Who Needs Orkney Anyway
By purplehaze
- 456 reads
One minute you’re standing in your sunny kitchen, as it shimmers light from the window crystals, the next, you’re trying not to slip on hail stones.
One of the aspects I love about living here is there are plenty of high view-points for weather-watching. Watching the dark clouds sailing in over the Moray Firth, knowing I have ten minutes tops to get home. Usually, I scurry home and dry, feeling like I’ve won a prize if I close the door behind me just as the rain starts. But since seeing ‘The Outrun’, I have been longing for wild weather, and today the winds, waves, rain and hail obliged.
Maybe it was nothing to do with ‘The Outrun’.
Maybe I’m done with the depressed stage of retiring, aging.
Maybe I’ve just been longing to feel fully alive.
Like those people chasing the hurricanes.
On the high point above the harbour, decided, ‘I’m dressed for the weather, I’m staying out’.
It was exhilarating. Seabirds in blustered swoops or on full alert, rallying on the sea-weedy rocks. Sea foaming itself into a creamy wrath. Waves, a relentless roar. Nothing like the gales in ‘The Outrun’, but close enough. A wave rave. Heady scent of salty ozone and the light changed so quickly as the squall slooped into the bay, then heaved-to over the hills, to fill rivers and lochs inland. Galleons of clouds scudding, clipper-fast, to their journey’s end.
What do seals and dolphins do in wild seas? Probably know coves and havens, like the Vikings once did. Johnshaven, Craobh Haven – east and west, they knew and named the places.
Do dolphins whistle and click their wave dance?
Do seals have their word for havens?
Am ready to venture out from mine.
And understand that rage now, ‘against the dying of the light’.
Images for this journal have been posted on Insta @purplehaze_journal
- Log in to post comments
Comments
Loved your description of the
Loved your description of the stormy weather, and felt a trace envious of the experience! Though it does also make us appreciative of calm – and light! Rhiannon
- Log in to post comments
Your very enticing
Your very enticing description almost made me want to do similar (with suitable hat etc) - thank you!
- Log in to post comments
Brilliant descriptions! Don't
Brilliant descriptions! Don't know how many times have slopped home in full wellies hoping no one notices my bedraggled hair. There was a David Attenborough program once, where on the sea floor, lobsters (which are usually solitary) gather together into long lines by holding front claws, to stop being washed away in storms. I think sea gulls LIKE the storm winds :0) Maybe dolphins like the energy underwater, too, do you think?
- Log in to post comments
Keep on with the rage. I've
Keep on with the rage. I've found that retirement is brilliant, as long as you keep moving forward. If your circumstances allow you to do so.
I've gone off wild weather a bit since yesterday, when I was wild-weathered for nearly an hour on an country road waiting for a bus that was eventually gracious enough to turn up. Although I think I would have forgiven the weather gods if I had been able to see the amazing things you describe rather than the flow of cars, with their dry occupants, sloshing their way along the B Whatever-it-was.
Thank you for a lovely read.
- Log in to post comments
Pick of the Day
This lovely piece of nature writing and personal reflection is our Facebook and X Pick of the Day!
Purplehaze - I've added a picture for the social media posts, but if you don't like it please do feel free to delete it on here.
Picture free to use at Wikemedia Commons: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Crashing_Waves_on_Rocks_-_geogra...
- Log in to post comments
I enjoyed reading the Outrun.
I enjoyed reading the Outrun. Now it's a film, I'd quite like to watch. I think we've all gotten into the house, just ahead of the wind and rain and thanked whatever god we didn't believe in.
- Log in to post comments