jenifer told me that she was not especially looking for anything.
this instantly delighted me and i said: i am not looking for anything either
but now, upon reflection, i realise that i must always be seeking in some way for something for my sign is to explore.
i came back to scotland to attend my grandfather's funeral.
the day of my flight i asked jenifer for her email address.
"que te voy a escribir" she said
"maybe we can meet up if you come to germany in the summer" i said.
jenifer only wants to use the internet when it is stricty necessary. she considers the cave her home. she talks about one day keeping bees and hens nearby. the hens would be a good solution to the food waste question. they would simultaneously eat up all the food scraps and give eggs. we tried to make compost of our food waste, but jenifer said that without water good compost does not form. it merely rots, attracting rodents and flies.
friend colin and i cycled south out of glasgow. as we were passing the square in the centre of paisley, the wind sent hundreds of pink petals into the air from the cherry trees. at first i thought a wedding was underway. we rode through the wind-blown blossom like through falling confetti.
with our bikes, we arrived at kilburn castle, where a musical festival was to take place. no sooner had i arrived at the campsite when a youth approached me with a can in his hand and said,
"excuse me, did you get a lift here in a van?"
"no" i said, filled with our bike trip, and the youth strode off.
"wait a minute," said colin "do you not say you got a lift to glasgow in a van yesterday?"
"o yes," i slowly remembered, "so i did"
i strode over to where the youth was camped and it turns out it was his brother who had given me a lift, had gone out of his way to take me all across glasgow practically to colin's doorstep, had shown exemplary glaswegian friendliness to me. i had told him that i was going to the pyschadelic forest festival, and he had told me his wee brother had gone the year before and really enjoyed it. now his wee brother was asking me how long i would be staying in glasgow because it was their mother's fiftieth birthday next weekend and would i like to come to the party?
i found this very endearing.
colin had described the festival as alternative. it is true that there was a friendly, relaxed atmosphere. the castle gardens were lovely. the castle itself rose grandly into the night, the turret walls painted ideosyncraticly in bright colours. there were curious sculptures and decorative banners dotted around. but everywhere were young people losing themselves on drink and drugs and in the music, and i could not help but longing for the consciousness of the rainbow gatherings, where the aim is to grow together in consciousness and responsibility.
back in buckie i found a wetsuit among my things. this opened up the possibility of exploring the coastal waters. without it the temperature of the north sea has me scrambling out the water after only a minute or two. it is always refreshing to come in contact with the sea. first there is the feeling of cold. this must be when the blood instinctively realises that it better keep the vital organs warm, and so it retracts from the members. then there is the wonderful feeling if said blood returning triumphantly to said members. an energised glow. a little story of retraction and triumphant return. a wonderful feeling.
the wetsuit also affords a wonderful opportunity for bird watching, i realised, when i swam from portnockie to cullen beach. near the bow fiddle rock the air around me is filled with the excited cries of seagulls. the sky above me is crisscrossed with their flights. kittiwakes circle curiously around the bobbing neoprene figure. cormorants, their long necks extended like stately black geese glide low over the water and pass very close to me with slow silent flaps of their wings.
this is the time of year for incubating eggs. after jumping off the cliff called the green castle at portnockie, i climb out the sea and scramble back up to the top of the cliff. seagulls are wheeling all around me and i notice that their nests are dotted here and there, all containing a set of three large eggs. they are large and beautiful, of a dark greyish green, flecked with pale grey speckles. an idea occurs to me. "hey finlay," i call to my brother - we had just then been talking of where we could acquire some eggs locally - "what about taking these?" there were so many of them. finlay extracted six, emptying two nests. i had heard that some mother birds, returning to a nest whose eggs had been tampered with, abandoned the nest entirely. the seagulls seemed to pay no attention to us then, but a couple of weeks later i jumped off the cliff again and this time when clambouring back up the cliff the seagulls dived almost upon me, screeching, clearly wanting me to go away. finlay assumes that this is because the eggs were a lot closer to hatching point, some of them indeed having already hatched, thus being more valuable to the seagulls.
we boiled the eggs, slightly beyond the runny yolk stage, but they were tasty, accompanied by soldiers of toast spread with marmite. in two of the eggs small seagull embryos had already begun to form. finlay googled this topic and, learning that in parts of asia embryos in eggs are eaten and enjoyed, we tasted them too. their small beaks were still soft. the young feathers i did not eat.
i first observed a certain compunction when this egg thought entered my mind. poor seagulls! i considered commiserating. they want to live just as much as i do. imagine i were a mother seagull and i discovered that my whole instinctual purpose for that season had disappeared from the nest. what a blow. i decline to inflict that blow on poor mother seagull.
however, i overcame this compunction by reasoning that the seagull population is extremely buoyant all around the british coastline. i know that with plants nature is often extravagant with her gifts, producing a superabundance of flowers and fruits and seeds, in the knowledge that many will be gobbled up before they reach fertile ground - if they reach fertile ground - and succeed in growing, if they are not overshadowed by the growth of other species in the earnest, unflagging game of survival. maybe the seagulls operate by the same principal, stoically accepting that other animals may take their tasty young eggs this year, but there will always be next year - not to mention the other members of the seagull community - to keep the seagull population buoyant.
pop! - a little explosion while spinning down the road to dundonnel and finlay's inner tube had burst. the tyre had become so thin and worn that all it took was spinning over a sharp wee stone. dad was already quite far ahead, so i made the most audible sound i considered myself capable of - curiously consisting of a high-pitched screech - but it was to no avail. we had brought patches for repairing punctures, but - thoughtlessly - no spanner to remove the wheel. we decided to hide the bike in the woods and look for a spanner later. "i can get to shenavall soon by walking over this hill," i told finlay, "you take my bike and catch up with dad and i'll meet you in shenavall tonight"
"happy navigation!" were finlay's last words as he pedalled off.
i wandered into the hills with an armful of dry branches and an old fencepost, thinking of the bothy fire and the good food to be cooked thereon. after an hour or so i was almost at the top of the glen when i met a solitary old man. he flashed me a keen smile, but i think it was only when he noticed my barefeet that we began talking. finlay had recommended going barefeet across the bogs, to keep my trainers dry. the man seemed to regard this fact with a certain respect. however, when i told him i was heading for shenavall, he said:
"shenavall! you are going the opposite way. shenavall's miles away!"
"i thought it was just over this pass . . ."
"no, this takes you to loch fannich"
when i set off i assumed i was much further along the dundonnel road than i actually was, also misled by the small scale of the northern scotland touring map i had looked at before giving it to finlay.
"you need a good OS landranger for the hills" said the man as he pulled out his and explained that i would have to go back down this glen.
"you'll never make shenavall tonight" said my benefactor candidly
"well, sometimes i surprise myself at how many miles i can cover when i am feeling fit" i confided, "besides, i have got long daylight hours on my side"
"there is no point in taking that wood any further" he stated. i immediately dropped the armful of sticks, and let the big old fencepost fall to the ground with a squelchy thud. it made an unusual sight at the top of the bare treeless glen. i often am happy to haul in heavy supplies of wood to a bothy, considering myself amply compensated by the precious flames they will emit when burning. but the man's advice was sound. with a word of thanks i sprang off like a gazelle, now barely feeling the weight of my small pack which contained but sleeping bag, clothes and food. i felt energised and galvanised by the thought of all the lonely miles of bog and glen ahead of me. it was exhilarating to run barefeet across the heather, jumping over boulders and splashing across burns, not giving one whit about the wet and the flying mud, immersed in the glorious deed of the gloaming traverse of wild country. sometimes i plunged into gloopy bogs which went up to my knees, other times i merely sank to my ankles - one cannot tell beforehand. i was tempted to be cautious about the slipperiness of the mud, but often hurtled on regardless, and was sometimes sent ungainly sprawling surprised to find myself suddenly making intimate contact with the soppy glop of scottish bog.
scotland is diametric to tenerife, i observed to myself. in the west of scotland it rains so frequently that the ground is often saturated with water. rain above, bog below, walking in scotland is connecting with the water element. jenifer said that on average it rains eleven days a year on the south coast of tenerife - the reason for the proliferation of tourists there, seeking a guaranteed sunny holiday. water is conspicuous by its absence in the landscape of south tenerife. having drinking water at the cave necessitated carrying big bottles from a tap, the nearest of which was twenty minutes away. always dry and rocky, many plants prickly and pale green, the presence of greener plants in a shaded barranco occasionally watered by rainwater was the beautiful exception. something that struck me about the scottish highlands upon my return was how rich and dark and vibrant and beautiful the hill colours were. my eyes had become accustomed to a brilliant sunbathed rockscape - or sunglinted seascape - very bright and very different to the deep shady hues of the highlands, laden with moisture and mystery, very dark, very beautiful.
my benefactor had told me about a bothy at the far end of loch a' bhraoin where he recommended i spend the night. i sheltered for about an hour there as it drizzled outside. in that lonely spot in the glen, there stood a grand two-storey house, whitewashed with freshly painted green window shutters, which was locked. nearby was the bothy which looked like an old barn by comparison. inside it was stocked with firelighters and wood which i used to make a wee fire and a pot of instant coffee. i was grateful to the estate for providing such shelter. i considered sleeping there but decided to push on to shenavall, lest my dad and brother become worried. as evening slowly stole over the land - the dim gloaming lingering till after eleven in midsummer - i saw great herds of hundreds of red deer, who quickly moved to higher ground when they caught sight of me.
the familiar shape of shenavall finally loomed out of the darkness at the base of an teallach. i entered the rudimentary shelter as i would a sanctuary of rest and peace. up the wooden staircase i found my dad and brother already lying in their sleeping bags. i lay down and felt my whole body tingling as if it were a heated engine which had just been switched off and which would take a long time before cooling down.
the body was again seen as a machine they day finlay and i cycled 100 miles home to buckie. what gave us so much energy that day? we arrived at muir of ord in early evening and, sitting on the pavement outside the coop, gobbled down sugary bakery items which in other circumstances would not appear to us as tasty - custard doughnuts and jam tarts, not to mention a whole jar of peanut butter and a couple of baguettes. cycling long distances is a wonderful activity for those who enjoy eating lots of food. tastiness is magnified as the body-machine gratefully absorbs anything of calorific value to replace that which has been so lavishly expended. undoubtedly the strong westerly wind at our backs magnificently magnified any energy we thrust into our pedals. sometimes it seemed like the wind was doing all the work. "it's like riding a motorbike!" i called gleefully to finlay as we freewheeled along the beauly firth. it was exhilarating to be swept across the kessock bridge, unable to admire the sunlight glinting off the sea, all concentration absorbed by avoiding being buffeted into the railings by the strong gusts.
it must also have been the gleaming goal of arriving home which kept us going throughout the night. daylight had almost disappeared when we reached nairn. we entered a bar in the hope of hearing some of the soft local accent which has come to delight our ears so much, but since not much could be heard over an electric guitar, we soon resumed our cycle. "remember," i observed to finlay a couple of times, "tiredness can kill: take a break" but the wind was always at our backs and our body-machines did not desire rest. between forres and elgin there were brief squalls of rain, and it was the darkest hour as we followed the country roads past fields and through woods. after elgin it began to get light again. by this stage we had ceased exchanging words. we had both become part of our bikes; our bikes had become an extension of the peddling machines that we had become, our consciousnesses sleepy to all but registering the road sliding by in the early morning light. sometimes finlay would take the lead and i would be encouraged to pedal faster to keep up, then i would make a pedalling spurt and finlay would follow suit. other times we cycled along silently in perfect unison, eyes observing the countryside advancing effortlessly towards us and disappearing, as if it were a film.
finlay got me thinking when he came out with this: that there is no essential difference between humans and other animals. there are lots of people putting forward lots of different interpretations of what could be called reality, but when such an untoward assertion is made by one's brother, one feels personally challenged. "the idea of humans becoming collectively enlightened" finlay feels "is hopeless idealism"
what! not that much different from the other animals! but what about our rational technological prowess? what about the flights of the human soul? our apprehension of The Beautiful and The Sublime, our Consciousness??
it is a good thing, i have realised, to have one's values and beliefs sensitively challenged lest they become mere assumptions.
what of our Free Will, the crowning jewel of being human - our capacity to choose, to desire to change, to undergo self-transformation?
finlay feels that what we commonly call free will is a lot less free than we would like to believe. "maybe for given individuals," he concedes, "there is a certain capacity to choose and change, but most people merely obey inner urges the same as other animals. humans are just like parasites on this planet, consuming all the resources till there are none left. and what of human consciousness? what do we achieve by it? chimpanzees can also stare at their navels. much more cruelty and warfare is perpetrated by humans than any other animal".
finlay has really made me think about this topic. the human animal is such a curious one because a part of us is precisely that - we have animal bodies. but - i would contend - we also have extraanimal, superanimal qualities. but what do we actively achieve by dreaming of God? what difference does it make if we undergo long adventurous journeys with our consciousness? i had been entertaining notions such as that the essence of our existence was Light and Love and Joy. we are these things incarnate. it certainly sometimes seems a good description of being:
i am the embodiment of Joy
you are pure Light, clothed in a body.
we are Love, manifested through our human beings.
what is indisputable is that we are all governed by the animal laws of possessing a body. the difference for the human is inner. but.then who can tell what the inner experience of a dolphin, or a horse, or a fly is? merely by observing their behaviour. perhaps it is the dolphins or why not the flies who have collectively become enlightened and realised that the best thing is simply to swim around or to buzz around, and thereby experience the depth of their existence.
