The second volume of essays by Kathleen Jamie that I’ve read, more encounters with birds on lonely, windswept islands that have long been abandoned by humans, though traces remain of their earlier occupation.

If you have not yet read Kathleen Jamie, do check out my review of her first collection Findings, which I adored. It talks a little more about her writing and the difficulty her publisher had in describing her work, which defies categorisation, not exactly travel writing, not quite autobiography, a more accessible form of nature writing than we’ve seen before, seen through the eyes and in the prose of a poet.

In her trademark lyrical style, she travels with experts from whom she gleans bits of information, fascinating trivia, or alarming statistics that tell of a significant drop in population of certain species, but mostly she continues her mission of acute observation, of trying to see in the simplest terms something of the lives and patterns of behaviour of majestic winged creatures, who make long migrations each year and return to these islands to continue their heritage.

We learn more of her beginnings, of the archeological dig where she developed a fascination for uncovering secrets hidden beneath. She muses on microscopic observations in a science lab, writing about wind, light, the moon. We accompany her to the Arctic, witnessing giant icebergs on the move, the green lights of the aurora overhead. She visits to a museum in Norway where ancient whale bones dating from the mid 1800’s will be cleaned, restored, rehung, the melancholic weariness of their demise emitting an odour even after years of inhabiting this dusty dry interior.

The Gannetry

Jamie and friend take a picnic and visit a gannetry during mating season, they see much of what is expected, they’ve been there before, Jamie observes, looking for the unusual, she spots it in the sea, a straight line, something she doesn’t recognise until she does. A pod of orcas lead by the matriarch, she reflects on her role as mother, as her own children approach the age of leaving the nest.

The Woman in the Field

Jamie recalls being 17 years old, leaving school and rather than her mother’s suggestion of a library job or secretarial school, she delivers her to an archeological dig, to uncover a ‘henge’, a circle of stones seen from the air, where they’ll find a Bronze Age burial cist containing the skeleton of a woman and a well preserved pot, findings that will inspire a poem ‘Inhumation‘.

Aurora

Polly asks Jamie what brings her to the Arctic north, to the freezing cold, to float alongside unleashed icebergs, watching green light phenomena in the sky.

It is the birds that lure Polly, though the geese have flown, that and an illness which awoke something that continues to push her to seek these experiences, while they remain possible.

For 30 yrs Jamie sat on cliff tops looking at familiar horizons.
Now she wishes to change her map.
Something is changing.

The Hvalsalen

The Bergen Natural History Museum in Norway houses the largest whale skeleton installation known. No one knows how they got there, whether they were hunted or stranded, they date from 1867.

About to close for 4 years for renovation and repair, Jamie is invited to return during the conservation work, she will spend hours sitting in the bones, smelling the still present odours, imagining, contemplating their previous majesty.

Pathologies

Musing in frustration on nature clichés: ‘nature takes it course’, (death of her mother) ‘reconnecting with nature’ (environmental activists) Jamie makes an appointment with a clinical consultant in pathology to observe the inner workings of the human body ‘nature’ and its mutations, tumours, cancer cells, infections, seen to the naked eye and under the microscope. She sees landscapes, shorelines, marshes. Looking at the lining of someone’s stomach, searching for bacteria, she notes the following:

Between the oval structures were valleys, if you like, fanning down to the shore. Frank wanted to show me something in one of those valleys and I couldn’t find it at first; it took several patient attempts – this microscope didn’t have a cursor device to point at things. It was a very human moment, a collusion of landscape and language when one person tries to guide the other’s gaze across a vista. What vistas I’d seen. River deltas and marshes, peninsulas and atolls. The unseen landscapes within. You might imagine you were privy to the secret of the universe, some mystical union between body and earth, but I dare say it’s to do with our eyes. Hunter-gatherers that we are, adapted to look out over savannahs, into valleys from hillsides. Scale up the absurdly small until it looks like a landscape, then we can do business.

‘There!’ said Frank. ‘Isn’t that a pastoral scene? They’re grazing!’

I had it: six or seven very dark oval dots, still tiny, despite the magnification, were ranged across the blue valley, like musk oxen on tundra, seen from far above.

Her easy reading essays will also cover a lunar eclipse, three attempts to visit St Kilda, Neolithic caves and the passage of time in her own life, marked by the growth of her children into adolescence, on the threshold of young adulthood.

Fascinating and cosy reading to discover freezing cold, wind blown parts of the world that hold fascinating secrets that only the hardy voyager will venture to uncover. Enjoy reading them about from a more comfortable vantage point.

To buy one of her books, click the link below.

Kathleen Jamie’s essays via Book Depository