hey, you!

on the edge of my world full of birds


The very first thing you notice when you approach the summit of a headland (well, apart from the salt from the ocean carried by relentless wind gusts!) is that sudden cacophony; a bit like the Royal Albert Hall, or le Palais Garnier, in surround sound! High pitched, non-stop, storytelling in a multitude of avian languages!


To live on the edge of the North Atlantic, common guillemots (once called "petits pingouins" by French explorers on their voyage to Canada in the time of Jacques Cartier) find nesting safety in numbers on stacks. The chocolate colour member of the auk family - a cousin to the more maverick razorbill and the ever so clumsy looking puffin - returns to those rocky pinnacles to lay an egg even without bothering building a nest. The conical shape of the bluish stained egg somewhat prevents (or limits) a fall in the ocean... 



To stand at the very top of the headland allows you to converse with feathers and exchange glances at close range. 


That's exactly what I did today with a few avian friends. "Johnathan" - not Seagull! - ...Seagulls do NOT exist! "My Johnathan" happens to be the very affectionate name I once gave to fulmars, (the miniature version and very distant relative of the Southern Hemisphere based albatross) as I began to make my acquaintance with them on a more professional basis when wardening on and around this "belfry", Sumburgh Head, now some nine years ago.  I came to appreciate a world as real as it could be, not that bubble we, humans, have built around ourselves. A very raw, somewhat "harsh", "tough" world in which the very concept of natural evolution as well as Darwinian concept of "survival of the fittest"... Here, you really witness life and death as it happens live.  

Prey and predator live side by side, as wanted by nature to regulate itself. Many folk perceive  predators, such as bonxies (aka great skua, as pictured on the right) as a pest... What those same folk forget to understand (or ignore) is that they have a very disctinctive function around bird colonies: they clean them of sick/injured birds, hence preventing epidemics on cliffs... Every creature has a function on Earth, otherwise, it simply does NOT exist. 

The island has already begun to display a palette of colours all around. Now with June approaching, thrift (or sea pinks) have added to the myriad of petals around the headland, as well as on road verges and in ditches. The island is shining in sheer splendour. Walking around the edge of my world full of birds never ceases to amaze the eye and heart. Night has turned blue. The wind may still rage outside my window as I type, however, 

how I love my Nordic shore windswept in the north Atlantic!

long overdue

beyond aerial


Beltane done and dusted, now we are sliding to summer. Temperature do not appear to go higher, and yet, blue now stretches well beyond nine (p.m. GMT). Cloudscapes fashion in exquisite shapes without shame... The other night, I saw two hounds above my head playing in blue. Aerial dream, as blackbird began to share its elaborate recital. Summer has come to the island.


The more I look to ground level, the more colours and signs of life meet the iris. It's like a hymn or an anthem the world wishes to share with us. Explosive red of the campion - intimate bath of a skylark... And when plovers act as vigils, we know nesting is taking place.  


That plethora of wild flowers begin to show: campion, sea pinks,  kidney vetch, bird's foot trefoil, cuckoo flower... Spring squill, marsh marigold, primrose and common mouse ear to name a few. I think Van Gogh would have loved my boreal meadows after Beltane. The light may not be Provençal, however, colours dare to explode in cool blue!

Catching my shore in summer light remains a gift and priviledge. 


And when I look in the garden, my avian friends shine among daisies and bluebells, as they delight my Saturday morning!

There is no rest   inside the real world, since life demands precious moments to be counted inside world clocks...

Now tell that to the universe! 

...Even dandelions go grey and disperse ashes like remnants of a Phoenix... 

power of words

I love my local library.


It is home to countless treasures: pages, poets, poetry nights, number of smiles beyond all words.

Our librarians are devoted to share the power of the print, recorded voice or fiddler's bid and endeavour  to devour miles across islands to reach out to communities separated by roaring tides. 

As a poet, such devotion goes well beyond might of the pen!


So, here and there, we come to gather and air pages or a song... Inside the walls of Ringan's Church at the Hillhead, we are blessed by such dynamic team! Our librarians have a passion to share might of the spoken word and provides writings with a home, where we belong in all seasons...

Last Saturday was Open Mic' - three minutes of pleasure per poet or participating reader. 

Thank you, Fiona, for such evening - thank you, dear Shetland Library, for harbouring so many treasures and a home! Shetland Library

In this cycle of creation, poetry nights feel de rigueur.

edge of my world

walk to edge of a volcano


I love Northmavine. It's wild, rugged, shaped by fire, time and tempests... Timed in granite, basalt and salt.


A trip to the Eshaness Peninsula, NW of the island, feels like a reunion with your true self. To stand to the edge of the cliffs, without fear of staring at the world with your heart wide open, reinstates your humility.


Eshaness is a magic place. There is no other word for it. It holds many secrets, dormant inside the many crystals molten rocks once solidified by a mystic jewel designer... On Beltane Eve (30 April), we came and found more than we thought.


We've always known of da peerie folk who roam at night and snatch fiddlers for reveling inside their homes deep inside earth... The miniature cast of the much more famous Scandinavian trolls, trows, as they're known, only bring mischief around roads, crofts and our world. However, those supernatural creatures have their own Achilles heel: sunlight petrifies them at once and the faintest ray from our star turns them into rock... Now, I wonder.

Would you meet one in broad daylight... Freshly petrified... In full Viking dress?

Trows are not known to bear arms of any kind;  let alone guise like a Viking.

...Or  could a Norwegian cousin appear and join in merriment and forget fate just after dawn?

The plot thickens among the rocks!  

Northmavine, Eshaness, Stenness, land of magic & mystery!

...And on the very first of May, Beltane was spent among flowers!

...well away from da peerie folk!

in the boat shed

wonderworld


To enter a boat shed is like... Just ask any boat builder and their world suddenly becomes a wondrous oyster - a cave of wonders among all the marvels from our world!


As soon as you push the door, the scent of wood freshly chiseled fills your nostrils just like perfume! It has a special scent. Dust jigs through sun beams like May flies and tools litter inside and all around works in progress. A bit like a session musician inside a studio or a poet at the writing table! Your senses feed your imagination without effort. In this boat shed, Robbie Tait and his mates repair Shetland traditional boats, such as Ness Yoals... In the last few years, they even built a sixareen - or six-oared fishing boat complete with sail - that is moored inside Hays' Dock, just outside our Shetland Museum & Archives. Shetland Museum Photo Gallery

Robbie Tait is very humble about his work. He is happy to share words with visitors and smiles with humility. His love for wood, rivets and tools shines outside the building, as finished works are proudly displayed in the Boat Hall and outside. His shed speaks for the talent of the boat builder. 


I came to find Robbie Tait to share a few words about Humblyband. Ruth has the ambition to tie another string to her bow and experience the art of Shetland's craftsmanship in terms of traditional seafaring crafts. Her love for sheds, wood and tools is unbounded! Her very capable hands will feel at home on this latitude. 

So we spoke for a while. Yet Robbie Tait does not hesitate to mention Willie Mouat, Unst's boat builder, Shetland's most northerly master of their craft. 

My next visit to the most northerly edge of the realm - the Island of Unst - will focus on the Gardie Boat!

In
the meantime,

 I'll stick to my Ness Yoal :-) 

Meandering through spring

Between Mousa Broch and Beltaine


If I stick to this Earth Year Calendar, we now stand seven days away from the Greater Sabbath, Beltaine, and will follow the cosmic wheel of seasons.


A week earlier, and we were wandering though the offshore island of Mousa... 
Mousa, home of the wild, flat stones and rust - this big rock, east off my township of Sandwick, is home to its own Iron Age fortification, known as the Mousa Broch (we are talking over 2000 years old construction!) itself under the watchful eyes of Historic Scotland, AND inhabited in summer by the smallest of the Petrel family, the Storm Petrel, locally christened as Peerie Mootie.

Still early in the season, the broch's tenants are yet to land in between stones and beach boulders... We nonetheless had a wild time among skylarks, bonxies as well as two Red-throated divers flying around our heads! 


To give you a greater idea of size of such man-made wonder, here is the gang aginst that broch. And if you want to find out what it really looks once you've entered it, well, let's play Mootie inside those ancient stones. 
Now I'm waiting for both avian and human visitors in this corner of wilderness. Thank you, dear Nadia for your lens!
All Mousa photographs courtesy of Nadia Gould 2011.
And as evening settled, we enjoyed two massive male orcas  playing in the Sound at Burland... I love Saturday night on my 60th Parallel! 


as Earth rotates...


Now, on 21 April, four weeks exactly after our cosmic rite of passage through Ostara, otherwise known as the Vernal Equinox, the island bathed from dawn till dusk in sheer boreal blue.


 I remember staring at my Nordic sky through the windows of many classrooms from Lerwick and hoped it would remain the same till our star slides through the silk of our Atlantic... How I love my northern sky when it fulfills such hope!
So blue, we decided to divert to the very southern tip of the island to salute sunset and seabirds. How magnificent in such light, i never get tired of it. As we are galloping to the azure of the Simmerdim (our light blue night season of summer!), our sun takes so much more time to dip in... To give you a better idea of daytime, today, the sun rose at 0522 and will set at 2038 GMT - in other words, we are enjoying 15 hours and 15 min of light!
As a result, days extend like loose rubberbands and nights shrink like nylon exposed to fire. 
So we wandered around this magical headland... Its occupants played around it and nearby stacks. Common Guillemots, Shags, Fulmars, Razorbills, Kittiwakes and Puffins - all six species amused our hearts. 
It felt like a real summer evening, light, calm, warm and soothing. Back home, my garden and nearby fields teeming with life, as shalders, skylarks, sparrows and blackbirds deafen our hearts! At the same time, two swallows graced our sky. They too now perch on our dizzy latitude.

Beltaine begins in seven days. Beltaine, gateway to da Simmerdim!

post scriptum to between baskets & the wild wood

twist of fate


Let's talk of small world for a moment.


In my previous blog entry, I mentioned Humblyband, as I was day-dreaming in the main room at Shetland's main art gallery, for a very simple reason: basketry.


Humblyband project: Humblyband 


As I was exploring Ruth Macdougall's latest blog entries for an update of her curach we shall carry and row at a later stage, I suddenly realised that both artists, Macdougall and Walpole, would deliver their respective talk at some International Conference, "Basketry & Beyond: constructing cultures" at the University of East Anglia on the same day, one, following the other! Needless to say Ruth must have smiled when she read my comment on FB... 


Without a doubt, this world could fit inside a single basket.


About our local art gallery: Bonhoga