Sightlines
Page 18
A fibreglass replica. No doubt this is right and good. But you have to wonder, standing on the hilltop at Berwick, if this is how it must be. If we are adjusting our relationship with these greatest of animals, and with the non-human world as a whole, if we’re now, at last, refusing to slaughter or torture any more whales, does it mean that when we do reach out for the natural, in wonder or shame or excitement or greed, what we must touch is a man-made substitute?
* * *
Aside from the Stromness eardrum, the whale relic I visit whenever I can isn’t a jawbone arch, and therefore not festooned with meanings. It’s not even very big. Again, it’s on the Orkney Islands, the northwest side of the Orkney mainland. There, near the Brough of Birsay (as good a place as any for spotting minke whales) where the land trends eastward, a narrow path follows the coast. It’s an elemental place in any season—loud waves surge between long skerries; eider ducks ride the waves and, often, seals watch you as you walk. Look ahead though, and you’ll see beside the path what you might think is some huge bird, perched on a pole, hunching its wings to lift away, or even a standing stone, but it is, again, the vertebra of a whale. I don’t know what kind. The vertebra is mounted about five foot high on a curved stalk which looks like wood but is a rib from the same long-dead, presumably washed-up animal. I like it for its shape, its graveyard air of mystery, and, because the bone is so greyed and porous now, it’s hard to say if it’s bone at all. I like it because it’s not intended as a symbol, has no story that I know or wish to know, no knitting or harpoons or interpretation boards or fibreglass. Someone’s raised it, part homage, part joke, but in the end it’s just a whalebone, anatomical and mortal, and set to face the wide sea, whence, of course, it came.
WIND
IN ALMOST A FORTNIGHT the wind had barely eased, although it was May. The days were long but they felt dark and wintery because of the gales. Gales by day, gales howling through the short nights. If there was a lull the silence was uncanny, tentative. Sure enough, it meant only that the wind was crouched behind the horizon, shifting a notch or two before it rose again.
It was said, that when Hirta was inhabited, a thoroughgoing gale would leave the people deaf for days.
We could go outdoors, being careful to close the inner door of the house before opening the outer, else there was all sorts of banging and damage. Someone had rigged an old ship’s hawser to hang on to as you crept up the external stair to the upper storey. A recent innovation; in the olden days the houses had no upper storey. We slept up there, and the wind carried on through the night. Only once did I wake at dawn and hear a wren singing. Every other dawn there was the wind.
Depending on its direction, you could work out which places were unwise to visit—which cliff tops were best avoided, which slopes might be too exposed. Glen Mor was safest; it faced west, so the wind was onshore. We went there several days in a row, getting clouted properly as we crossed the hill to reach it. All the time the sea roared. A burn runs down the glen and, where it spills over the cliff, the wind would catch it and send up plumes of rainbow.
I recall no sense of the warmth and expansiveness of Maytime—just a feeling of being embattled, of shouting, of being overdressed. I discovered that gusts of 70 mph can knock me down. The sensation is not of being tumbled like a leaf, but of being thumped by an invisible pillow. It doesn’t hurt if you’ve lots of clothes on; one just finds oneself on one’s knees, as if beholding a miracle.
On one of these outings we came across a whooper swan which had died en route to its summer grounds in the Arctic. Visible from some distance away, a white rag on the bright green turf, it was lying with its neck extended and its yellow beak pointing north like a way sign. On some impulse we opened its wing, its right wing, and held it outstretched. It was astonishing: a full metre of gleaming quartz-white, a white cascade. You could understand at once how these creatures make the journeys they do; its wing had been formed under the wind’s tutelage, formed by and for the wind.
But we are not creatures of the wind; we were frayed and weather-worn. In every outing, every conversation, every plan, the wind had to be admitted and negotiated with, or discussed behind its back, like a teenager who’d gone off the rails.
We left the swan and walked on up toward the ridge, and from there further up to the communications mast, which shrieked as the wind passed through it. From that vantage point—we sheltered in the lee of some sort of hut—the sea all around was grey-green and crazed, driving against the cliffs. It was wildly dramatic but the screaming of the mast soon became unbearable.
Of course there were no boats, had been none for days, and would be none till the wind died and the swell calmed, whenever that might be. So a doubt crept in—when would we be able to leave? Certainly not on the day intended. Maybe not for a while.
But this is the modern world, at least for now. A helicopter comes out twice a week to serve the radar base. It brings personnel on for their stint, and takes away those going on leave. We discovered there might be spare places on Wednesday’s flight; if we packed ourselves up and put ourselves on standby we might get on. But Wednesday’s was cancelled, leaving us with a negated feeling, all packed and nowhere to go.
The Thursday was dismal, wind of course, and rain too. The hills were dreary, the ground saturated. Starlings, caught in the blast, dashed by the window. However, the helicopter was on its way. Though the wind was strong, it was funneling downhill from the west, and that was alright. Were it blowing in eastward from the bay, it might have capsized the helicopter as it lifted off.
In a concrete shed we zipped each other into yellow survival suits, then strapped on life-jackets. Already winddeafened, we were given earplugs and then we made our way against the wind across the asphalt. Instructed by hand-signals how and when, we moved, doubled over, across the helipad and into the machine.
I’d never been in a helicopter before. It yawned into the air without my realising. Like a bird it could swap the state of being on land with that of being airborne by a mere alteration of attitude. Then we were chugging over the sea. The crossing, hours by boat even nowadays, took twenty-five minutes. Small windows at foot level showed the sea below as the swan would have seen it on its last flight, migrating in its family group. If they ever look down.
There are myths and fragments which suggest that the sea that we were flying over was once land. Once upon a time, and not so long ago, it was a forest with trees, but the sea rose and covered it over. The wind and sea. Everything else is provisional. A wing’s beat and it’s gone.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
Many people made this book possible, giving of their time and knowledge with forbearance and goodwill. I’m grateful to Professor Frank Carey and Professor Stewart Fleming, both of Ninewells Hospital Dundee; to Dr Alison Sheridan of the National Museum of Scotland; to Dr Terje Livseland and Dr Anne Karin Hufthammer of Bergen Natural History Museum; and to Prof Gordon Turner Walker and the ‘whale team’ of conservationists. My thanks also to Ian Parker, Strat Halliday, Adam Welfare, Angela Gannon, and James Hepher (all of the Royal Commission on the Ancient and Historical Monuments of Scotland) for memorable trips to St Kilda, and to Susan Bain of the National Trust for Scotland, for allowing me to join them.
Thanks to Tim Dee for the birds, Peter Dorward for the caves, and boatmen Donald Wilkie, Bob Theakston, Norman Tenby, and Angus Campbell for happy landings—and for getting us off again. I’m especially grateful to Stuart Murray and Jill Harden, island-goers in chief.
Shona Swanson, Meaghan Delahunt and Susan Sellars were there when things got tough.
Peter Dyer and Henry Iles made a mere typescript into a beautiful artifact, which Nikky Twyman copy-edited and proofed. Nat Jansz continues to be an editor of uncommon insight and patience. Again I thank her and Mark Ellingham for their constancy and hospitality.
Love to Phil, Duncan and Freya Butler, as ever.
PERMISSIONS
Lines quoted in “The Gannetry” from “Landscape With
the Fall of Icarus” by William Carlos Williams, from The Collected Poems: Volume Two, 1939–1962 © 1962 William Carlos Williams. Reprinted by arrangement with New Directions Publishing Corp.
Lines quoted in “Moon” from “The Knapsack Notebook” by Matsuo Basho, from Narrow Road to the Interior and Other Writings, translated by Sam Hamill. © 1998 by Sam Hamill. Reprinted by arrangement with The Permissions Company, Inc., on behalf of Shambhala Publications Inc., Boston, MA.
Lines quoted in “The Storm Petrel” from “Stormpetrel” by Richard Murphy, from The Pleasure Ground: Poems 1952–2012 (Bloodaxe Books, 2013) © 2013 Richard Murphy.
Lines quoted in “Voyager, Chief” from “The Wellfleet Whale” © 1985 by Stanley Kunitz, from The Collected Poems by Stanley Kunitz. Reprinted by arrangement with W.W. Norton & Co.
PHOTO CREDITS
1. Lichen © Kathleen Jamie.
2. Cabinet containing a whale’s eardrum, Stromness Museum, Orkney © Alistair Peebles.
3. View through a ship’s window © Kathleen Jamie.
4. Giardia organisms in a biopsy of the small intestine © Professor Frank Carey.
5. The author, 1979 © Kathleen Jamie.
6. Cist burial, North Mains, Strathallan © Historic Scotland.
7. Gannets © Stuart Murray.
8. Light through branches © Janet Hayton.
9. Hvalsalen, Bergen Museum © Zina Fihl/Bergen Museum.
10. Hvalsalen, Bergen Museum © Kathleen Jamie.
11. Moon behind tree © Henry Iles.
12. Boat at St Kilda © Stuart Murray.
13. St Kilda prefabs with derelict cottages in background © Stuart Murray.
14. Surveying St Kilda © Jill Harden.
15. La Cueva de la Pileta © Mojo Appleton.
16. Magpie moth © Niall Benvie/naturepl.com.
17. Aerial view of Rona © Stuart Murray.
18. Killer whales circling Rona © Strat Halliday.
19. Storm petrel © Tomas Svensson.
20. Ring © Phil Butler.
21. Whalebone on Lewis © Stuart Murray.
22. Helicopter © Heary/iStockphoto.
23. Whale fin © Stuart Murray.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
KATHLEEN JAMIE was born in the west of Scotland in 1962. She studied philosophy at Edinburgh University and at 19 she won the prestigious Eric Gregory Award, which enabled her to travel. At 20 she published her first poetry collection, Black Spiders. She is a regular contributor to the Guardian and BBC Radio and her nonfiction writing and poetry has appeared in The New Yorker, Orion, Poetry, The Economist’s Intelligent Life, New Statesman, Boston Review and the London Review of Books.
Her poetry collections to date include The Tree House, which won both the Forward prize and the Scottish Book of the Year Award, Jizzen, which won the Geoffey Faber Memorial Award, Mr and Mrs Scotland are Dead, which was shortlisted for the 2003 Griffin Prize, and The Overhaul, which won the 2012 Costa Poetry Award and was shortlisted for the T. S. Eliot Prize. She has also won the Somerset Maugham Award, a Paul Hamlyn Award, and a Creative Scotland Award.
Her first nonfiction book, Among Muslims, was described as “utterly luminous” by the Independent and “one of the most powerful accounts by a contemporary Western writer” by the Times Literary Supplement. Her subsequent collection of prose essays, Findings, is considered a landmark in nature writing.
Kathleen Jamie is Chair of Poetry at Stirling University, and lives with her family in Fife.
www.kathleenjamie.com
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