Apart yet A Part

“No man is an island,

Entire of itself

Every man is a piece of the continent,

A part of the main.”                                  John Donne

 The road wound out of the town. There seemed to be no reason for the sharp left other than the fact that there was a long well established wall. Soon the driver found himself in a narrow winding valley, green hilly farmland, a shorter drive than he had remembered. The ascent was gentle, the descent over the other side more extreme. He reached the ancient road bridge where the River Findhorn tumbled underneath. He was over quickly but not without memories of stopping there when he worked as a van boy for the Nairnshire Laundry. Donald Mathieson, the driver, was not a man given to effusive expressions of joy. His dour silence was often the only accompaniment on their long drives. But he had stopped on that day because the river was in spate, its normal, gentle tinklings, now a raging torrent from the Spring thaw and the exceptional rain, a bridge threatening deluge.

Upwards the drive continued, soon amongst pine trees, beyond amongst moorland. The heather was not yet ready to bloom, the spectacular, purple blanket was still guarding itself with virginal coyness. But the driver knew it was only weeks away.

He almost missed the turning such was his reverie. There was nothing behind him as the narrow entryway indicated a road with passing places only. It was a pot-holed, pock-marked apology of tarmac, no doubt on an old list for improvement, long since mislaid by an ancient bureaucrat somewhere in a cob-webbed file. 3 miles along, he pulled into a gap at the side of the road and parked. He trekked back for a couple of hundred yards and turned left onto a gated farm track. He could see the croft on the hill and beneath it the boat house on the loch beneath. The waters were choppy but the breeze was from the south and warm. It caused the waves to lap on the banks. The man noticed the difference. They had not the violence of the sea, there were no significant coastal rocks or cliffs, no powerful ocean’s shoulders to the wheel. But the man remembered such days from his youth with his two brothers and his father and knew and could hear the rowlocks on the boat as they strove towards the boathouse and home, aware that no self-respecting trout was going to take a fly in such turbulence. He strolled further towards the boathouse. Coming across occasional dotted tree growths he recognised that the water did not have a monopoly over the sound of the wind. The heather was familiar underfoot as he spotted a bank on which to sit for a while. He left the track. He rested his feet on the sand beneath, sat and looked out on the scene.

Some miles away on the west coast and some days previously in the village of Gairloch, the man had sought out a rock on the sea front. He knew that it was in the middle of the side road; that the road builders had decided to go around it. After all it was the end of a cul de sac, a natural turning spot for the boarding houses adjacent. It was only about 6 feet high, an incline on one side made it an easy climb. There were cine films of the man as a boy, pretending bravery by climbing the rock when little bravery was required, showing off to all who would look, an unimpressive display of childish bravado. It was just a rock. He had looked at those films recently and cringed at the child he was. The rock was still there, the beach where they paddled still had the same sheltered rock face. It was still as unoccupied as it appeared in the films.

I am just returned from five weeks in the UK, traveling in familiar and unfamiliar places. Sometimes, Dear Friends, when one steps apart from the madding crowd, one can find things that seem just as they were. It hasn’t taken me 72 years to realise that the heather still scuffles the same underfoot, that the rustle of leaves, waves at sea, waves on a loch, wind in a stand of firs, a quiver in a copse of birches; all are unique; numinous nuances. We are some of us, Dear Reader, so far removed from our past that it seems like another country; things were done differently there. And yet, and yet, finding the place, finding the moment, mustering the wherewithal, one can still feel where one was and be a part yet again even though life’s adventure has taken us away and apart.

I had so many of those glorious moments on my recent holiday. Words and pictures can never do them justice. But I remain a part of all that I have met.

Then sometime late in my time away, I received a short Whatsapp video from my good friend and ex-colleague, Benoit. He is a wonderful man, a courageous man, an empathetic man, a man who deserves the absolute best that life can offer. It is a life that has not always been kind to him. But he thought enough of the pictures that I was sending that he sent me a short video back. He was doing a supervision duty on a playground with which I am familiar. It was only 20 seconds long but the sound of young children at play was all too familiar to me. Friends, childish laughter, childish joy, childish excitement are sounds which are familiar to us all.

Somewhere on a country road, quite suddenly I had to pull over. I reached in my back pack for the pen and notebook which are always with me. It had come to me as one of the many slow dawns throughout my long life, suddenly a realisation, a sense, a feeling, a light bulb moment. I have always tried to let the sounds of nature express themselves without interruption, particularly those that I know were present thousands of years ago before our modern world interfered. This recent awakening was caused by Benoit’s short interlude. The sounds that he produced on his short video were not of one time or place, they are universal. They are as recognisable in Myanmar as in Nigeria; as evident on a rough housing estate as on a frozen lake in the Yukon when the dog sleds arrive to give an experience to children never to be forgotten. Humankind would have known them millennia ago. Like the waves, the trees, the winds, the rain, the sound of children at play has a universality which comes into our lives and reassures us, takes us away from so much that is wrong on our troubled planet and tells us that that which has been, can still be. We can draw strength from that.  The flurry and fluster of modern life keeps us apart from the natural strengths of our world, whom we really were and whom we really are. But if we wander just a few steps off the beaten track, we shall find that we can still reconnect. We may now be apart but, for some short interlude, we can still be a part.

Thanks for reading.