low cliffs, here stunted oaks, birch and aspens hide out from the herbivores. I am looking for hazel to make some low hurdles for the garden, but it is not until I am about to run out of island that I find a small stand of bushes above a rough hewn wall of boulders. The pruning saw slips easily through the thin sheath of life and bites into the bone whiteness of the wood. I cut three or four poles from each bush, trimming out the crown ends to release them from the tangle of other branches and then throw them to the sand. The cuts will sprout again and the limbs re-grow in profusion like the split brooms of the magician’s apprentice.

On the sand I bundle up the rods with the belt from my trousers, twisting it as a Spanish windlass to add tension. Lifting one end, it seems bearable but I am aware, looking back over the sand, that distance adds its own weight. I move off covering my tracks Indian style as the trailing branches scratch out my foot prints. Behind in the lagoon the seals have gathered to watch, extending their heads, clear of the water, as the strange half man half tree shrinks into the distance.

The lie

Image above: Fog moves through the narrows

The Lie

The snow that had remained clung to the shadows or was scattered over ground less popular with cars and foot traffic. I wandered into the ferry terminal and bought a cup of tea from a kiosk that would of worked equally well at the end of a dole queue. Conscious that silence had marked my entrance and feeling a little uneasy I retreated to the gallery to watch for the ferry.

His grandfather spoke first, the story was about the snow plough that keeps Mull’s central glen open; over the last few days the plough had packed the roadside snow so tightly that the route had begun to look like a bob sledge run. His grandfathers friend relayed another story about a local youth known for pushing the speed limit who had ditched his car and abandoned it to the snow.


Sat between the grandfather and company the grandson had been waiting for his turn in the conversation and when a natural lull presented itself he began with his own tale. I knew he was lying from the onset, and so the story of a friend of a friend who had crashed in some place a while ago filled the small waiting room. The grandfather played devils advocate asking those awkward questions that made the lies more obvious to the rest of the room. Answers were given that became even more dubious but none the less he pushed on until he had used up all the available words.

The snow has long gone but I am still haunted by that story. I like that he tried; the story was never about cars and snow or the truth but about fitting in. Recently, when out walking the island I have found myself turning it over in mind, not so much the lies but whether the truth is any better or distinguished only by its commonality.

Image Above right: Running Mooring

Miracles On The Sand

Image above: Orlando collecting mussels from the bay.

Miracles On The Sand

Wednesday January 19th

Out of the breeze the bay has warmed, I follow Orlando who has equipped himself with a bucket and a staff borrowed from a biblical epic. The waters have already parted and the retreating tide has left a deep mat of kelp. I pad through to meet my wife and our neighbour who are returning over the sands from a trip to the doctor’s. In the haste to check the post and any news they are carrying I forget to ask about the new doctor.

Orlando has been slowed by the kelp and I wait. He catches up and we walk on fording the stream and checking rocks for mussels as we go. In amongst the stonewalled fish traps he answers his mobile and is away in conversation as I walk on towards the corner of the bay. I make exploratory kicks at empty shells hindered in my movements by youngest son who is perched in a carry frame on my back. When Orlando returns we are in the thick of mussel territory, the bucket takes only a few minutes to fill.

As we walk back he talks about the phone call; news of an operation that he has been waiting for to correct the vision in one of his eyes. Later he jokes that the operation should miraculously halve the island’s population ; at least through his eyes.

Image Below: Orlando collecting mussels from the bay.

Images: Candles shine along the street as we bring in the light.

New Year’s Eve, New Year’s day

The health centre’s waiting room was almost full, we took the final spaces joining the ranks of those looking for a cure before the turn of the year. The locum boomed out the name of the next patient as if he had worked all his career in a much larger practice, I looked to see if the waiting room had somehow been extended while my attention had wandered.

With the doctor returned to his consulting room and a respectful pause given, those who remained felt compelled to share their view of the temporary doctor or more importantly his manner. Briefly I felt like a local as this proxy parliament swung into debate. Our ‘old doctor’ who is still confusingly referred to as the ‘new doctor’ by those who can still remember the previous occupant of the position has retired due to ill health. And so we await the arrival of another ‘new doctor‘, who shall carry this title until he or she faces their retirement. Every initial greeting will be prefixed with , “you must be the new doctor,” as if somehow those of us who still qualify as tourists having not been born on the island of Mull will have gained some history with the place. Conversations beyond the health centre will begin with “have you seen the new doctor?” and answered with, “do you remember the old doctor?” Older residents will of course secure their positions as community elders by correcting their youngers and referring to the old doctor as the new doctor and the latest arrival as just the ‘latest doctor’.

There is a weighty duty on all of us to practice our appraisal skills. Undoubtedly our opinions will be sought in pubs, on fishing boats, in the local shops, over fences and fields, in the huddle of parents that haunt the home time bell, and when all is said and done in a crowded waiting room.

Image Above: Light On The Bay
Location: Erraid Sound, Erraid

The Thaw

Christmas Eve 24th December

Around the gutters and windowsills the movement of water had begun, every projecting surface held a drip tapping out its rhythm on the wet surface of the snow. By late afternoon the drips had found rivulets running unseen under ice. The world had begun to sag uncomfortably, where the snow had concealed it now clung to the skeleton of the island like a piece of linen blown from a washing line. I felt a little sad as if woken from a dream or finding myself falling out of love and realising despite grasping hands that it had slipped through my fingers.

And so the mask has fallen and ordinary objects return to their duties freed from the burden of being a sculpture. The chaos of human existence is revealed in misplaced sandals, spades lodged in garden borders and bags of rubbish abandoned on route to the bin store. I am still not used to snow, it comes from some other place that seems to be governed by pure whimsy. I take comfort that there are still things that even on my best day I could never have imagined.

When the blizzards had began a little over a week ago I had watched the water of the bay stilled and softened by the lightest of touches. I rowed out between snowfalls and felt the change in density the melting iced fronds had brought to this salted lagoon. Beneath the boat a translucence touched with the grey of snow clouds obscured the sea bed. The low water sands and the strand lines of kelp had also fallen for the spell, leaving only the brine as a counterpane to the monotone depths of the sky. The ocean eventually reclaimed the bay. Each incremental rise of successive tides redefined what was given to the water and what belonged to the land leaving a sharp line drawn beneath the whiteness.

While the snow and ice was barely passable and the tides ran under a full moon we waited for the bay to drain. The sands lent passage and we could deliver Christmas presents to our neighbours, returning with news and mussels plucked from weed drenched rocks. Yesterday I wandered the shallows in the afternoon sunshine as a creature of the tidal race with the hermit crabs and sand gobies for company enjoying the warmth beneath that cold band of snow. Today all has changed and the world seems almost ill-defined, the land runs with water, while the tide carries away small bergs of frozen beachfront.

In the late afternoon the cows return to the byre, their coats wet from a shower trail vapours in the darkness as afternoon turns to evening.

Image Above Right : Coils Of Pea Fencing
Image Above Left: Hay Loft Floor
Image Below: Hermit Crab

The Zed Bed Sled

Image Above: Bea And The Zed Bed Sled
Location: Isle Of Erraid
The Zed Bed Sled
Sunday 19th December

I chased Isaac out of the tool shed before dropping the mask’s visor and drawing an arc of molten light over the final joint in the steel. Isaac waited in the snow displaying his impatience with well timed questions as children do marooned on the back seat of the longest journey. Eventually I slid the bent steels out of the shed and let the welds hiss in snow. We found a seat sized piece of plywood amongst the remnants of the zed bed I had abandoned earlier on the pier. A little over an hour ago it had been silently rusting in the corner of the boat shed, with a little effort and a cutting disc its days of torturing spare room guests were finally over.

The rope came from the ‘rope trailer’; named cunningly because it holds the island’s collection of old rope in what could only be described as the world’s biggest knot, rather than pull at threads in search of an end I wisely took a knife. Celia fetched oil and a rag from the garden shed, old vegetable oil used to put a sheen on spades and a slickness on steel runners. We gathered on the street, kids, neighbours and trudged through walled in whiteness of grass gardens pausing at the gate to look out over the bay. The moon had risen out of Ben More and hung over the silence of the snow rimmed bay in ownership of the late afternoon like a benevolent soul.

I had forgotten about the simple pleasure of sliding down a hill and felt ashamed that somehow I had not devoted enough of my life to this pursuit. It was rumoured that a local shopkeeper who had displayed a sledge for the last six snowless winters had exaggerated its annual inflationary rise as the first few inches had begun to settle, never mind that he was dealing with a sacred object. All objects travel in space and time but few instantly transport what it is to be a child as seamlessly as a sledge . It is not the past that rushes up to meet me but a freedom in the moment and the pure joy of it . But I am not the first of my family to build time machines. My great uncle went to night school metal work classes and furnished my childhood winters’ with a sledge that seemed to run equally on air as snow. And then my father and his metal imagings, sledges crafted from junk that could hold a street full of kids and send them hurtling down the rolly polly field.

Once again It was my turn at the top of the hill and lifting my feet I let the world rush by. Later I wondered if the zed bed had ever imagined such an afterlife.

Lights

Image Above: The Burg, Mull

Saturday 31st July

The light has almost gone now, I waited in the quarry and watched gaps in the clouds deepen into crimson. There is so much sky here and so much is made ridiculous by that blanket of light. Earlier in the Sound of Iona I watched a wave suddenly enveloped in an amber glow, there is no reason for this, who chooses a wave out of ocean full of movement? My line snagged a mackerel and I looked away briefly to the rod, boat and the silver life that hung from the hook. The fish I returned as tribute but the glow had moved on leaving me in the shadow of a squall. These random acts of beauty are the local currency and wealth is often afforded merely by a cliff top perch or an open boat.