i left my heart on islay

When I told William Corson that I was from Buckie, he told us a tale about a Buckie man he once knew.  They were building a building, and when it came to fixing on the roof, the Buckie man - perched upon the trusses - dangled a string through a hole in one of the roofing sheets, then instructed someone below to tie a screw to the end of the string, after which he pulled the string up and - hey presto! - the screw was in place.  Amid the astonishment of those present, the Buckie man pronounced the words, "the hard road for old dogs, the pavement for puppies."  William Corson told his tale slowly, and with relish, as he drove Colin and I slowly along the wee road that wound through a tunnel of moss-covered old oaks that would take us to where we would walk into the bothy.  With relish William Corson told his tale, and with a twinkle in his eye which gave me the impression that perhaps he always saw the humor that lay beneath all things.

At that point it was only our second day on Islay, but already the slower-paced, friendlier demeanor of the islanders was palpable.  Having grown up, and spent most of my time on the east coast of Scotland, I find that the people from the west coast (in general) and the islands (in particular) have a different quality of character which is difficult to place exactly but which is unmistakable.  They have something softer about them, something gentler, something quieter while still self-assured, a twinkle in the eye, a charm perhaps . . .  perhaps an awareness of the charm that lies behind all things. 

It had become palpable to us not long after getting off the ferry on the Friday evening.  Darkness had already descended - and with it the rain - as we stood trying to thumb a lift from the cars coming off the ferry.  Nobody stopped.  After a while no cars went past any more.  We looked at each other through the rain with grim grins of reluctant acceptance.  We had booked tickets for an Islay Jazz Festival gig that would start in an hour.  I had blithely assured Colin "We'll have no problem hitchhiking on Islay.  Everyone stops for you on Islay"  Then a police car stopped.  Lynn, one of the island policewoman, took us a few miles beyond her destination to Bruachladdaich village hall where our gig was to be.  It was a timely display of island friendliness, which with time became only more palpable, and confirmedly charming.

At the time we had laughed easily along with William Corson, "the hard road for old dogs, the pavement for puppies" - ha, of course! - but later, as we were walking into the bothy, we puzzled over exactly what this saying was supposed to drive at.

I was sure that I had been to An Cladach bothy before, but it was only as we got close to it, trying to pin point its exact location, that I realised I had never been there before.  I had it confused with another bothy - similarly located on the coast - but on the island of Rhum.  An Cladach was built at the end of 1999 from ruins which had lain empty for a hundred years.  Few bothies have been built with the care and loving attention which was given to An Cladach.  A small plantation of young trees - oaks, birch, sycamore, pine, and a little holly - have even been planted behind the bothy, next to one tall old solitary rowan, which stands alone on a pretty treeless stretch of coast.  It is exciting to think how big they will grow in the years to come.  I climbed over the fence one day to take a look around.  When I saw a bright red apple lying on the ground my first thought was that it was a discarded item from somebody's picnic, but closer inspection revealed that it had fallen from a little apple tree.  It had a little hole where someone had already begun nibbling, but was otherwise firm, crisp, sweet and delicious chopped into yoghurt and muesli for breakfast.  There were a further three apples still attached to the tree.  I felt a little bad about taking them from the birds, who, as local residents, arguably had the better claim over the tasty local produce, but hey-ho.

That first night was pretty stormy.  The bothy was already occupied by a team of six young RSPB workers, two of whom were unpaid volunteers (this they pointed out to us in a tone of good cheer.)  When they turned in for the night Colin and I were still in no mood to sleep.  With rain and howling gusts of wind and darkness all around us, we instigated a party mood under the scant shelter of a corrugated roof outside, finishing off a bottle of whisky we had brought for the trip, and dancing to tunes Colin played on his phone.  At a certain point in the night, we elected to make a camembert fondu, made ingeniously over Colin's gas stove by sort of steaming-melting the camembert, which we wrapped in aluminium foil, and kept above the boiling water by a bed of little round pebbles from the beach.

The next day colin left to get the ferry back to Glasgow, and left me for what would turn into more than a week's wonderful solitary retreat.  (if I didnt know it already) I realised that I am the eternal bothy bum, that I was born a bothy bum and that I will remain one to my last days.  bothy bum is a term my brother Kevin coined, and we understand thereby one who loves being in the bothy per se (a love of simple living in a remote shelter in a wild and lonely place), someone who enjoys just hanging around the bothy (the bothy seen as more than a mere utilitarian means of overnighting in between ticking off munros)

I didn't initially intend to stay so long, but the stormy weather did not abate for days, and the bothy had been furnished with a shelf of good books, many of which demanded at least being dipped into - if not being read from beginning to end.  There was an anthology of Neil Munro's writings.  Somebody wrote about him:

"Few writers have caught more truly the spirit of the Highlands, its romanticism, its mysticism, the spell and wonder of the mountains, the glens and the lochs, enveloped in the deep mists that scatter so quickly before the sun."  

His ten-page story The Lost Pibroch is a little masterpiece about two wanderers who are pipers who stumble upon a mythical village, where they begin an all-night piping session with the local old piper who eventually agrees to play the lost tune, a tune which "makes them crave for something they cannot have.  Its the tune that puts men on the open road.  They had forgotten that the world is wide beyond the fir trees"  The story begins thus:  

"You may rove for a thousand years on league-long brogues or hurry on fairy wings from isle to isle and deep to deep, and find no equal to that same Half Town.  It is not the splendor of it, nor the riches of its folk, but the scented winds of it, and the comfort of the pine trees round about it"

Writing at the beginning of last century, Munro noted that:

"The English of modern life and modern letters often appalls you by its flatness and insincerity; it is a mosaic of phrases ready-made, and as the phrase comes to the writer's mind before the thought, it is consequently a mosaic of worn-out thoughts."

In one of his short stories Munro imaginatively portrays the life of a fiery young Robert Burns, including this passage:

Burns held him for a moment with his hand upon his sleeve.  "Tell me this, Will," he demanded, "Are ye a contented man?  Do ye sleep sound at nicht?  Do ye mind auld things?  Do ye ever think ye micht be better?  Do ye see yersel' the actual man ye are?  Do ye meet wi' mony folk that understand ye?  Have ye ever had but a glimpse o' a' the possible joys o' life, and seen them gaun by ye like Nith, down there, wi' ye stuck helpless on the bank?"

"O, I'm no complainin'," said the ploughman, whose mind had grasped but little of this fierce, bewildering catechism.  "I'm no complainin', I tak' my meat, and sleep like a peerie."

Browsing a book lovers' bookshelf is a good way of gleaning reading recommendations.  I am grateful to the book lover(s) who donated material to the bothy bookshelf.  George Bernard Shaw, Robert Frost, Ian McEwan . . . and I discovered Angela Carter's earthy sparkling prose.  One of the short stories of her Black Venus collection begins thus:

Every city has its own internal logic.  Imagine a city drawn in straightforward, geometric shapes with crayons from a child's colouring box, in ochre, in white, in pale terracotta.  Low, blonde terraces of houses seem to rise out of the whitish, pinkish earth as if born from it, not built out of it.  There is a faint, gritty dust over everything, like the dust those pastel crayons leave on your fingers.

Against these bleached pallors, the irridescent crusts of ceramic tiles that cover the ancient mausoleums ensorcelate the eye [...] We are visiting an authentically fabulous city.  We are in Samarakand.



I saw fit to copy out this passage from Ian McEwan's psychological novel Enduring Love:

"I felt a familiar disappointment.  No-one could agree on anything. We lived in a mist of half-shared, unreliable perception, and our sense data came warped by a prism of desire and belief, which tilted our memories too.  We saw and remembered in our own favor.  And we persuaded ourselves along the way.  Pitiless objectivity, especially about ourselves, was always a doomed social strategy.  We're descended from the indignant, passionate tellers of half-truths, who, in order to convince others, simultaneously convinced themselves.  Over generations, success had winnowed us out, and with success came our defect, carved deep in the genes like ruts in a cart track: when it didn't suit us, we couldn't agree to believe on what was in front of us. Believing is seeing."



As soon as I read these words in the preface of Erica Jong's Learning to Fly I told myself: I have to read this book, immediately.

Every writer has a myth buried in the unconscious - accessible only through the telling of a tale.  My myth is picaresque.  A heroine in trouble takes a journey which unlocks the rest of her life and confirms her as a heroine.  The voyage taken is both inner and outer; it changes forever what she thinks of herself and of her life.

This pretty much describes Fear of Flying [and other books] . . . what these books have in common is the journey taken by a perplexed protagonist to solve a dilemma and get on with life. 


However, in the course of the book I realised that a well-written preface is no guarantee of a well-written book.  Every novel written, one could generously say, represents a slice of reality and its way of being seen, and has the potential to engage the attention of a potential reader.  While I wouldn't want to dispute the inclusion of Fear of Flying on anyone else's bookshelf, for my own part, I must say, I felt the limitations of the uncensored outpourings of this liberated young American woman in sustaining my interest.  It is a reminder to me that writing just whatever comes into one's head doesn't necessarily produce an enjoyable reading experience for anyone else.  



I saw that many wildlife enthusiasts had been attracted to the bothy and had recorded in the bothy book sightings of different bird species, as well as sea creatures - seals, porpoises, dolphins, swans, and otters, who had been seen feeding on crabs on the rocks.  The coast has become known to be home to otter families which have increased in number in recent years.  It took me a few days before I noticed anything - before I could tear my eyes away from words printed on a page.  Early one morning I got to spot an otter out of the corner of my eye, who quickly slipped with a little splash into the sea.  A few times I saw a pair of swans bobbing near the shore, always together, gliding imperiously through the water like pristine noble courageous miniature viking vessels.  The first time I saw the seals they were basking in the sun and paid me no attention, but subsequently they seemed pretty curious, following me as I walked along the coast, and surfacing regularly to watch what I was doing.  They barked to me with their plaintive sea doggy whines, and I called back to them a few times - just asking them how it was going, what they were up to - just to show them that also I was curious about them.  Somebody had left really good guide to the coastal ecosystem at the bothy.  I can't remember the name of the author.  His enthusiasm for the geology and the unique plant and animal communities to be found at the interface of land and sea was infectious - his writing directly transmitted his unbounded passion - even to the point of awakening a fascination for the different types of seaweed and lichen, which adhere strictly to certain zones above, below or within the ebb and flow of the tide.  


For a while now I have been going around without a camera, and not missing one either - thinking that capturing the world on film only gets in the way of the pure unmediated visual pleasure of the moment, which is true in a way, but being interested in photography also makes one pay full attention to the elements of beauty in a scene, and, in this sense, increases one's appreciation of it.  One morning, walking along the coast, I became engrossed by the task of capturing the play of light and shadow on the Paps of Jura across the sound.  Another morning I regretted not having my camera with me as the sun came out after a spot of rain and made the oval stones on the beach gleam with bright insistence.  It was just a moment which came and went.  Just a unique, unrepeatable, everyday, fleeting moment, which came and went as the light shifts and fleets.  Taking photos, and especially under Scotland's ever changing cloudscape, turns you into a carpe diem fiend - or a carpe momentum one - having to have your camera ever at the ready, ready to whip it out and seize the fleeting scene.

a few jumbled Richard Holloway quotes

jumbled is the right word.  I know that taking words out of their context, paraphrasing here and there - having scribbled down the snippets that most appealed to my attention at the time - to now jumble them all together does not do much justice to Richard Holloway's autobiography Leaving Alexandria, but I wanted to share these snippets anyway, to give a flavour, and a reading recommendation.

Holloway writes eloquently, honestly, with clarity and ease, with intellect and insight yet without guile.  He writes really well.  Holloway may be of interest to those of a religious persuasion because he comes from their camp yet recognises the importance of doubting.  He may be of interest to non religious types in that, alongside his scepticism and doubts, he looks at religion tenderly.  He carefully considers the question and concludes, ''I cannot say whether God exists'' but this does not make him dismissive of the church.  He values the consolation that religion may offer the faithful, or the poor in spirit.  He recognises the role of religion as a comforting psychological blanket ''that protects us against the chilly winds of an empty universe''  Holloway's heartstrings chime along with Jesus': he reviews our human scene - our worries, our struggles, our stumbling misapprehensions - with tenderness, and compassion.

For Holloway, the good Samaritan is one of Jesus' flagship stories, showing that laws and religious conventions are not there to be slavishly followed, but should be overridden when a compassionate heart dictates otherwise.

For some reason, Holloway begins his book by quoting from Paul's second letter to Timothy:

''Demas hath forsaken me, having loved this present world''  

My first thought was: good for Demas, at least he loved something.  But I suppose that, in Paul's theology, this present world is a byword for material things, perhaps pleasures of the senses (as opposed to aiming for the treasures of heaven).  I say 'for some reason', but Holloway obviously identifies with Demas.  Throughout his book he writes about feeling disappointed with himself, a feeling that he has let God down.

A subtle shade of melancholia combined with unsentimental intellectual objectivity, pervaded by a Glaswegian sense of irony, compounded by his love of poetry, topped off with a yearning for transcendence all come together in Holloway to strike a rich and unique tone.  I like the modesty of his self-presentation.  He guides the reader guilelessly into his world of open-minded religious contemplation, peppering the retelling of everyday scenes with some carefully nuanced psychological commentary.  The whole thing is written with his poetic ear for a dapper turn of phrase.




The opposite of faith is not doubt, it is certainty.  Where you have certainty, you don't need faith. . . What do you do if you can no longer live with the doubt that is co-active with faith?  You try to cure yourself.  And the best cure for doubt is over-conviction.

Terry Eagleton puts it like this: ''God, if he does turn out to exist has absolutely no reason for doing so.  He is his own reason for being.''

 . . . a sense of presence at once given and denied . . . 

It is not that the presence is sometimes experienced and sometimes withdrawn: it is both at the same time, like a piece of music that consoles and makes us grieve in equal measure.

In the hills i was experiencing latency, the sense of something hidden behind what is seen. . . 

I was in a place that suggested elsewhere. I had not realised what a lovely word that was, elsewhere.

Yet there is also the mystery of latency, the sense of something just out of reach, something unseen that listens!  From that invisible listener a colossal demand has exerted itself upon some men and women, who gave themselves utterly away to it.  Jesus called it Father and offered himself to it without condition.  Since his death on his behalf countless others have followed his example.  Always a minority, they provoke discomfort, even among believers, because most people acquire only a mild version of faith and are made anxious by those who catch it badly.

Constancy is an endowment of the self that marks the good off from the rest of fitful, flitting humanity. I wanted to be good, but knew I wasn't. [. . .] Since heroically good people are rare, it is hardly surprising that they provoke envy in the rest of us.  Envy has been described as 'sorry at another's good', which is why it is the saddest sin in the book.  Because it is such a mean affair, we rarely admit to it.  We may confess other, more positive sins with relish, but we are rarely prepared to admit that another's grace has made us sad.  We find corrosive envy expressed in other spheres, such as the critic, perhaps an unsuccessful writer, who is caustic of a better writer who has won acclaim.  But the saddest manifestation of this human fault has to be envy of the good for being good.  It is really a sorrow for ourselves that life has dealt us a less attractive hand to play.  Moral goodness is not unlike those other accidents of the genetic and social lottery, good looks.  Rather than rejoicing that the good and the beautiful exist at all, it is all too human to fall into sadness because we ourselves have not been so endowed - understandable, but unattractive.  Indeed, envy at the endowments of others has ugly physical manifestations: a tightening of the features, as the face constricts into a sneer; behind the eyes a lurking sorrow and from the mouth an ugly contempt.  I remember a friend responding to another's justified reputation for goodness, 'And I suppose he shits custard'.

Tragic as it may appear, even unfair, there are good people, not so good people, and bad people.  And the big discovery we make in life is the person we have been revealed to be.  We don't have that knowledge when we start out.  We imagine there's a list of characteristics we can acquire if we fancy them, whereas the main lines of our personality were cast before we knew it.  This does not mean that we have no control over our decisions and choices.  It does mean that we will have little control over them till we acknowledge who we are and accept the reality of the hand we have been dealt to play.

My wrestling with my own compulsions, as well as my experience of the tragedies of others did not demonstrate any discernible improvement in the human condition as a result of the death of Jesus - allegedly decreed by God for our salvation.

I feared and longed for [in the words of T.S. Eliot] 'the loneliness of the night of God, the surrender required, the deprivation inflicted.'

Paul Tillich understood inner duality and the anguish of longing for a state of being he was incapable of achieving.

On my last evening I made my confession to him in the convent chapel.  As I expected, he was gentle.  He knew whereof I was made, remembered I was but dust.  And as Father Stanton used to say to the poor of 19th century London, 'You can't always expect dust to be up to the mark.'

[the drinkers in Edinburgh. . .] there was something almost holy in their dereliction, their lives stripped away to nothing
[in the soup kitchen Holloway's church opened, which turned into a homeless social hub . . .] out would come the grubby photographs, reminders of the now of then that they were powerless to bring back again.  

''sink without another care to that dread level of life itself''  . . . MacDiarmid went on to describe it as the capacity for 'mere being', and he thought it was more common in women than in men.  It is the ability to wait behind someone when the waiting is all that can be done.

the power of the church in Boston lay in withholding nothing, whereas the power of St Paul's in Edinburgh lay in withholding so much.           [my paraphrase, my emboldening]

Churches that stay open enclose themselves to the sorrows of humanity.  

Churches do not speak; they listen.  They understand helplessness and the weariness of failure, and have for centuries absorbed them into the mercy of their silence.

Apart from lurking round cathedrals, what do bishops do? [ . . . ] even the ability to act the fool can be useful.  I learned that from Desmond Tutu, who can't leave a church after the service without dancing down the aisle, especially if there's a good lively hymn to do it to.  It wasn't everywhere I got away with that, but there were one or two places in the diocese that liked the service to rock a bit, and I was always game for a bit of jiving down the nave.

They argued and challenged with that assertive democratic ease that is the cultural hallmark of America

It is as if America suffers form an auto-immune deficiency disorder that attacks the antibodies of scepticism and irony, which are there to protect us from the toxins of social hysteria and group rage.

[in Ireland] I found that [ . . . ] chaos and helplessness are never far away from anyone, that they just take you as a strong wind takes a tree, and that their victims are to be commiserated with rather than scorned [as in the U.S.]

. . . not much of that relaxed Hibernian tolerance in the US, where you either swim or sink.  

I was already clear that there was no point in negotiating with fundamentalists.  By definition, they do not negotiate.  You had to accept them as an inevitable part of the dramatis personae of the human comedy.

Anger at new annunciations is the mark of the invincibly conservative mind; it is futile because we can no more stop history than we can hold back the sea.  

this last quote refers to a traditional christian reading of the bible which says: God has spoken. God has now stopped speaking.  i.e. there are no new annunciations.  The bible contains the entirety of God's message for humanity.  For years Holloway stood up for the ordination of woman priests and the right for gay couples to get married.  He realised that calling upon developments in our moral consciousness since the bible was written will get nowhere with people who believe that all our moral directives are to be found exclusively in the bible.

Francisco, ¨the dude with the donkey¨

francisco told me he had been on television; i have located this video showing a clip from a local canarian tv programme which looks at the lives of people who have chosen a simple life in the country.  it gives a nice portrayal of francisco, who made a considerable impression on me:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t3sxfvIAMko

seeing online his donkey perrico makes me want to share an anecdote, for its comic appeal: after eating a bowl of lentils, francisco told me that if i was returning to my cave i could accompany perrico out to a good grazing place, and that if, upon my return, i should see perrico further out, i should bring him back.  it was a simple request, and a simple misunderstanding on my part.  i assumed that francisco wanted me to bring his donkey all the way back with me.  "of course," i told myself, "francisco is past sixty now, and is glad to have my helping hand - still strong and youthful - to bring his donkey back at the end of a day's grazing."

later it became clear to me that Francisco meant me to bring his donkey back "only if his grazing has taken him close to your cave."  At the time I was convinced that Francisco wanted me to bring his donkey all the way back wherever his donkey was to be found.  As I began chasing Perrico, I soon heard Francisco hollering and whistling to me from the other hillside with some insistence, and - so convinced as I was of the idea that he wanted me to bring his donkey back - I began to reproduce his hollers and whistles, assuming that he wanted to share with me the sounds that his donkey best responded to.  What he actually wanted to communicate to me was: "no, leave the donkey alone, leave him where he is, stop stop stop!"  however how was i to understand this only through his whistles?  Francisco grew up on nearby island of la gomera where they have the fame of having developed a way of communication across hillsides by whistling, and all i could assume was that i was being privy to a bit of old time whistling savoir faire.  Amid francisco's repeated hollers and whistles, I heard him at one point blowing on his conch shell, a stirring sound which reverberated around the hillside and which awakened noble feelings within me.  I was already fatigued, but still determined  to display some sort of (non-existent!) know-how with donkeys.  I presumed that perrico probably didn't get to eat an apple very often, and thought that having given him one the other day might have made him well disposed towards me.  nothing of the sort.  instead of this, he ran away from me, and had me running doggedly after him through prickly plants which scratched my lower legs while i tried to reproduce the insistent whistles and calls which francisco was still sending me.  it was ridiculous really.   only, heaving a successful sigh of relief, upon somehow getting the donkey back to francisco's place, did i learn that that was not at all what was desired of me.  "leave him grazing, if he is grazing peacefully! he needs to graze, everyday he needs to graze"  francisco was royally put out.  it took him about twenty minutes to regain his composure.  I felt like a wolly.  Francisco had invited me to eat meat grilled over a barbecue with him, and the meat had now gone cold through all his waylaid whistling and shell-blowing.  "if you don´t understand, then ask!" he implored  - generally a good tip as regards effective communication, but what happens when one person is convinced they have understood something one way when in reality something quite different was meant?

I felt like a right numpty.  "ok, it was a misunderstanding. ok, perrico has returned a bit early from his daily grazing, but, come on, everyone is still more or less happy . . .?" i responded in a suggestive tone.

it didn´t take fransicso long to return to his habitual good humour, and to pull out his aforementioned timple and to strum it with careful understanding, while raising his raw, almost raucous - but emotionally convincing - singing voice.   francisco had open a bottle of wine which his son had gifted to him and which he said had costed seventy euros.  i kind of hoped that he might offer me a little tipple - just a little taste to taste how it tasted - but the last cup was sitting there on the table.  over time two flies had drowned therein; after a while i flicked them out for him.  Francisco caught sight of me and said "flies, ey?" and poured the whole lot down the sink.

now i think about it, i can't say that francisco showed much interest in the details of my life story.  i don't think he ever learned in which country i had grown up in - not that it matters; he saw that i showed interest in what he had to say, and that allowed our encounter to drift through hours.  i think he clearly liked me.  in the evening he said: "you are going already? ah!" - it seemed to suddenly occur to him - "here i have a bottle of wine we can share" as he reached under his sink.  "come back tomorrow morning and we will visit a neighbour who has a little shack near here by the sea", - a suggestion which, as things happen, did not come to pass.   i recall francisco saying that he had befriended many wayfarers over the years and that sometimes he finds bottles of wine or what not left for him with a little note.  i said to him "perhaps i will come back with a bottle of wine one day" and i still intend to do so.  only now i am looking for cheap flights back to scotland, because mid-august my grandmother will complete ninety years and the close family will come together.  after "ninety years" i almost want to put ninety exclamation marks, one for each year!

tenerife

Previously my recommendation to anyone wanting to visit a wild corner of tenerife was invariably: Masca.  do not leave the island without visiting masca.  please see masca.  it ran like a mantra; masca masca masca: the deepest, lushest barranco winding between spiring wild untouched melting pinnacles of volcanic rock.  But such a splendid barranco on an island so filled with holiday-makers does not go unnoticed.

Recently Jenifer and I struck out cautiously on a little tour of the island.  I say cautiously because I was driving the car and I hadn't driven a car in years and it took me a certain while to feel being behind the wheel again, to gauge the bulk of the car on the road and steer smoothly around even the narrowest and tightest of bends with complete security - with an almost exagerrated caution, so as to avoid awakening any type of anxiety in my passanger.

First we walked down to Cuevas Negras - an abandoned village nestled in a gentle green barranco which drops from the village of Erjos at 1000m to the sea at Los Silos.  We were going to camp out but then we met Jens - a Walt Whitman type with bushy grey beard and amused gentle eyes.  He had been living in one of the old houses by the side of the path for eleven years and seemed to be thoroughally satisfied with his lot.  He said the only inconvenience he had encountered were people stealing his fruits.  As he said this I looked up to lush boughs of an immense orange tree covered with countless gleaming orange fruits - undoubtedly the biggest orange tree i have ever laid my eyes on - and i could see what he meant.  He had an abundance of avocado trees too, and gave Jenny a big bag of their dried stones, after she had mentioned how much she always wanted to carve some.  One night, back at our cave, Jenifer dedicated about four hours to hollowing one out, intending it to be the head of a pipe, pressing in tiny glimmering stones into the sides and rubbing the finished thing in olive oil.  The next morning it had mystifyingly disappeared, and with its disappearance went Jenny´s interest in those avocado stones.  We can only assume that this was perpetrated by the rat - who we consider capable of doing things purposefully to annoy us - who perhaps felt peeved by us not having left anything tasty for him that night.

Through Jens we heard about another abandoned property we had passed but not paid any attention to along the way.  Over the years people had stayed there only briefly.  The heavy door had come off its hinges but Jenny soon saw that it would be easy to put it back in place.  Before long she was dreaming about really doing the place up.  Jenny has this characteristic, I am learning, of looking around any beautiful place she finds herself and wanting immediately to make it more habitable.  She is a powerhouse of dreams of a practical nature, utilising, somehow or other, the resources at hand. i.e. "we could use the clay soil outside to plaster over the holes around the window" or "look, someone left a tin full of seeds.  all we need to do is sprinkle them over the soil - coming back regularly and cutting the weeds back - and in a few months we can have our own vegetables!"

 The best thing about the place was the water.  The house was surrounded by luxurious green plant growth.  Trees, ferns, succulents, flowers, vines and other climbing plants.  Plants that grew on the outer walls of the house.  Moss that grew on the trees.  A bright fungal growth from the moist earth that looked like a mixture between a flower and a mushroom, or a very colourful petal-shaped mushroom.  And always the wonderful moist smell of organic growth in the air.  What a contrast to our cave 30 or 40 km to the south!  Along that arid rocky strip of coast it has become a little fixation of mine to develop a garden, necessitating frequent trips into the nearby barranco where until recently the rainwater from over a month ago still lay in the shadiest, coolest pool.  I was glad to fill bottles with 20 or 30 litres of this muddy water and carry it back to the cave because then it gave me a good feeling to distribute this magical fluid, granting the most generous splashes to my favourite plants.  The plants respond immediately.  If I give the crawling succulents a drink of water, the next day they will give me a flower.  Den wahren Geschmack des Wassers erkennt man erst in der Wuste is another German saying I have picked up from Jenny.  The true taste of water can only be appreciated in the desert.  Calling the sunny south coast of Tenerife a desert may seem like an exaggeration, but, honestly, the growing conditions there are quasi desertic compared to the moist woods we found a little bit further north.

Then we arrived right to the north, to the peninsular known as the Mountains of Anaga.  An incredible place!  It makes me excited now just to write the placename and think about what it signifies.  I could not have suspected that a place of such captivating natural history not to mention natural beauty was to be found, hidden away on the northern tip of tenerife.  Previously I had heard people talking about the fine walking opportunities of Anaga, and had even spent a day walking dubiously around the wet woods at the fringes of the protected reserve before scurrying back to the south and its sun.

Something spurred us along the coast beyond Roque de Dentro where a huge boulder lying on the hillside caught my eye.  We scrambled up and found a spacious cave with a fireplace and lots of wood and a wonderful view across to the rock.  The rock held me enthralled from the first.  I didn't know it had been given its (rather prosaic) name Inner Rock by the Spaniards until after I had climbed up.  This Francesco told me later that day, as well as clarifying many of the other questions we had regarding the place and its history.  The smaller rock further out to sea is called Roque de Fuera and is one of the few places where the endemic giant lizard is still to be found.  Climbing the inner rock is forbidden by law, something I did not know as a I waded with trepidation through the waist deep waves early in the morning.  The day before I had observed the tides and saw that at low tide it would be feasible to cross if the waves were not rough.  Jenny had told me that this north coast claims more lives every year than the south coast, where, it could be said, people are constantly being swept away by the sea.  "I hear the sea can be pretty rough here" i put to Francisco.  His eyes widened as he described how the huge rollers during storms are swept magnificently up the steep smooth side of the rock.  

"este aqui no es mar," began francisco offhand 

". . . es océano" he finished, expressing all the danger the thing contained, and the respect which it commanded, through the emphasis of its name.

I was well aware of the dangerous nature of the ocean as I first waded in.  The ocean is dangerous because unpredictable.  The waves rolling in now may pose little threat, but who can tell when the next big roller will roll in?  The poor souls who get swept away by the sea don't even suspect the lurking danger out at sea until the big wave is upon them.  Midway I grew fearful and turned back.  My voice of reason said "why take any unnecessary risks?  what do you have to gain?" but as i pondered this second question i realised how strong and irrational my desire to climb the rock was.  I could not explain it, and soon i was wading back in again, even more determined.  I am not sure to what extent I believed my inner reasoning, "even if i lose a limb or something, I will probably get off with my life, and even if i lose my life . . . well, better to have lived and died taking a stupid risk than not to have lived at all."  

I had noticed no seagulls before I began climbing the rock, and also noted next to none when back on land, but as I climbed up the rock, I was surrounded by a noisy gathering of them, who screeched and wheeled above me. Every so often one would come descending upon me, screeching past a couple of metres above my head.  I soon saw the reason why: speckled grey eggs, lying in clusters here and there hidden among the bushes, and little grey hatchlings, darting clumsily around.  I attempted to ward them away by gingerly waving a stout bamboo cane I had found washed up at the shore.  The seagulls did not mean me any harm; they merely wanted me to buzz off.

I judged the last perpendicular summit rock plug unclimbable, and turned around, permitting the gulls their peace, and allowing me to get back before the big lurking unsuspected, possibly speculated danger wave barred my way.  Later I learned that on the very top of the rock there grow about a hundred Dragon trees, ancient indigenous trees which grow slowly for hundreds of years, and which I feel attracted to.  It fills me with gladness to see a Dragon tree growing.  

Francesco told me that at the back of the rock was a cave where the Guanches laid their dead to rest, looking out over the ocean and into its endless beyond.  Two mummies - one male, one female - were found lying next to each other and taken to the museum in Santa Cruz.  Very little is known about the aboriginals of the Canary Islands, but remains of mummified corpses lead some to hypothesise that their forefathers must have had contact with the Ancient Egyptians.

Francisco impressed me by how he had set up a really lovely simple home in nature, starting from scratch. His house was homely, bothyesque, whitewashed stone surrounded by stony rugged land of cactus trees and stiff spikey agave leaves, a wild stretch of coast riven by spectacular barrancos plunging into the blue sea, and the view of its endless wide horizon. He clapped a piece of rock jutting out of the back wall of his kitchen, and showed me a photo of the very same jutting rock, surrounded by nothing but bare rock and ruins.  “This was ten years ago” he said, and his vital strength shone from his eyes with every word of the telling. The four 4 metre long beams that support the roof were carried in on the back of his donkey perrico, as well as anything heavy. “Apart from that” - Francesco nodded to his large marble tabletop - “that I carried in on my back.”

Jenny and I had given Perico an apple when we first went past. Francisco was not at home then. Jenny had looked around at the arrangement of potted plants and flowers, and the way pieces of glass had been incorporated into the simple clay walls and said, “an artist lives here.”

I was alone that day as Francesco hollered after me, “hola! Come and have a bowl of lentil stew. . . just finished eating myself. . . some bread with it?” and me feeling like a hungry boy in a fairy tale, who gets lured off his route by the whiff of something tasty. A couple of hours later Francesco had pulled out his timple - a traditional canarian stringed instrument - and was going through his repertoire of romantic mexican folksongs along with other south American ballads, looking at me meaningfully meanwhile with eyes expressing love lost or love longed for, sorrow or meaningful melancholy according to the lyric flow of the song. I always answered with eyes of enthusiastic appreciation and encouragement, until I got up from sitting so long and set about stretching and, feeling free, began to dance, my most visceral response and mode of thanks for the musical treat being offered me.

One of the questions Francisco cleared up for us was:  why are there wild mother goats roaming around with bulging breastbags pendulating heavily and obstructing significantly their free movement?  "this is a crime" explained Francisco, "it is completely illegal, but the young of the wild goats are frequently sequestrated for their tender meat, leaving their milk to uselessly gather in the mothers´ breasts.  the milk will eventually turn bad and lead to disease and the death of the mother goat"  ¨Corruption¨ was the idea I discerned as Francisco muttered some half-comment about the local government.

Francisco told me about his love for roaming around the wild parts of Tenerife, and mentioned one place which in particular has taken my fancy: barranco seco - a wild barranco north of Los Gigantes, accessed by a kilometre length tunnel through the mountain - where you will likely not meet another soul, where you descend to the sea passing a huge fig tree which when in season gives bags of fruits and close to the sea the rocks rise so abruptly, so immensely hundreds of metres high that you can’t help but be struck by their towering strength and majesty.

ease your feet off in the sea . . .

the stillness of the barranco de chinguarime

"i just met josé bencomo's grandson," i told jenny when i returned to the cave.

he was standing at the abandoned tomato factory as i walked past.  i should have known that he occupied a position of authority: the shiny 4x4 neaby showed that he had a key to the access road.  all i wanted was to go to the room upstairs and take the tealights somebody had left there.

"really? what did he say?" said jenny with interest.

"not much," i said.  "he said no se puede estar aquí -  that i shouldn't be there, that the abandoned property could be dangerous.  i said okay.     
are you the owner?
he nodded.
José Bencomo?
on saying this he looked at me suddenly somewhat suspiciously, as if i knew something about his identity, but i explained easily that i had seen the name written on all the cardboard boxes.   
"i am his grandson," he told me.

Jenny said that she would have so liked to have asked him a few things.  like what had led to the demise of the tomato factory?  why had it all been left abandoned?  and what would be done now with all the rubbish?  "i can't believe that, after the business went kaput, everything has simply been left lying around. in Germany that would never be allowed," jenny asserted.

thus spake the voice of german Umweltverschmutzungbewusstsein, conscious of environmental pollution, and desirous of its minimization.  "so many people in the world do not care about their impact on the environment," i remarked prosaically.  "josé bencomo's old tomato enterprise is but a drop in the ocean of world-wide environmental carelessness"

it could have been interesting to have followed jenny's line of enquiry.  josé bencomo - from my brief  encounter with him - gave me the impression of being an intelligent, reflective, amiable character.  however, i wanted to keep a low profile.  i had heard that the landowner did not view positively the fact that his barranco was used as a free campsite by countless campers all winter.  we considered ourselves fortunate to have found an unoccupied spacious cave protected from wind and rain above the banana plantation.  it wasn't right next to the sea, and presumably for that reason it had been left unoccupied.  i didn't want further conversation with the landowner to lead to me revealing this fact.  


camping in el barranco de chinguarime - on the eastern coast of the canarian island of la gomera - is the choice for the discerning german hippie who wishes to avoid the northern european winter.  it is a climate question.  although at the head of the barranco (which to my eyes looks morphologically for all the world like a wild scottish glen) is often capped by clouds - captured by the 1,000m centre of the island - no more than isolated drops of rain ever make it to the sea, and interrupt the dawn-to-dusk sunshine which otherwise pours upon the coast, and makes the place so pleasurable for those with a bent for outdoor living.  it is as if this sunwashed stretch of coast possessed a protective charm which wards off clouds and rain.  this is referred to as a microclimate.  the stillness of the barranco is incredible; isbrand commented on this: perhaps once a day an aeroplane will cross the horizon.  otherwise the place remains free from noise pollution.  if there is no wind the only sounds to be heard are the occasional buzz of a fly or the respectful twittering of a bird or two in the morning; otherwise there reigns a startling silence - a deep, penetrating, expectant silence, which pervades both day and night, and which - i suddenly realise - has been absent from my life for i don't know how long.

el barranco de chinguarime attracts altogether a different type of character to la caleta - the corresponding sunsplashed area of wild coast on neighbouring tenerife.  of course generalisations are odious; any type of person can exist at any given moment in any part of the world, but groups of people inhabiting the same place do generate a collective energy, which they cannot help but sharing, albeit to a greater or lesser degree.  i feel that the stillness i feel so powerfully in chinguarime comes not only from the minimal soundscape, but also from the fact that it is inhabited by a host of still souls.  it may seem that i communicate barely with a soul for days here, yet the mere act of crossing paths with somebody on a rocky path - and in the moment of passing exchanging eyes of watchful sunny alertness - alone constitutes communiality and could be seen as an instance of deep communication.   whereas in la caleta one may encounter inebriated brawls and drunken quarrels in which someone ends up setting fire to someone else's teepee, in chinguarime one comes across extremely tidy, discreetly disposed dwelling areas, with particularly beautiful spots treated as sacred spaces - bedecked with artfully arranged shells or feathers, perhaps in the shade of an unusually twisted bough or next to an intriguing rock formation.  one's eye may be caught by reading material which describes life as an inner search and a soul journey.  the presence of litter may not be commented upon.  i came across a pile of rusty cans and old bottles in a remote corner of the barranco one day.  they seemed so out of place that i put them in my rucksack and resolved to take them out to a public bin.  that was the time i first passed by the abandoned tomato factory at the top of hill.  Jenny´s definition of rubbish runs thus: "Mull ist Material im falschen Ort"  The abandoned building immediately seemed an appropriate place for me to let my gathered pieces of litter fall and be added to the waste products here already assembled. i explored the dilapidated buildings with a kind of horrified wonder.  everywhere lay a mass of detritus - old rusty machinery, rusty metallic drums, coils of plastic tubes, plastic canisters containing sinister chemicals, fusty fridges, dusty mattresses, and one dusty room filled entirely with hundreds - perhaps thousands - of flat, yet to be used cardboard boxes, all bedecked identically with the colourful bold print: TOMATOES.  PRODUCE OF CANARY ISLANDS.  JOSE BENCOMO.

outside i looked up to the dark clouds on the mountain, and thought that a postcard of the scene would make an artful antithesis to the typical scene promoted to tourists.  the focal point would be the big round concrete water tank (lying empty) on the brow of the rising hill.  in the foreground would be the disused row of desolate dirty white houses (presumably once used as worker's lodgings).  on the righthand side would stand the three dark palm trees, whose fronds were being tugged forlornly in the wind.


"imagine that you owned an entire barranco, like this" jenny invited me to consider, "what would you do with it?"
it was an imponderable thought - the possibilities of possessing of a large tract of wild land - a thought which expanded heavenwards with the evening stillness and became lost among the first twinkling stars.