wild

October, the month of heaven & grace

Marvellous moments of lightness, privileged times among paired swans, preening and sharing love in grace at last light… Statuesque haigries (herons) around our bays, the joy to reconvene with our beautiful Earth. I observe them from the distance, with that humble feeling, so intimate the moment. The light is soft, nearly sunset. The air is charged with tenderness and love in that autumnal sense of rawness…

Intimate. So privileged, I feel.

Sensual, magical.

This north end corner of Spiggie Loch gradually welcomes them back, as the Arctic winter dictates. They will flock in and preen, share a few weeds with a few ducks – gather on the shore for bathing and arrange their feathers, and roost by twos… A bit of love inside a world so few can taste.

Hiroshima

No siren or red flag,

high from blue sky without warning.

I should have read each 

little sign, but

June began

bright, so

hazy – 

bluebells 

untouched in the garden,

air filled with 

     song from summer birds –

curlews, skylarks and

                        bold blackbirds.

In between Lino and floorboards,

our frantic feet would

slide through time;

and imagined 

                yours on tarmac about to

                       to leap out through

             thick clouds.

High from

blue sky without 

warning,

one 

     single ring,

                your frantic voice,

                      shaped one single cloud

champignon,

          and felt that bright light,

                       blasted heart –

one final blow without 

warning. 

Nat Hall 2017

belle (#wearewoman #1)

We are woman, we are beautiful. 

How I love the way she paints those flowers, poppies, coquelicots, as she knows them in Provence.

In first #wearewoman post, I am celebrating  lifelong friend I met in 1990, in transit between two life chapters, en route north, beyond the horizon…

Her name is Isabelle Garnier Foriat.

Isabelle Foriat

Sensitive eye, accurate, meticulous in every sense of her iris,hand and brush… Please click on the two following links, ELLIA, the painter’s constellation, and ATELIER PATRIMONIUM, where the artist turned saviour of artworks.

Every visit weighs all its gold.  We reconvene at spring by the shores of River Durance. Our friendship flows by Les Moulins.

 

I recall a poem I dedicated to the artist. Initially written in French back in 2003 and available online at Poésie Française.

 

Pour toi, Isa la Belle, en attendant de te rerouver dans ta constellation.

 

Regards de peintre

A Isa, avec tendresse.

Cézanne, écoute :
Le Lubéron s’est éveillé –
Maître Foriat,
Isa la belle
A fait jaillir
De ses palettes
Un pic épeiche,
Un âne bleu –
Dans la chaleur du vent,
Ses pinceaux sont encrés ;
Dans un panier de pêches
Tout son génie est né.
Coquelicots,
Cyclamen,
Iris ou fleurs d’amandiers,
Entre Haute-Loire
Et Durance,
Mont Mezenc
Et Sainte Victoire
Se sont comptés fleurette…
Pommes d’amour
Ou coloquintes,
Ses mains de peintre
Ont enfanté
La magie des couleur,
Tout un plaisir
Des yeux,
Bleutés par l’huile,
Ou l’aquarelle –
Dans ses regards
De peintre,
Crue luminosité.

© Nat Hall 2003

wheel of life

September, month of smiles and tears.

Yesterday, I congragated with friends and fellow writers from the Westside as well as the Waas community to say agoodbye to one of us. I loved the way his son spoke of my friend, and the way Janet somewhat managed to conceal some of her grief. The service was very poignant. I, among so many of us, will miss the good doctor who animated our monthly friday nights in Weisdale, as well as the many facets of everyone who was connected to his life. But he lives in our hearts, and his writings testify the life journey of a very brave, adventurous, life and children loving man. Rest in peace, Robin.

September, change of light.

Weeks fly like lit gun powder; fridays tear down the pages of our almanacs like a develish, untamed child too eager to rid of school days. And the sky follows suite. Little have I noticed sunsets and sunrises shifted on the the great cosmic clock… That daylight had begun to shrink. The island now unveils those autumnal hues.  A more difuse light now clads everything on the island. The sky awaken and talks again.  Whereas swans are starting to flock at Spiggie, others are thinking to go… Northern wheatears, pied wagetails and meadow pipits, together with a few swallows still grace our fence posts, road verges and fields… Though they too will depart from our shores and let others replace them for the darker months ahead.

September, trade of wings. 

That juvenile northern wheatear will home itself south of my eyes for a few months, should it survive that great epic maiden flight south. I feel somewhat eager to reconvene with our winter visitors, whilst already marvelling at eclipse or winter plumage from some of our local avian friends. Guillemots certainly are noticeable from Gutters’ Gaet or Bressay Sound.  And if observation feels rather limited during weekdays, the odd visit to harbours, lochs, fields, voes and wicks (bays) rekindles that pleasure.

And as nothing remains the same, September will vanish in flames, and let October take over. With the tenth month, I too will trade land and migrate for precious time to the other side side of he North Sea, as I will reconvene with friends and fjords. That second collection of verse demands so, as my heart does.

With October, the more prominent return of darkness… And the almanac will obey the laws of the universe.

 

fluttering [5]

I love amuse-bouche. Either at appéritif or any other time. 

Here, here, as appetite is awaken, let me offer you, dear reader, two of them, as conceived and produced by Nordland. 

And I do hope you too will find both enticing.

When asked to select snippets from Compass Head, some of my favourite lines literally jumped to mind. Here, above, two from some favourite poems you find in this first solo collection. 

visitors

The island remains a honeypot for all kinds of visitors – sometimes I let my imagination loose at sea, and imagine lighthouse beams as magnets… Too irresistible to the intrepid one to ignore.

  Two kinds of visitors caught my eye. The first clad in clinker and rivets looked at the lerwigian sky like in defiance – yes, a dragon in the heart of our only town!

 From the Norwegian, it translated as Dragon Harald the Fairhair, back at Alexandra Wharf for a first time in a couple of years – en route to NY via the old Viking routes. Draken Harald certainly caught our attention & hearts.

Statsraad Lehmkuhl had arrived and already moored at her usual place at Victoria Pier. I would catch her the following morning just off Bressay Light with my other notable visitor, Lancashire based Landscape Photographer, Peter Laurence who followed in the footsteps of Britain’s Landscape Photography master, Faye Godwin,  who had immortalised the island in the 1980s…

A day in the field would only seal friendship, challenge the eye, as we employed a whole day well spent between the old lime kilns of Fladdabister to the edge of the rocky promontory, Grutness.

And what a day it proved to be. Armed with our respective lenses, time turned irrelevant, for our wandering in between tall grass and muddy roadsides filled our eyes with smiles.

And we wandered across tall grass and May flowers…

And pointed to the majesty of the southern edge of my homeworld.

I may spend a lifetime  capturing that power of place, the eye remains challenged as time loses sight in salt. 

With gracious thanks to Peter for a memorable day. Enjoy Compass Head inside each page. 🙂 

green

One moment, one shade of blue, green flares inside stars… My sky tonight, as I love it. My superwide screen in amazing colours 🙂

 

…As if spirits smiled at us all.

How I love my garden, home, and island! #wildaboutshetland #60N #geopoetics

loose

   My very first thought as I discovered Wednesday from mid-morning: 

Do we need to set alight replica viking longships to stop rain? …Let’s carry on, ’cause it’s working! 

The day after the great bonfire in Lerwick gave us all hope to stretch our legs in style, as a much calmer day overrode a miserable Tuesday (and the final Wednesday of January allows us that in the first place!) . 

Needless to say I would not stay put inside home, as the island was calling me out for an afternoon in the wild.

  
And it began with a great northern diver off Rerwick Beach, where a colony of common seals littered a good part of white sand.

  
From the roadside, they look like slugs…

   A family of whooper swans graced the dullness of Spiggie Loch in low light. 
  
And moorhens whizzed in between pools… 

  
On the North Sea side of the island, teals & waders foraged at will on what the bay offered to them. Every wild gale feels generous, as rollers bring forest of kelp to be picked on from the edge of our known world. 

Loose on a Wednesday afternoon, with the magic of the island.

  
That wonderful window of freedom felt a privilege, as well as penicillin to winter. 

Magic moment so beneficial to the soul – a sample of winter wildlife on my Nordic doorstep. 🙂 

migration

They flock, they feed, they fare, they fly…

SO is the tale of Earth’s winged creatures that dare to tame our meridians, gales, tides and cycles of the moon… This urge to breed make them undertake an extraordinary journey, from the estuaries in Eastern and Southern England to the more sub-Arctic region where I find them on my local mudflats. I, as many, am in awe to their ability to find their way, memorise routes, resilience in the face of danger(s), as well as their physical stamina for their size in this everlasting race for life and endurance.

How do they do it? So extraordinary, for us, humans from the 21st Century, parked inside patches guarded by politics & passports…

Some even go further than that.

Take the Arctc Tern (Sterna paradisea) – a species that holds a formidable record in terms of annual migration. Its story reads incredible. And yet terns remain one of many avian species that takes this immense risk to defy the rules of nature and undertake such vital marathon.

At this moment in time, autumnal migration has begun. Many waders – knots, sanderlings, ringed plovers, redshanks, godwits, to name a few – grace the edge of each tide, beach or pool, around the island. Some, still in full regalia, others, moulting. They come to feed and prepare for the long journey. And then, they will take to the air and disappear…

We really live on an extraordinary planet.

alight

Up-Helly-Aa 2015
Lerwick, Shetland – 1 Jarl, 47 squads, 969 torches through the streets of the Islands’ capital…
Les moments forts, highlights in a string of images fresh from my iPod 🙂