Between the Years

Photo: Katrin Schönig

By Paul Scraton:

We were supposed to leave on Boxing Day, but the waves raced in off the North Atlantic, crashing against the harbour walls and rolling over the loading bay where the fishing boats had been pulled on wheels out of the ocean’s reach. There was no ferry that day, as there hadn’t been since the 17th December, and the forecast was not good.

For two further days the wind and the waves hammered at the island. São Jorge is a thin sliver, a line of volcanic peaks falling away towards the ocean. If there is flat land to be found it is often on lava debris fields at the foot of cliffs, where villages were built that, for centuries – and in some cases still – are only accessible by foot. Across the channel it is possible to spy the neighbouring islands of Pico and, from the right vantage point, Faial. But if the winds and the waves are high, it does not matter how close they might be. No boats will leave the harbour, and no planes will rise from the airstrip.

We hunkered down, waiting for the break. At a local surf shop, the owner looked at the same website as the owner of our guesthouse had shown us on his phone. A line of coloured boxes, filled with numbers. The website is hosted in the Czech Republic but is apparently bookmarked on every browser in São Jorge. The surf shop owner translated what it meant. High winds. Big waves. We weren’t going anywhere.

Each evening came and with it the message that the ferry was cancelled for the following morning, until one evening when it didn’t. Our guesthouse owner was hopeful. Tomorrow, you can sail. But he promised to leave our beds made just in case. We were to message him only once we left harbour. Only then, would he know we had finally checked out.

At the port in the morning a trickle of passengers became a tide. It was more than ten days by now since the ferry to Pico and Faial had run. In that time, Christmas had come and gone, although the decorations were still up in town and festive songs were still playing through the loudspeakers that had been erected some time in December. Passengers checked in their bags and waited in the terminal buildings. 

Others lined up their cars, waiting to board. At the check in counter, a woman delivered a parcel that would travel on the ferry without her. A man did the same. A taxi driver delivered three boxes and then queued to pay for the transportation, before driving off to work the next fare. The weather forecast for the next day was bad, and for the day after too. This might be the only chance.

Photo: Katrin Schönig

We sat on deck and watched Velas and São Jorge slowly retreat. It would take two and a half hours to reach Faial via Pico, and the island remained in view throughout. It was a long farewell. The first crossing was rocky, the second was rough. Perhaps they wouldn’t have made the crossing if it hadn’t been more than a week since the last one. We stayed on deck and watched the horizon. Some passengers slept, laid out across the plastic chairs. Others headed inside and tried to ignore the motion, watching films on their phones or tablets. 

In the channel between São Jorge and Pico, in the central islands of the Azores in the middle of the Atlantic, the internet connection was better than Berlin. We weren’t surprised.

We were between the years and between the islands. In the channel between Pico and Faial a windsurfer raised alongside the ferry, flying above the waves that we were crashing through. The waves seemed to grow bigger the closer we got to Horta and our destination. The spray reached the top deck. Gulls hovered above. At least one passenger was sick. The time between the years is usually when nothing much happens. As we approached land and the rise and fall of the ferry seemed to intensify, we wondered if there were any more surprises left. 

At Horta harbour, where sailors from around the world have left their mark in colourful murals on the harbour wall, and where the first transatlantic seaplanes used to land between the boats, we felt solid land beneath our feet. That evening in Faial, we would still be able to hear the ocean breaking against the rocks below where we were to sleep. We could still feel the motion where we lay. And we could see the dance of the white horses as they broke between the islands behind our closed eyes.

Outside it was calm. The sky had cleared and the stars shone down on the islands and the ocean. Tomorrow, the sun would shine. But the waves had been growing, and the colours and the numbers on the Czech website were not good. The messages had been received. The ferry for the next morning had already been cancelled. 

Photo: Katrin Schönig

***

Paul Scraton is the editor in chief of Elsewhere: A Journal of Place. His latest book is In the Pines, a novella of the forest with photography by Eymelt Sehmer, and published by Influx Press.

In my wild urban garden

At the height of summer, Gerry Maguire Thompson is looking back across the year as he works on his forthcoming book Wilding the Urban Garden. In an exclusive extract for Elsewhere, he takes us back to the very beginning, and January in the garden…

Jan 1st 

A cold, bright day. I love watching the diverse life in this wilded garden in the city. It’s remarkable how many species are attracted here, mostly brought about by just getting out of nature’s way. 

Jan 2nd 

Mild weather today. A large bumble bee is visiting the flowers of Mahonia Japonica for nectar. At this time of year it’s got to be a queen – the only one who survives through the winter – needing nourishment to get through the cold months.

I’m sitting in the garden, just quietly observing; it becomes a kind of meditation. For a while it may seem like nothing is going on; but really there is never nothing happening. There’ll be an animal or a bird or an insect doing something, or a new plant that you hadn’t noticed before. And there’ll be sound; the longer you listen the more layers of sound you realise there are. The intricate web of nature is always there and is always amazing in its workings.

Observing this challenges me in how I evaluate what is significant and  worthy of attention. I realise more and more that the everyday and the mundane are in fact extraordinary: the amazingness of the commonplace. The seemingly prosaic or unglamorous species like the sparrow or earthworm or dandelion can reveal itself as charismatic when we give it our full attention. It makes you question the whole concept of what is conventionally charismatic or appealing

Sensing all this, for  this moment of time I suddenly feel that transcendent momentary sense: that nothing could be changed to make anything any better. This is the Tao of wildlife gardening.

Jan 5th 

The sparrows are out in force today, with fine weather after a day or two of rain. I never tire of watching them in the garden. There’s a large and growing flock who seem to never leave the place. All their needs are met here: food, protection, nest-sites, safe roosting – and lots of opportunities to bicker at one another. There is  immense joy to be found in this connexion with the inhabitants of our little wildlife haven and the intimate insights into their lives.

Jan 6th 

A woodmouse (Apodemus Sylvaticus: ‘one who goes abroad among the sylvan glades’) has been popping into the conservatory on the odd sunny day when we have the doors open to the outside, looking for something to eat. 

This little creature tends to look in each day for a couple of days, and is surprisingly undaunted by  our presence. It’s quite happy to move around our feet, picking up whatever bits fall from our plate, as long as we don’t move suddenly.

Jan 7th 

In the late afternoon I notice numbers of redwing gathering in the big ash tree just outside our garden gate; as the sun goes down more and more of them gather until there are well over a hundred. 

Jan 8th 

The redwings are still gathered in the ash tree in large  numbers, now  covering its whole canopy.

Jan 9th 

I look out first thing in the morning to check on the redwings: they’ve  gone. And so has every berry that was on every holly tree in the garden. They probably departed in the middle of the night.

Jan 12th 

The resident male blackbird is stabbing at windfall fruit from the apple tree that have remained intact on the ground into the winter. He’s starting to look glossy and his beak is turning a brighter colour: preparing to defend this very desirable territory, I imagine. 

Jan 14th 

The blackbird is now systematically eating ivy berries all day long; the visiting redwings didn’t take these. 

Jan 16th 

I’ve been watching the sparrows feeding today. It’s mysterious. They often leave a full feeder for hours, while at other times they pounce on it as soon as you put it out. I suppose it could be about the availability of other food sources, but at this time of year there isn’t an excess of other food around.

Jan 18th 

Taking the dog  out for bed-time walk and toiletries last night, I spotted a fox across the road. This one I recognised: a big old dog fox with a woolly face that makes him look like a bear. I’ve seen him around here for a long time, and I know where he lives – under an unused shed at the nearby allotments. He’s wary of people and dogs, which is probably how he got to be big and old. Tonight, as usual, he keeps his distance, then moves away.

Jan 20th 

Two bluetits are forming a promising relationship, hopping round one another on the apple tree when the sparrows are not in evidence – they seem to keep away from those slightly bigger and more assertive birds.

Jan 22nd 

I’m watching the sparrows as they finally settle down to roost in the holly tree as darkness falls. All has gone quiet. Then I notice one bird hop down to the lowest branch of the tree, do a poo, and hop back up to where it was before. Seems like this is sparrow etiquette: you just don’t poo on someone else’s head while they’re asleep. We’ve all been there.

Jan 23rd 

It’s particularly dark this evening, completely overcast. Taking the dog for her night-time outing we encounter a different fox – a lot younger and sleeker than Big Old Bear Fox – and a lot less wary of people and dogs. Has this one taken over the territory?

Jan 25th 

I’m delighted to hear  – from the dog-walking fraternity, who spot more wildlife than everyone else in this neighbourhood – that Big Old Bear Fox is still  around. Maybe he’s been pushed into an adjacent territory – or maybe he’s being tolerated by New Young Fox– maybe as a relative? Maybe even as proposed father to offspring?

Jan 26th 

Big Old Bear Fox and New Young Fox have been seen – together. So now I’m hoping they’re a couple. Sentimentally. I’d be delighted for Big Old Bear Fox to become a father once more…probably for the last time.

Jan 27th 

This evening I heard the first twilight mating-plus-territorial song of the year from the resident male blackbird: it’s beautiful and uplifting as ever. I know this bird is  probably saying, “This is my territory so don’t even think about coming into my space or you’ll seriously regret it” but I never fail to feel joy from listening to it, especially just before dawn and again at dusk. Who knows, perhaps the bird feels joy too: the joy of telling others to **** off? That’s a sentiment I too sometimes experience.

Jan 29th 

Big freeze. Now the ground is covered in hoar frost. Looking out my upstairs window at dawn, I see a dead fox in our next door neighbour’s garden, lying frozen and covered in white frost crystals. The neighbours let me into their garden. I’m pretty sure this is New Young Fox. She clearly didn’t die of hunger, because she’s in otherwise pristine condition. Incredibly beautiful and heartachingly sad.

Jan 31st 

Sun shining warmly today.  First male song-thrush of the year starts singing on the highest tip of the highest holly tree in the garden. Perching on the highest viewpoint in the vicinity – as thrushes are wont to do – and singing your heart out for a long time is a high-risk strategy, and numbers of thrushes are taken this way every year by sparrow-hawks or other birds of prey.

The sparrows are having their first splash of the year in the birdbath, always a joy to watch. They’re so exuberant and noisy that I can’t believe they’re not having a terrific time. My beloved sparrows continue to bring joy, so full of vitality and effervescent chattiness are they in any weather and any time of day. I love listening to them; they sound cheerful and optimistic to me, though I’m also perfectly aware that they’re mostly bitching, arguing, fighting and complaining to one another. I don’t care; cheerfulness, optimism and full-of-life-ness are still the effects their chatter has on me. Anthromorphique, moi? Certainement.

As January draws to close I’m reminded once again of the immense benefits urban wild gardening can bring: to the individual, to the local wildlife, to the cityscape, and indeed to the planet.

***

You can get free advance extracts from Gerry’s book “Wilding the Urban Garden” by signing up at urbanwildgarden.com
The book also has a Facebook page, at facebook.com/UrbanWildGarden 

Sketches of China 04: Beijing by train

Illustration: Mark Doyle

This is the fourth instalment of Sketches of China, a collaboration between the writer James Kelly and the illustrator Mark Doyle.

Speeding across the countryside under sulphur skies, an arrow shot for the city’s heart, the forlorn moan of the electric locomotive thundering along the tracks, cutting across the land, slowing from time to time, stopping at anonymous skylines of half-built tower blocks and cranes that tell of the rapacious pace of urbanisation, the shape of a woman emerging freshly showered onto a balcony in the evening sun as the carriages pull away once again, surveying the scene from the window, the landscape drenched in wan yellow light, the sinuous figures and sun-beaten skin of peasants who till the land, resting for a moment under a drooping tree, the red and white stripes of a chimney stack behind them, a smelter belching out smoke that hangs low in the air above fields of cadmium rice and split melons, the smog lingering over rivers whose fish have long since departed, hanging in wisps above brittle fields, their groundwater sullied, their aquifers depleted, the earth sucked dry, the train reaching the first buildings that announce the metropolis under darkening skies, the forlorn moan of the engine dying out to the creak of the carriages as it slows, snaking unnoticed through shabby suburbs, the buildings growing taller, entombing the land and climbing to touch the sky, the carriages tugging as finally they come to a halt, stepping out onto the concourse, waking into a nightmare, feeling the frenetic pulse of the city as the sun gradually sinks over the fields left far behind, the land slipping into shadow to await the new day, the televised dawn of progress at all costs.

***

James Kelly is a writer and translator with a strong interest in landscape and time. Read more of his work at www.geosoph.scot/writing/.

Mark Doyle is an artist and illustrator working in painting, sculpture, printmaking and digital media. See more of his work at www.markdoyle.org and on Instagram @markdoyleartist.

Sketches of China 03: River Scene, Qinhuai by Night

Illustration: Mark Doyle

This is the third instalment of Sketches of China, a collaboration between the writer James Kelly and the illustrator Mark Doyle.

The mother river, the artery around which the city’s historic heart once grew, its banks now thronging with crowds, an ancient temple from another time – all but forgotten – standing behind them, the reflections of a neon dragon shimmering on the murky olive waters, couples and families pausing for photographs on the bridge, feigning indifference to the smell of putrid waste hanging in the air, stopping to watch the pleasure boats as they pass below, all lit up in yellows and reds, swallowed by the darkness of an arch from which bats emerge, their wings tracing flights of Brownian motion in the night, crossing the bridge and turning off on the other side, off down a street lined with gift shops, running the gauntlet, avoiding eye contact and playing deaf to the hawkers’ cries as they echo off the walls, finding a moment’s respite from the humidity in the chill gust emerging from a department store before being enveloped again by the muggy air, leaving the water to drip steadily from the air conditioning unit as miles away a chimney belches out coal smoke, turning off down an alley leading to the metro, the street lined with counterfeit goods, the sound of raised voices, a slap ringing out in the night, descending the stairs, the dry click of the carriage doors, sterile, modern, and a lingering question as the train pulls away: the mother river, what will her children become?

***

James Kelly is a writer and translator with a strong interest in landscape and time. Read more of his work at www.geosoph.scot/writing/.

Mark Doyle is an artist and illustrator working in painting, sculpture, printmaking and digital media. See more of his work at www.markdoyle.org and on Instagram @markdoyleartist.

Sketches of China 02: Cloudburst

Illustration: Mark Doyle

This is the second installment of Sketches of China, a collaboration between the writer James Kelly and the illustrator Mark Doyle.

The air saturated, the sky cloud-sodden, climbing the purple mountain as dusk falls, the light starting to fade, entering the pagoda, savouring its cool stone shade, the brief respite it offers from the oppressive humidity, climbing the flights of stairs and admiring the view from the top, where one feels eternal and complete, a gentle breeze stirring the torpid air, the emerald verdure stretching out down below, carpeting the land as far as the eye can see, the mist rolling up across the hills to touch the clouds, making out the concrete mass of the city’s skyline far in the distance, its compacted energy paling to insignificance against the plenitude of the surrounding landscape, the serenity of the present mingling with recollections of the paths leading to this sanctuary, of great stone steles inscribed with their ancient words of wisdom, of ponds rank with waterlilies and algae, of animals now calling out in the trees down below, embryonic memories of a still-living present, of a past yet to form.

***

James Kelly is a writer and translator with a strong interest in landscape and time. Read more of his work at www.geosoph.scot/writing/.

Mark Doyle is an artist and illustrator working in painting, sculpture, printmaking and digital media. See more of his work at www.markdoyle.org and on Instagram @markdoyleartist.

Wiesenburg: A spring diary

By Paul Scraton:

Field notes from Brandenburg:

We walk across the fields to the old village just before tea, and we see that the stork has returned. The nest is on top of the brick chimney above a workshop that is now an art and community hall between the supermarket and the Schloss. But the stork is in the fields, taking languid strides across the rutted ground, while a hooded crow watches on from a safe distance.

Another returnee to the village: the artwork that stands in the middle of the pond, part of a 42-km walking route that links Wiesenburg with Bad Belzig. The artwork represents all the lost and abandoned villages of High Fläming. Those destroyed in the Thirty Years War or left as ghost villages as industry shifted, swallowed by the forest. Each winter the artwork is taken away to protect it in case the pond waters freeze, and each spring it is brought back. The lost villages found once more. 

In the Schloss gardens, the anglers sit along the banks of the ponds, easily maintaining social distance with their umbrellas and low stools, trailers pulled by bicycles and plastic bottles of water and beer. 

At dusk I watch the bats dance between the houses above the gentle orange glow of the street light. I stand on our driveway and look up and down the street. A number of houses are empty. Shuttered and waiting for someone new. A generation change, our neighbour said. 

The new house that we pass on our walks is beginning to take shape. Walls and and a roof. Windows and doors to come. The old tumbledown shack that was the only structure on the once-tangled and overgrown property now has a shiny new big brother. 

The path through the forest follows the old dry valleys formed by the last Ice Age and leads us to the next village. It is there we spot the first swallows of spring, pinging this way and that as we walk down past the houses with their neat gardens to the sandy track out the other side. We’ve never been this far before, and the path leads up to a lookout point that offers as close to a view as you’ll get in Brandenburg without climbing a castle tower or a wooden walkway high above the trees. 

Our neighbouring house has been gutted, the remnants of the old lives lived between those walls piled up in the garden. The things that were left behind when they sold it. Old travel cases and trunks. Hunting trophies. Garden gnomes. The new neighbours are working on it around their jobs, on evenings and weekends, working hard and making good progress. The kids play on piles of sand as the adults pause for a beer and we say cheers across the top of an overgrown hedge. 

In the window of the village library, closed since March, there is a line-up of books: Albert Camus’ The Plague. Gabriel Garcia Marquez’s Love in the Time of Cholera. David Wallace Wells’ The UnInhabitable Earth. The librarian has a sense of humour.

In the garden the cherry blossom comes and then the cherry blossom is gone. 

On a walk along the art trail we come to an open door on the edge of a field. In the middle of the 19th century the village of Groß Glien had 42 residents. Now all that remains of the village are the ruins of the church foundations a few steps from the work of art, enclosed in a tangle of brambles and young trees.

At the top of the Hagelberg, a five kilometre run from our house, I’m at the highest point in Brandenburg and the smallest Mittelgebirge in Germany. Or perhaps it is the second highest. It seems that there is a debate, involving places on the borders with other states and rumours of earth movers in the middle of the night in order to take the crown. No matter. It’s so peaceful on the hill it is hard to imagine this is the site of a bloody battle that, in 1813, took 3,000 lives. 

Outside the supermarket the asparagus stand is erected. Beelitz is not far away. They sell white and green asparagus, offcuts for soup and punnets of strawberries. A plastic screen stands between us and the friendly woman who weighs our purchases and takes our money through a small gap at the bottom of the barrier. 

On a run out from the village I see what I think might be wolf droppings, but there’s no internet connection on my phone to check so I take a photograph for later. The results of the research are inconclusive. 

We hear the sirens first. Then see the first engines passing by quickly on our road. Over the fence we hear our neighbour say that he should go down to the station and see what’s what. There’s barely been any rain for months, and the forests are dry as a bone. Twenty minutes later the engines return, slower now, as does our neighbour, ringing his bicycle bell as he turns into the drive.

The latest coronavirus information is posted outside the town hall. The number of new infections, of those who have died, useful telephone numbers and relaxations to contact restrictions. Other notices include planning permission for an extension to the supermarket, and on which days the military will be conducting live fire exercises in the restricted zone. 

In the remnants of the old GDR factory on the edge of the village, the police find two thousand cannabis plants in an old warehouse. Three men are arrested. 

Most mornings a red kite hovers over our garden and most mornings I wonder if it is possible that there is a more beautiful bird. 

***

Paul Scraton is the editor in chief of Elsewhere: A Journal of Place and the author of Ghosts on the Shore: Travels along Germany’s Baltic coast (Influx Press, 2017) as well as the Berlin novel Built on Sand (Influx Press, 2019).  

Parenthesis in Time: Journal entry from a road trip in northern Chile

By James Kelly:

Down in the valley, among the verdure, the landscape seems still, immobilised in time. Giant slopes of sterile rock bear down from above, arid, expectant in an epochal wait for rain. Yet carved between the high walls, the valley floor, with its regular crops of alfalfa and corn, is of a different time. The boulders and pebbles that lie scattered across the riverbed stand at rest, a temporary pause on their journey down from the Andean highlands to the sea. These petrified fragments of an immense telluric memory are testament to the youthful vigour of the mountains that bore them, the wave of rock that surged up from the Pacific Ocean to form the Andes.

Some of the stones, no doubt, have siblings way up there, up where the air is thin and fresh, where the snow-capped volcanoes of Isluga and Guallatiri attract giant storm clouds with their magnetic pull. Some of the rocks would have been present in the immense columns of burning ash and debris thrust skywards from the bowels of the Earth to hang suspended in the air by great updrafts of igneous gas, before collapsing in devastating waves that ripped down the mountain slopes with force enough to bury a small country under the volcanic rubble. 

And it’s there, up in that other world, in the heart of Cerro Anocarire, that the river begins, the same river whose flows have sculpted the valley and its hillsides. It’s there that the source of the water can be found, the water that washes gently over the pebbles, polishing and massaging them, conveying their sediments on towards the ocean, the same water whose minerals now nourish the transience of these sun-kissed plantations, day after day, year after year.

15:25, 9 January 2018. Camarones Valley, Arica and Parinacota Region, Northern Chile.

***

James Kelly is a writer and translator with a strong interest in landscape and time. His work explores interactions between different timescales, from the human to the geological, and what we can learn from the cosmovisions of other peoples in our relationships with the land. More of his work can be found at www.geosoph.scot/writing/.