I went to Machrihanish for a rest. I hadn’t been feeling great and several life events had knocked me a wee bit. The sea always restores me, the big clout of a wave in our cold northern waters blasts the mind clear of all sorts of rubbish. I swam as soon as I got there, and again the next morning with snorkel, mask and fins - really getting into it.
Walking back to my glamping site, I came across two young girls with bikes. “Did you swim?” they asked.
“I did” I replied.
“Was there a rip current?” they asked.
“Not where I went in,” I replied.
One girl asked further: “Where did you go in?”
“You know where the river cuts across the sand into the sea?” I asked. “Yeah,” they both replied.
“Well just beyond that - where the high sand dunes start there’s a big tree trunk lying on the beach. I left my clothes there and swam opposite that.”
All the swimming happened before I noticed the dead guillemots, soft, dark, dark brown and white, their beaks shut tight, their small flat feet lifeless. They had died from bird flu. All the air on the beach was suddenly changed, sucked away, still as a stone. I was moved beyond words. Some kinship about pandemics stirred within me, and I started to draw - I hardly knew what. I was not about to draw dead birds.
One dead Guillemot at my feet.
But the paintings came, easily, quietly once I was home and the memory lent them more calm than I could muster on the spot. There is a resignation to strange aspects of nature which contributes a beauty that can only be perceived if we accept.
