by Jeremy Page
I often sit on Mingulay’s headland, on granite that is warmed by the sun, surrounded by the blowing scents of the grasses and heather. Crickets chirp around me, bees, moths and butterflies fly delicately in the air. Flowers grow in even the smallest cracks and lichen clings to the bare rock in a coat of brilliant colour. Below me, a thousand acres of sea roll quietly towards me from the west. It is such a vast sight, such emptiness, that it fills me, overwhelms me, every time I sit here. There is nothing to interrupt the eye, apart from the gannets as they spear the water beneath the cliffs, or occasionally the tip of a basking shark’s fin—a lonely, roaming point of life in all this view. Sometimes I feel as though I am floating, yet surrounded and connected to all that I adore. Everywhere is the reminder that nature is tenacious, it clings to the bare, it abhors a vacuum, and will fill a void. Nature replaces, continually.
It is strange to think that when it came down to it, the great auk’s future was a simple throw of the dice. The odds were even, but nature won: the auk chick was a male offspring. Within two years another egg was laid. With plentiful feeding, a second batch succeeded that same year. I think of it being the largest of journeys that began with a single step.
On fine days I launch the skiff from the white sand of the coral bay and row around the brittle limbs of the promontories that reach out to sea. I scull towards the west of the island where the cliffs rise, ever steeper and more sheer, until they tower above me by several hundred feet. They are a formidable sight to pass beneath, black and stained and as ancient as any rock I have ever seen, splitting into stacks and coves and sea caves along their foundations. As I move alongside them, their brooding presence begins to affect the motion of the sea, as if they have their own gravity, lifting and pulling at the skiff even on the calmest of days, sucking the tiny boat into their shadow where the water swells up and surges. It is a humbling experience to pass below these wonderful cliffs, hearing the echoing shrieks of the nesting birds high on the ledges, feeling an intruder beneath a primeval landscape. After the third stack, which rises as sheer as a cathedral’s spire, I turn the boat into the shadow of the cliff and let the current guide me in. I pass a narrow entrance, a collapsed cave, not much wider than the span of my oars, and bring the boat into a cleft in the rock, where I can tie the painter around a boulder. It is a damp, slippery hollow in almost total shadow, with drips and streams falling from the cliffs, and black rock overhung with vivid green ferns and trailing vines. But beyond this natural barrier, there is a small protected cove which opens onto the sea, and this is where I sit, among the group of great auks that have made this place their home.
They are my phoenix birds. I have saved them from a sea of flames.
Sometimes I close my eyes and listen as they murmur to themselves. I like the way they preen each other in a small social group, their necks rising and rubbing each other in new-formed greetings, several times an hour. They have a tendency to face out to sea, gazing at the waves and the horizon beyond. Weather does not concern them. Neither do the calls and shrieks of the other bird species from the cliffs above. They have taught me a great deal. Sometimes they allow me to approach. I may sit on the rocks near their feet and reach forward to stroke them. They are wild and they have no friendship with me, but I am accepted as I never believed I could be. I am considered a part of the family that lives in this hidden cove. When a chick is hatched, I am allowed to hold it, and in the slate-grey reflection of its eye I know that I am the total protector of this fragile strand of life, and beyond me there lies only one thing: extinction.
It is summer now. Each year, at this time, they follow some unknown signal and swim out to sea. They are gone for several months, and there is no one on earth who knows where they go. I imagine them in the rolling dark slopes of the North Atlantic, where they have been for thousands of years, their plumage the same colour as the blackened waves. I imagine them out there, beyond my protection, and know that I have played my part in saving them. I imagine them fishing with one another, paddling across the surface and diving into a shadow that is complete and enveloping. I shall never know, until I see them again, whether they will return.
All rights reserved, including without limitation the right to reproduce this ebook or any portion thereof in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of the publisher.
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, events, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, businesses, companies, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.
Copyright © 2013 by Jeremy Page
978-1-4804-4826-1
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