The geopoetician who animates my heart, hand and pen never ceases to realise moments in time are held in snowflakes or in dew…
I am continuing to network with kindred spirits whilst the spirit of Ms Crusoe wanders along on an island that sings life through seasons.
April rhymes with freedom, this enchanting earth song elevated through the cacophony of birds – curlews, blackbirds, wrens, starlings (the greatest feathery imitators at 60N!) golden plovers… Skylarks and our everlasting chattering sparrows.
April is the return of the mind-blowing light that overrides wir mørkin (darkness) now we are back in BST. I noticed dusk and twilight are flirting later to my great delight. To the poet, it colours my sense of bliss. And I can only pray Father Sky’s clemency increases as we now walk more confidently towards Beltane.
April allows my child within to reconnect with the now and here.
Today again, I experienced stillness capsules that are tattooed in my heart forever. I watched raingjus glide on water, a pied wagtail tiptoeing on the edge of a burn… I listened to whistling swallows and wigeons. Spring in its glory as daffodils bowed to the fresh South Westerlies…
There is no doubt we are swinging towards summer.
And yet, Father Sky seems to lose sight of the moment. As if he was blending winter and spring a little longer…
On the night of the great eclipse on the other side of the Atlantic, I watched a sky blending colours as I had not seen in moons… A real sunset (pictured above) and prayed we might marvel once more at wir Mirrie Dancers (Aurora Borealis) before May steals them till August.
There are still a few days left till I return to the indoors world…
Mind you, when the last bell rings, I will not linger much inside. 😊
However, let’s keep our bubble of now the most important one, as tomorrow does NOT exist!
Our sea furry mammals are oblivious to a watch… They nonetheless respond better to moon and tides.
Time for humans means something else. If you too obey timetables, you are shackled to a routine.
When school bells ring for a last time, you suddenly feel lost for words. Aye, no more alarm clock for a while! Yule has returned with its magic. Home is ready for the pagan and the scent of the pine tree. Cinnamon sticks and melting wax as darkness has reached its climax…
First day of freedom in the snow, as icicles graced the garden to my delight. It is a moment of reconnection with the natural world I treasure so dearly. Out in my Caribou snow-boots, I wandered off in the perfection of nature, feeding my dear garden dwellers and free water out of the ice.
Their constant presence feels my heart with so much joy, I owe them help for survival in such seasonal conditions. After all, why should we be the only ones to feast at Yule?
What is Yule without its cortège of hellery? 60N at a crossroads with the Nordic realm means everything.
Two mighty storms in between Hogmanay and now, have swept across geos and skerries…
Storm force winds swept the old year away, as one would sweep away old dust.
January welcomes brand new gales.
So I hold tight to candle sticks until the sky turns to bird tunes.
Tis nearly over, this Yuletide.
Nisse will return to the barn for a final bowl of porridge; tinsels and baulbs, back to the den… Blue mantelpiece back to candles without Yöl cairds…
But then, again, Nisse still smiles.
And Aa da best fur da new year.
Thanking you all for your presence, likes and contributions to Arcania.
Not a story from a dusty book, but this island I call my “boreal Eden”, or home for short.
Lookaminnie’s Oo (cotton grass)
The island shone throughout summer, teeming with life, light and colours. Without a doubt, I have noticed an increasing sensation of silence across the land. However, our meadows and hillsides still home an array of avian wonders – meadow pipits, wheatears and shalders to name but a few.
Gannets took their time to reappear around familiar bays by late summer. However, in lesser numbers, our oceanic visitors exited our homeworld without a word or goodbye call…
Whilst our automnal migration gathered momentum, swallows stayed with us throughout September. As if they hesitated to go south… I try to imagine their voyage.
Whereas the world dries up in places, we have been blessed with clement skies that have notably favoured broods…
Unusual visitors
My two most amazing “exotic”encounters this summer: a honey buzzard and a Hudsonian Godwit. Two utterly stunning specimens forever tattooed in my heart.
It always feels a privilege to meet with the unexpected. However, every bird seems to count more and more in this day and age. And summer did not fail to discover the next generation of many familiar birds…
And speaking of unusual visitors…
Parts of world sent off extraordinary sails to the “Venice of the North” on the last weekend of July…
They were awesome: da capital’s Waterfront was ennobled with tongues and port lights from beyond our horizon. Some familiar- others, exotic. The muddy bay has always been open to the world.
They came and left like our birds from the sea.
And into da hairst (autumn)
Without a word, da hairst settled in… Timidly at first, as men made their hay for winter, and arctic breeders pit-stopped en route to their southern winter quarters…
Mother Nature, so amazing.
By mid-August, the island thrives behind the glass of the classroom… That’s when my world turns for the word “academic” until that early October.
This afternoon, my joyful heart at Breiwick Café turned silent with the news of the passing away of the father of Geopoetics, Kenneth White, at his home in Brittany.
His vision of our place in the world may have been perceived as radical back in the 1980s, but the Glasgow born poet & original thinker – as the intellectual nomad – has a body of work in which I, among the many Earth-connected creatives, have developed as a poet. Through his writings – either in English or in French – I have defined my own and continue to do so.
I, in the world 🌍 because we have our place as part of it all.
Love and Light
My heart is sad tonight.
Have lit a candle for his soul, as well as for his survivors. I treasure his writings and vision, as well as his life journey, from Scotland to La Sorbonne via many wanderings around France, and eventually Brittany.
And when I look at the sea, headlands and towers of lights from my 60N latitude, I remember the man, and celebrate our homeworld through his spirit.
That spell of snow in March hindered the return of colours all around us.
And as Ostara came and went, the promise of spring – wir voar – eventually appeared in spite of cold air still around. Father Sky has its own sense of humour – call it the sword of Damocles… Jekyll & Hyde.
Yet Mother Earth has her own agenda, and urge to burst in many forms. Vegetal or animal, Arcania is waking again. And as April is unfolding, our quintessential harbingers of spring appear under our eyes, filling our hearts with that same joy.
From leaf budding to flower blossom, da voar is surrounding us. Already, my most immediate garden is speaking,
I need to watch when I’m treading when reaching out to the washing line (!) as daisies, dandelions and bluebells (awaiting to flourish) are erupting all around…
At the start of the spring holiday, young Alfie cleared the remnants of last summer’s quadrats of tall grass in an effort to regenerate the meadow. Already, sparrows and blackbirds have begun to make use of cut grass blades left behind for nesting material. Our garden dwellers are establishing territory all around each corner of da tun (groups of human settlements).
Further afield, da voar displays its many threads of magic. Added to the kindness of Father Sky, light shines in every eye and every heart.
As far as the eye can see, the island is welcoming life again. Our avian summer visitors are gradually making way back to their ancestral breeding grounds. Cliff ledges, clefts, skerries or stacks – hillsides, lochs, mires… Heath or peatlands.
They are investing the homeground we share. What more joyous than renaissance?
Every new meeting with a hill sporrow (meadow pipit) laverick (skylarks) sten-shakker (northern wheatear) raingjus (red-throated diver) or a tammie norie (puffin) proves enchanting every time. Our reunion with our natural world.
Those iconic creatures add to those arrived a little earlier in the year: from the multicoloured shelduck to the shalder (oystercatcher) that have been toiling to display love through their courtship. A new cycle of life restated in earnest.
And yet da voar is showing signs and question marks. Whereas swallows and swifts, chiffchaffs, siskins, goldcrests and willow warblers have erupted around the island in precocious ways, entire cliff faces famously occupied by certain species, including gannets and common guillemots or kittiwakes remain deserted in places… Last year’s spell of avian influenza notably decimated gannets & great skuas, da bonxie, so notorious as a thief, and yet so crucial as a muckraker – usually keeping bird colonies healthy by predating on unhealthy, sick or injured birds… The irony. Their function on Earth as keepers of healthy colonies in times of plenty for its own species (the great skua, like its cousin, the Arctic skua) is above all a fisher bird, yet fell prey to a virus created to regulate numbers…
More surprisingly, common guillemots looked a little late back on their stack at my favourite headland on Saturday evening. They usually invest their ancestral breeding grounds before puffins arrive… Only a pair sighted at Smithfield Stack. Unless… Unless, they stayed at sea when I reconvened with their cousins, since guillemot and puffin (together with razorbills) belong to the same family.
Kittiwakes also missing on their abrupt cliff face…
The island’s most southerly tip – Sumburgh Head – so famously renowned for its bountiful wildlife is yet to home a new generation of seabirds, delighting us all.
A point so famous to travellers and sailors, made safer by Robert Louis Stevenson’s father & family builders of lighthouses around Scotland, my favourite headland has this feeling of a world end. It is so precious for life.
I will come back and keep vigil, for every new visit sparks light and excitement in my heart.
It is a magic place to watch the world unfold in its precious and yet at times rawest moments.
Fitful and Quendale Bay from Sumburgh Head, 8 Apr 2023.
I am the hawk perched on the fence in between winter and da voar – this Shetland spring held in snowflakes in a month deemed everlasting. I am the hawk, smallest of all, slashing through time and arctic air. My pointed wings now retracted, elevate my heart to thee, sun. In between ice and celandine, gold of petals hidden in white, I am the hawk so statuesque and yet so small, men may not notice me at all… Aloft I feel invisible.
Hoswick
I am the water, not the rock: home to life wild – waders, wild fins or wanderers – today, two swans drank off the mouth of my own burn (that stream that flows from nearby hills) since I do not offer a river. Today I shone in blue and white… A glorious sun against ripples and icicles. Men live nearby in small cottages by my beach.
Greylags
We are the ones fae a population steeped in ice. Land of fire, we have conquered every field; flown through the stars and icicles to find respite by every bay. In such tough times of survival, we leave our footprints in snowflakes. This island bare yet bountiful, we are awaiting the great thaw.
Burn
I am still abducted by ice. My water tastes rich and peaty under this thin layer of ice. Winter filled me to feed the sea so shamelessly… But as the sun feels strong again, I am awaking one more time. Soon, celandine and marigold will strive again. March is a trickster as a month and Mother Earth, so resilient.
Dusk
I am a dame all clad that blue always ending as indigo, where Venus kisses Jupiter. I am the home of the entire Milky Way – and when I trap those solar flares, I dress my self with a sari in hues of green or orange… Men fear da mørkin of my world (darkness of winter or just night) so they will marvel at my magic multicolour. As ice settled on the island, I refract blue of icicles.
Tonight, I will feast with the Moon, the ebbing tide and Orion.
If seasons rule my homeworld here on the island, so does each school term. So much water in every burn, da Voar flew as fast as da Simmer… And in between, time capsules caught on microchip in an effort to celebrate moments of “now”.
Freedom regained today, with feet stretching once more towards the horizon.
More writing under way, now that “peerie spider of time” allows once more.
As we have reached Yule and rolling in its tide, time seems to wander around kelp.
2022 felt like lit powder and yet, each precious Time Capsule is treasured outside timetables. This afternoon, I was watching purple sandpipers, turnstones among avian favourites that belong to my seasonal sky – those intrepid survivors were fighting against everything: time, the ocean, freezing weather conditions… I remain in awe of them all.
Winter, the cruellest of season, duels with life and death, determining survival on Earth. We are all visitors on our planet.
As busy as we, humans, can be, our ability to reconnect with our world can only allow us to be at one with it all. I often missed out on treading on my favourite sand bridge this year… I certainly favoured other magic places on the island, yet Ninian Sands allows full cleansing of the mind and soul. Tis time I return to it before this incredibly busy year ends.
Note: All photographs credit to the author and already published on Instagram & FB.
Drinking from the sea…
Some swans from my neck of the water world drink from the sea from either side of the island.
A photoshoot from Peerie Voe (Spiggie) and Boddam Voe (Dunrossness) this spring.
Whereas mute swans favour lochs – such as Spiggie, or Strand at Gott to name but a few – to live by and feed from, they appear to have developed a taste for sea water.
Jet streams, storms and other follies from the wind being a myriad of birds to the island…
An annual or so occurrence, Spiggie Loch homes great white egrets. This one arrived in early March, and had to share the NW corner with a grey heron (wir haigrie) for a few weeks.
Such birds are both majestic but they compete for food.
Haigrie vs egret at Spiggie Loch, Mar 2022.
Both species usually do not mix as I have observed them in Camargue… Here, the grey heron feels on home ground, and displayed it a few times to the exotic visitor…
Canadian among greylags…
The joy when patience is rewarded: their backs so similar in any field, when foraging…
And yet what separates the two species becomes obvious when they lift their heads in the open air!
Canada goose, Spiggie, Mar 2022.
A joy to see!
First meeting of 2022 with a N. Wheatear
They, together with skylarks and meadow pipits announce the return of better days, da Voar, spring and longer sunnier days –
A renaissance and hope for life, as they return to their ancestral breeding grounds.
Every spring migration seems more and more precious and precocious, for our summer breeders appear to respond to the urge to fare chicks earlier and earlier every year… Mother Nature has her own ways.
Eye catchers
Magic encounters so far…
And from the sea…
My second sighting of a deep diver – a sperm whale that seemed to be stranded in some bay on the Atlantic side of the island.
Too long have I awaited this joyous month of April, free from March – this month of miracles & tears – even if gales and remnants of winter are clutching at straw…
The island is slowly emerging from its great seasonal slumber to start and display more vibrant colours as daylight is overriding black.
Too long have I looked at my homeworld from behind glass overlooking an empty loch. Even though I love the view, my eyes belong to the younglings facing me during term time.
Vista fae North Loch Drive.
Watched snow come and go, return since our passage through the Vernal Equinox – morning and dusk in many tones, yet always with the same magic, as our sun rise and glow over Mousa Isle, to colour this Western sky in the kerb just before Quarff.
Only one road fae S to N – also known as da meal road by many islanders whose ancestors in the 19th century, at a time of tattie famine, were (like in the rest of the British Isles, and most notoriously reported from Ireland) rewarded with a meagre meal to build roads… Attempting to survive dire times in the history of the isles. The cheapest labour anyone with gold could find…
Two other side roads in the South Mainland linking da tuns (or human settlements) were added to the great North-South road. Those remain my favourites. Teeming with life, mostly wild, they turn magical in spring.
Da Clumlie Road
This is where freedom begins.
For seasonal cycles on end, the magic remains intact. The return of life, skylarks (wir laverick) arriving with meadow pipits & oystercatchers (wir shalders) depending on the year, though after shelducks (our traditional earliest migrants) . Northern wheatears (wir steinshaakers) also land back in our fields and meadows by April.
The elegance of loons, red-throated divers follow suite.
Tis when our land and sky turn cacophonous on a boannie day i’da voar (a sunny spring day).
Skylark, Meadow Pipit and Northern Wheatear, Apr 2022.
April is when our gardens begin to share flowers and buds against all odds. Haily puckles and thin snowflakes might still rage at this time of year, all seem to resist so far…
I love their resilience.
A return to my old belfry – Sumburgh Head where I worked 20 years ago this month as an ambassador for nature (RSPB Nature Reserve) – proved wonderful with a friend on Monday. We lunched in style overlooking the magnificent panorama. Strangely enough, Martin Heubeck roamed my mind as I was watching empty cliffs. Yes, it was barely early April on a day of hellery (adverse weather). Yet kittiwakes, guillemots and razorbills are coming back every year in fewer numbers.
Tis no secret.
Our great marine birds signal the return of better days from April onwards. By the time you discover the headland around da Simmer Dim (the summer solstice) you are welcomed by bird calls from every directions, as well as constant gannets fly-pasts on their way to more and more distant fishing grounds. They are striving as a species around our coastline.
Yet barely weeks to Beltane and the galloping to the solstice. Tis when the island really turns cacophonous.
Meanwhile, we make do with chilling conditions, and brace ourselves for days battered by gales and hail that keep you alive (!)
Tis a world bathed by a sea and an ocean, geographically so far away from it all, sheltered, somehow from any torpor…
This afternoon’s wild walk by my gale-swept Nordic shores prompted a blog post in my mind.
However, as wild waves – rollers, breakers – crashed at my feet, my heart reeled back to last weekend, as disaster struck over an antipodean archipelago.
Wild waves by my shoormal.
News of the cataclysm in the Pacific prompted a piece in response, written in the wake of it last Monday.
Living Planet
400,000 lightning bolts.
That sonic boom heard in Fiji, New Zealand, even Alaska. Hunga-Tonga-Hunga Ha’pai blown into sky; billowing cloud, giant mushroom on satellite, it has been felt around the globe.
Little Earth shook - ocean rippled so far away, Peru, Japan… It has been felt around us all.
So much unknown under water or where folk live like castaways; potential hell, dust, acid rain over it all.
nordicblackbird 