I Am An Island

It is a beautiful world of stubborn pride, hatred of difference and fear of change. In many ways, it remains feudal, with its own unique honour system that is quick to take offence and slow to pardon. Forgiveness is a quality that is as hard to disinter as the rocks in the soil.

I know not to worry. The wind is symbolic to me of the breath of change. It has stripped the barn of its past, and forced me, in the space of three hours, to envisage life on the croft differently. Sometimes the universe invites us to work according to its principle of destruction and alteration. To empty a space, discard an outworn routine or simply let go, so that a different future may fill that emptiness. The sight of the swans reminds me that if you can rise above the chaos, the mysterious flow of the wind offers a source of strength and renewal.

The gleeful cries of the gulls, spatters of feathers and bright chinks of sound tangling into a fishing boat’s sun-filled nets, encapsulate for me how freely and universally wildlife is given to us all. Yet so often we walk the earth oblivious, never lifting our eyes to look through its open windows. Living wild teaches you to tread gently, to listen, not just with your eyes and ears, but with that finer instinct that lies even deeper than your heart. All it takes to untangle ourselves from everything that disconnects us or deracinates our lives from our beautiful earth is to find that animal instinct. Belonging is ultimately simple. Yet still we cage ourselves, subordinating our intuition to our rational mind as we wrestle with the everyday and existential anxieties that dominate almost every aspect of our lives.