Words From The West

I’m just doing a little bit of weeding, really, you’d hardly call it gardening in this tiny postage stamp of a city street garden. Pulling up dandelions. Cutting back rose suckers. Turning over the earth.

That’s when the heathers pop out at me. Rooted now, growing, and thriving.

And I remember, suddenly, a day last summer when I walked out by Loch Fyne. A hot, sunny summer’s day when I walked out along the valley, got stuck with some cattle, jumped over some fences, got lost by a quarry, scrambled down to the water, put my feet in the river.

Sat by the river and ate my picnic, dangled my feet in the water, and kept my face from the burning sun.

I remember now going back to the cafe later, and stopping first at the garden centre nearby. Looking wistfully at plants that will only grow in the west, and thinking they’re not for me, there’s no point in buying them now. Still feel the need though, the urge, to bring back something from my trip. A little pocket of Loch Fyne.

And so I buy six twists of heather, that sit now, growing and thriving in my city garden, connecting this earth: here, to that space, that earth, that moment in time.

Remember too how forlorn she felt. How sad. How far from being in the right place.

And suddenly it all falls into place. Why I need to go west. How it calls me. And that it doesn’t need to be right here or right there, it just needs to carry that feel: of the soft sweet air, the cold clear water on my warm sunburned feet, the lure of the hills, the ridiculous kiss of the soft highland rain.

It doesn’t need to make sense to you. Just to me.

And at last, when I watch this heather growing, it does, to me.

It’s a quiet, gentle, invitation in the end.

The rain that starts to fall, with a smile, as the car drives onto the ferry boat. (Never mind the sunshine in Glasgow, it’s time for some highland rain.)

The radio playing, jauntily, in the cafe at the marina, while I gulp my morning tea.

It’s the oystercatchers who arrive, on cue, when I stop for a moment at Sandbank and drink in the sea, the hills, the holy loch. Who fly by, calling.

Oh but was that the call?

Or is it the tea drunk in a warm kitchen on a sunny Friday afternoon. An invitation to stop, to chat, to make conversation amongst a community of eccentrics, away from the conventions of the city.

The tail of the dog, thumping quietly, as she sits at the open door, watching the sunlight, waiting for the invitation to roam.

I don’t know.

Perhaps it’s the call of the ferry boat, floating above the houses, drifting above the garden that watches above the quay.

But when I stop and think I’d say it was the birdsong: calling, laughing, singing, cajoling, exuberant with delight that I was there. Singing in the garden, laughing as I climbed up the hill, nodding with approval as I crossed the line and entered the wildness of the wood.

I hear you.

I hear you.

I’m coming.