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| The Wader and the Wind
Forty years ago I handed in my three-year research project. Though I never again formally studied the ecology of Britain’s noisiest and most brightly plumaged wading bird, those Oystercatchers have remained as an intimate part of me, a symbol of freedom, of wide horizons and wild shores. So as I reached the beach on the coast of NE Scotland last winter, leaving the dunes behind, something spoke deeply to me, for there on the far water’s ocean-edge stood a lone Oystercatcher. It was as if it had been waiting, expecting my arrival from generations ago.
The shore sand was hard and firm beneath my feet, for all loose grains had been whipped away by the strong SW wind. To my right were the dunes and to my left the sea, breaker upon breaker. I couldn’t hear the crashing waves - my ears were muffled against the bitter cold. Neither could I hear the gulls valiantly battling their erratic way southward by the dunes’ edge, mirroring my own walk. I couldn’t hear the wind either, but I felt its power batter my face.
I had three choices. I could turn around to face the place from where I had come and from that position either retrace my steps with the wind on my back or walk backwards into the wind. I tried both, but something stirred inside me, urging me towards a third way. So I turned round once more to face the wind and walked straight towards the storm that lay ahead. Dark clouds loomed from the southern horizon and a horizontal mixture of drizzle and spindrift wetted my coat.
I turned a few degrees to the left, towards the sea; then a few degrees to the right towards the marram grass bending before the gale. But in that same indefinable way I was drawn back again to the Centre, to face straight into the oncoming darkness. Beside me, never leaving, was my Oystercatcher; at times it disappeared – or so it seemed. But when I looked more carefully there it was - sometimes hidden by tricks of the light, at other times as clear as crystal. And occasionally when I thought it had left, it re-appeared a little behind me, or a hundred metres ahead.
The storm approached – and I approached the storm; we were destined to meet, when all of a sudden I became aware of a lifting of the dark clouds and a lightening of the far horizon. Amazingly the rain and wind’s path changed direction a little to the north and was moving past me, not towards me any more. At that point my own path into the wind was able to change and with the threat now past I could turn away from the sea and back into the sand-dunes. Here I raised the woollen muffler from my ears and as I did so a sound pulled my attention back to the shoreline; my Oystercatcher, my constant Companion, gave a shrill cry and flew away northwards out of sight.
After twenty minutes of meandering back amongst the dunes and the marram I became aware that the sand in front of me was almost glowing, golden amongst the burnished brown and green of the dying vegetation. I looked up and saw behind me the source of this Light – a brightening sky with patches of setting sun-pink on higher clouds; to the north a full moon emerged and winked.
Now warmed by a Presence that I could just begin to understand I turned once more towards home, only to be surprised and astonished once more. In a final call to my own spirit’s awareness there appeared above me a skein of wild geese, their cries echoing from an evening sky – in turn echoing six words from a song of today’s Celtic church : ‘….the Holy Spirit comes to stay.’
Paul Heppleston ____________________________________________________________________________________
Discovery
‘Guide me to the mountain tops where rocks are strong;
lead me to the forests and the plain.
Take me to the ocean’s edge to stand before the wind;
there to find myself – and You’
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