sun stories

6 o'clock sun


Burn, burn, burn, burn! With the advent of the Vernal Equinox, a constant battle takes place between sun and fog.  Incessant duel between earth, air and sea. And yet, every time our star turns victorious, a beaten fog retreats, burnt out... The very first encounter took place last Sunday, as a defeated Haar allowed us to enjoy a very first evening of light till a lazy sunset and dusk. I never tire of those honey skies all around us. 


Latest sightings

Emerging from a cold and damp winter, I nearly forgot how an after 6 o'clock sun felt like. Quendale  & Brake looked so serene in light blue. A quick run around that shallow Loch of Spiggie remains a must in early spring, and it did not fail to amaze us.


Yes, geese, Goldeneyes, Long-Tailed ducks and other seasonal wildfowl - including Whooper Swan, Red-breasted Merganser, Northern Lapwing, Teal, Wigeon, Shelduck, Moorhen, shalder and a grey heron  - dwell on its edge. But somebody spotted the very first Bonxie of 2012 yesterday. So summer's definitely on its way! All seabirds need fresh water to wash off seaspray off their feathers, as salt burns the very fabric of plumage, keratin.  Damaged feathers will only make life difficult to a seabird, just as it does to our local population of otters. Any creature that feeds from our maritime world needs fresh water for survival. 


Pirate spirit, moi?

Not many of us like bonxies on the island. Although they were once highly hailed by crofters as the liberators from the Erne - and the last pair of eagles were last seen in 1911 - great skuas have since replaced the then "evil" eagle, and has been associated with more modern & economic folk tales. They are amazing flyers and fishermen, when our sea feels generous. Moorland nesters, their varied food diet ensures survival. Furthermore, many of us also forget that bird colonies would be plagued with disease during summer, for they act as muckrakers, cleaning off ledges with ill, injured or dead seabirds. Every creature has a function on our planet, or they simply do NOT exist. People need to accept this simple fact. As a species, we may have placed ourselves at the very top of the food web, however, financial greed can lead some of us to abuse of our homeworld's generosity and/or deplete the resources that are so vital to our healthy planet. The animal kingdom needs our help more than ever! Let's be reasonable and the laws of the karma will be favourable to the future generations.


Back to sun stories

Longer evenings enable us to wander around the island till a later dusk, especially in the unusual clement climate we've experienced till yesterday! Folk walk around, go to the beach and tidy up their gardens.
On the first of our British Summer Time season, we ended up on my favourite sandbridge and marvelled at a pale blue world.


The surf was gentle at our feet and my other half showed an amazing mollusc he found partly uncovered at the edge of the Atlantic: Arctica Islandica . Amazing find! 
  
As the sun dipped below our horizon, the edge of our world turns blue... 


The other end of day, I caught a bloodshot sun through the lens of my pocket camera, as we do not see very often. Our northern sky was filled with a uniform of grey but then, an unusual glowing red sun appeared amidst clouds from the front and I stopped the car to admire such spectacle. I trust other folk stopped on a passing place... It was awesome.


And as we are now reverting to a much more typical early spring spell for our latitude, I can only hope that this arctic moment will not last too long, and be kind to our much precocious spring. Our grass needs a first cut and birds begin to nest. It is no April fool.
Looking forward to the return of our closest flamboyant star :-).

half & half world

Beyond the stars, light, equinox


Nothing prepares us for such cosmic rite of passage. Not even the dazzling displays of aurora borealis that filled our sky since last summer's dusk... As we wandered through February, the island began to display precocious signs of revival. Strangely, our trees began to share so early buds... Winter bowed out without complaint, as milder air filtered through March. Not ice, but rain dominated our Nordic skies. March, month of rainbows and wild hares!

Revival, renaissance, a promise of return
From Imbolc to Ostara, our earthly calendar of life feels more than generous.
Celandine popped up with a good fortnight in advance... Avian movements have turned our skies into fantastic motorways! From wildfowl to waders, via blackbirds, skylarks and common guillemots, the island gradually welcomes back its summer visitors. 

And wherever you decide to walk, Greylag geese feast about everywhere! Their sound and sights slash days and nights. I love to listen to bird calls in a crepuscular sky. Geese make the best use of stars for night navigation. Somehow, I think of Antoine de Saint-Exupéry's Vol de Nuit.


Night. The one that weaves solace and fears  through a curtain of love & hate... 


Yet night will shrink even further as we jig with spring equinox! What began from late January will now accelerate at some amazing speed. So until then, I shall make the most of our stars and walk through spring till they faint away past Beltaine - enjoy a walk through the meadows and re-discover my world's palette of colours, though quite timid at first, when petals open to the sun. On Sunday morning, I heard my first skylark. Now I can truly welcome Voar, that wonderful dialect word for spring.

Voar haiku string 

Voar -

wind of spring in rattling blind,

distant echo of wheatears.

#haiku fae 60N

Let it out -

March, month of rainbows, ghosts & angels,

my grief still tattooed in grey sky.

#haiku fae 60N

Les choristes -

in their chocolate & white suits,

on every corner of the stack, guillemots sing.

#haiku fae 60N

venus & the crescent moon

tales from our sky


If you don't look, you'll never see. Saturday night and all is blue. Well, at least till dusk...


 The land is waterlogged. Peatlands,
 ditches, roadsides. That snow remains a memory. And from the roof of my marshy world, I felt water beyond the edge of hiking boots, as I walked around my hillside. In search of the first song of the skylark, I found some early visitors at its bottom: orange-billed, pied, beak inside earth, foraging hard in search of grubs hiding in mud... Yes, our dear shalders (oystercatchers) can dine in style! Saturday bathed in this springlike air and I could not resist making the most of such moment. The Lush fields around Spiggie (though waterlogged too) act as magnets for geese and farmland birds. And geese graze about everywhere! In a game of "catch me if you can", ravens stayed high when they were not hopping around mangers among sheep. Common gulls made me grin from one to the other end of field edges. Shelducks , Red-breasted mergansers and Tufted ducks (now in their pairs) kept well at bay... Redshanks & Ringed plovers patrolled the loch's edge. Whooper swans fed in their usual position (tail up) and large rafts of gulls and maalies ... I later saw a Slavonian Grebe at the southern end of the loch. My Saturday sky filled with feathers against blue. 


I love the island in such light. 
raw, majestic, it shines through the eyes of deep space.
The sky speaks many tongues in a myriad of voices. It learnt to whisper and to shout... it cries and smiles without reasons. Today it unveiled the colours of late February.
And when you wonder to the shore, birds walk the length of ocean's edge. 


And when we begged goodbye to the day, dusk settled its trillions of treasures. I love our sky at those moments. 


Blue, orange, indigo, crepuscular, and still so calm.

 And Venus shone left to the Moon.

february & ravens

LOVE YOUR HEADLAND


February remains an extraordinary month. It is a time when life returns, even if only through whispers. For every journey through the land, familiar sounds add to the light. If gales still prevail through most mornings, precocious signs of renewal become more flagrant after dawn. One hears excitement through the bare trees of my garden. 
Blackbirds, sparrows, gulls, corvids of northern kinds... Geese in gaggles or above heads. All so more noticeable now. It is a hymn to early spring.

That main trunk of tarmac that links the island from north to south. 
My daily run to the town means a good opportunity to watch one of my favourite birds: ravens.
February draped by their early aerial display, those majestic jet black flyers defy laws of acrobatics. Now they come to perch by the roadside for breakfast. Tarmac offers free restaurants for them and all our local gulls that come to feast on carrion. Some unusual and strange way to survive... Yet their success for survival depend on our rate of road kills, mostly rabbits that plague the land.
Ravens have learnt to tame tarmac. Usually found perched on fenceposts, they reconvene every morning in gangs of three, four, five or six and clean the roads of fur and bones...
They've learnt patience and great timing on the approach of vehicles, and will get aloft as headlights become too near to their feathers. As morbid as it may sound,  those muckrakers have turned such formidable opportunists, and their dare-devil flying skills have made them one of the most successful species in our world.


Fascinating species that inspires tales of all kinds.
From folklore to music, their jet black wings do not cease to amaze and awake musings of all sorts. According to culture, they turn devil or gods... In Native American realms, they bring change and  allow you to travel between worlds. In Scandinavian history, Vikings came to our land to collect young ravens as means of GPS - by launching them at sea to find land ahead - on their travels westwards/north-westwards.  
They are present in so many folk tales, songs and omens!

In Music, as here:

And There, the tale of The Three Ravens, Germanic style.

To my humble heart, ravens remain fantastic birds that symbolise freedom in flight.
Every morning begins with them.

Arctic Sunday

back to whiteworld


We have been warned. That exotic (anything above zero Celsius) air would not last long... Kate's 50 words for Snow is playing inside the hut, as am I'm savouring a bowl of warm porridge. The island once more caught in some Arctic spell, with a thin, though icy sheet of snow, has clad every meadow, garden and geo. Our three felines ventured fully clawed on the icy blue.


Peewit the Cat clambered over the crab basket and watched geese in mid-morning sky from his post. He looked a sphinx in this ocean of ice.  Frozen garden in glorious light on Sunday morning. Overnight gales let us enjoy more magic from our Nordic sky, with yet another luminous display of aurora. Mirrie Dancers delighted eyes late in darkness. So cold though through this Arctic air. If at the start of February, I felt on the shore of the Labrador, today makes me think of Svalbard, or somewhere near the horizon of South Georgia, South Shetland or Orkney Islands, or even Iles Kerguélen...  A short walk around my patch transports my heart to those desolate freezing realms. Scott, Charcot and Shackleton  belong to this catalogue of famous polar explorers, and yet, other names, no so well remembered, adorn this list. No leopard or elephant seal, just common and grey ones can be found all around my shore. Each print of snow boot has its rewards. I heard a snippick (snipe) in the nearby field, and geese calling above my head. So was the theme of my stravaig before lunchtime.


Everything belongs to the ice.

In defiance to eyes and claws of February, sparrows and starlings sang during snowfall on Saturday. So eager to chase this spell of desolation, they stood and chirped all around us. Every tree began to feel the weight of winter. Sticky snow whitened our world. But still, birdsong filled in sound this myriad of snowflakes. My Nordic world sounded so light. 

Such desire to feel alive and sing in Saturday's bleakest moments...

June & Richard's Old Manse looks so romantic clad in white. The old stone walls harbour comfort and secret worlds fit for a starling, gull or wren. They too feed birds that come to shelter from harshness. Among bits of twisted branches and frozen garden, tubes of peanuts hang from bareness. Birds know it so well. later they will find a suitable tree to love and fare for their offspring... In the meantime, they have to make do with whiteworld.

Recent haiku & tweets from 60N

Morning distorted by raindrops that could crystallize by Saturday - will have to tell curlews & wrens... #Geopoetics  

Magic words -

 inside book of incantations, 

one spell for snow.

 #haiku fae #60N #Geopoetics #flâneur #snow #dérive

Garde-barrière - 

sur le rebord du monde, 

deux étourneaux attendent la neige.

 #haiku fae 60N 

Now found your footprints in the snow - echoing round the 

whole island! 

roosting time

where do you stand?


Tonight I heard the blackbird's Braille and caught our Moon in eastern sky. We, islanders, have endured gales instead of snow. Morning downpours led way to light. The air was as freezing as our wild North Atlantic. The Westerlies feel so bitter, as sun ventures across our sky. February, the coldest, harshest month with a desire to make you feel its sharpest claws...  Raw, incisive, as wolf fangs through the flesh of a buffalo, and yet as invisible as a dream, snowless winter grips you and turns you blue. I could have felt on some shoreline in Hudson Bay; along the coast of Labrador... Those cold deserts, tundra landscapes, where permafrost still dreams of warmth and waders' calls, feel just like home. Each tongue of land holds its secrets.


Mine stands so proud in-between North Sea and Atlantic. Battered and constantly windswept, the island withstands anger from currents, rotating blades of each roller, ending their race on sculpted sand or against rocks, stacks and natural arches. Earthly Rodin. They shape our shores like a sculptor... They carve through basalt and Old Red Sandstone without shame and carry the world in their bellies. Every pebble locks its nomad's tale. 


And yet I grab those precious stones, as I retrace my steps back home. 


Birds unfolds wings to brave currents and reach heavens.
Sweet freedom, flowing in my heart.

By sunset time, I watched  gardens fill with our most common visitors. Since we planted trees in not such a distant past, they have now grown to perching springs, well above ground and feline eyes. As soon as I opened the door onto the sliding sun, the sky unveiled earth symphony, as starlings, sparrows and blackbirds hovered around barren branches. So many voices filled our sky. 

Wintersong,

gathering on top branches from June's secluded garden and fly off for roosting time.

Life, a constant flight for survival.
  

Another night, morrow or year. 

I wonder if they too stick to almanacs.

day of sun

day of sun, day of light


my fleeting soul, as Bertie sings. It all felt aerial, so ethereal and magical from dawn till now.  The Met Office application on my iPod had somehow whispered to make the best of our Sunday... Dazzled by blue from dawn till dusk, the island weighed its mass of gold. Fuelled by might of our Nordic light, I packed my heart with adventures found on the shore of the South End - its very tip made of white sand. 


West Voe was littered with uprooted kelp forests tides bring to rest on silver shores after each storm. Warmth on my skin, as I stepped out of the motor and began my first wandering. Whereas folk made it to the other side of arch, I followed the song of the waves and scrutinised the very edge of my own world. Life comes and feasts on rotting kelp,  
from wading friends to the tiniest!


What better spectacle but watch waders - turnstones and purple sandpipers - mingle with lace made by the surf. Each one looked so mechanical every time they got their feet wet! I soon sealed time in a bubble and let my eye play through the lens. 

And yet, behind me, the magic of our elusive jenny wren that too made the most of earth bonanza and played hide and seek in boulders. Magic moments. 





A drive around Spiggie led us to geese - greylag, white-fronted and bean - scattered around the loch and the lush fields in-between Spiggie and Bigton. 

Bigton, la voie royale to Arcania! So I went to salute my dear sandbridge for the first time since Yule and found new rocks on its shoreline... We shall never underestimate the power of water. Oceans and seas carry the world in their currents. We came to find shells of all kinds. And so we did... As spray flew high half-way though the tombolo and tide was high, we found happiness at its base. I marvelled at the game of light through marram grass... Like angel hair all around us. When the world sounds so loud, I always come back to the shore and listen for its earthly song. And love the island in such light. 


By mid-afternoon, I reconvened with my troupe in the town, as theatre needs rehearsals. Dusk draped Sunday without a word. This epilogue back inside night - somewhat distracted by a glow of Aurora in the evening - hovers like a silvery cloak of a day more than well spent. 


And I want to remember how it all began, 

here it is, immortalised, inside a triptych of haiku.

Vol de nuit -

des oies sauvages en escadrille

par delà tuiles dans bleu de l'aube.

Night flight -

wild geese in a squadron

beyond tiles in blue dawn.

#haiku fae 60N

Cri de l'aube -

des fers de la nuit,

merle noir se déchaine.

Cry Dawn -

from night's shackles

blackbird unchains itself.

#haiku fae 60N

Chant du monde -

au dire du matin,

les étourneaux en rang par trois.

Earth song -

to what morning whispers,

starlings in rows of three.

#haiku fae 60N

With everlasting thanks to my other half for his precious shots of geese :-)

first sun

2012 awakening


I love to wake to Nordic sun. A cold wind blows across the island. Last night's Réveillon at our friends began with a bang, as Andy lit that single rocket in black sky at the back of Midnight. We hung our last hour of 2011 on Monica's coat rack and gathered by a warm hearth for Hogmanay. We wished Cameron "Happy Birthday", smiled, kissed and toasted to a brand new year. Merriment de rigueur as we swung towards brand new dawn...


I love this isle from this point of elevation. Brand new year, the wanderer walks through heather and looks for now bathed in pale blue and brand new sun. Kate Bush once wrote & sang, "stepping out of the page, into the sensual world..." This simple phrase sticks through my mind, as I stood still and felt this crisp first day against my skin. At around noon, my northern realm was so dazzling. 


from blue to grey


But then light feels like trapped inside Pandora's Box as clouds gathered as if to signal end of gold... Birds hasted wingbeats and prepared for roosting time. But first, feast wherever it is offered to them.  Inside willows and on feeders, before they switch to sleepy sky... 


The wind still bites after sunset. And from the comfort of my hut, I celebrate this brand new year graced by a generous first sun. 


inspiring world

first sun -

pioneer's fire through new year,

January begins with pale blue.

#haiku fae 60N

happy new year fae 60N :-)