Clashnessie,
Assynt,
North West Highlands.
(Written April 8th 2019)
It seems as if everything has suddenly opened from inside out, yielding to warmth and light. The scent of bark and moss is rising out of the birch woods like warm incense, and primroses litter the woodland floor with their pale new coins. Beyond the edge of the wood, the loch flashes with shoals of bright, rebounding light, shining the holly and frothing the birch, dappling trout-filled pools of burns I can hear pouring off the hill, but cannot see. The mountains of Assynt appear to soar even higher than usual into a deep blue sky. Each contour and rock form, all the washed out winter vegetation are sharply defined in this new, pristine light.
At Clashnessie, rollers collapse rhythmically from a calm sea onto the bleached sand, and fresh piles of kelp lie heaped on the high camber of the beach. I make my way along the shore to where Lewisian gneiss forms a boulder beach of striped rocks and pebbles. Grainy and sculptural, their smooth forms are a kaleidoscope of grey, white and rose, jostling together, their colours sharpened by the wash of the sea, leaving them polished and glistening. I pick my way through the jigsaw of stones, exploring their textures and shapes, and returning them one by one to the water’s edge. My eye falls upon a smooth, white oval pebble which nestles neatly in my palm like an egg, and I slip it in my pocket.
I come across the dead whooper swan outstretched like a crumpled sheet on a ledge just above the shoreline, a pocket of grass in front of the old, whitewashed fishing bothy that overlooks the bay. Its pure white wings stand proud and upturned, like graceful sails, ready to glide. The discovery is so unexpected, that for a moment, I wonder if the swan can still be alive, until I see the pecked-out eyes, the limp line of its elongated neck, and the scaly legs tucked uselessly below its body at an angle.
There is something shocking about suddenly coming across this majestic corpse, its strength and elegance still so tangible in the fullness of its feathered carcass, yet contrasting starkly with so much else coming to life on this beautiful spring morning. Its expired body speaks of exhaustion and surrender to a recent storm, the power of winter still resonating in the failure of its raised wings.
I quietly walk round the bird, and shyly study its death form. For a while, I find myself looking from a distance, hesitant to go nearer, yet drawn to admire the abundance of its glossy white feathers. Curiosity gets the better of me and I step forward to examine its complex plumage more closely – the strong, shiny wing feathers, layered like a stack of fresh envelopes, and the softer, plump, delicate down of its chest feathers – all so detailed, and exquisitely arranged, like the hull of a boat, made for water.
A feeling of sadness comes, that I am able to get so close to this wild bird. I always find it a bit disturbing coming across something dead on the shore; a cormorant’s skeleton jammed between boulders, or the stinking carcass of a stumbled sheep. Perhaps it is confronting to be reminded of death when you are not expecting it. Yet, here before me, is this dead swan, hauled from the sea, ribs exposed to the sky, and despite its early stages of decay, disconcerting in its beauty and near perfection of parts. I study the detailed grain of its reptilian, claw-like feet, with scales as fine as snakeskin, and the soft thickness of its neck lying outstretched, like a length of uncurled fishing rope.
There is, however, something also strangely harmonious about the swan lying here on the shoreline. Its white wings blend easily with the whitewash of the bothy, the breaking rollers, the blotches of pale lichen on the rocks, and the pearly stone nestled in my pocket. It is simply part of this place, open to the elements, the light shining on all its feathered glory, waiting to be weathered by the wind, the rain and the sun along with everything else.
How it has come to be here remains an unknown story, a conspiring of circumstances, causes and conditions coming to bear on those final moments of life, and culminating in this very spot. I feel I am witness to this journey, and its ending in a buckled body, heaped on the shore like a change of clothes on the sheep-cropped grass.
Pointing seawards, yet unable to fly, the swan’s extinguished form marks a specific moment when life had simply ebbed away. Resting gracefully in the evident residues of poised effort, its carcass is testimony to greater forces of impermanence being worked out on these ancient shoreline rocks, rolling back into the crucible of time.
It had lain unseen and undiscovered , a white stamp on a damp patch of ground by the bothy. I had been completely unaware of its existence as I picked my way along the shore. However, it is not just a coarse relic pointing back to the height of a storm, but something that has now become part of my experience of this place, one absorbed detail in the complexity of all that surrounds me, all that is co-existing and renewing itself in the clear, salty air.
Standing, facing out over the calm of the bay, time and space flows from here in uncertain rivers. If I knew what lay beyond, would this experience of place, this discovery, be any different? Isn’t it the calling of life to be present to the truth of each moment, and fully inhabit the landscape of the present?
The swan’s evident effort, spoke to me less of defeat than of courage, an expiration of possibility, in the grace of a larger pattern. It had tried to fly. It had not returned to its breeding grounds in Iceland, but others no doubt had, in great passages of migration beyond this shore, in other weathered storms. This is what happened here, a whole life cycle completed, a journey curtailed.
The swan’s decaying beauty dances before my eyes, a blur of white under a blue sky. Beneath my feet, seeds lie dormant, all the language of tormentil, silverweed, sea pink and self-heal waiting to be spoken, stirring underground with the tangible certainty of warmth and light, of winter giving way to spring. And I feel my small self included in the fullness of everything that is taking form, gathering me into the present.
