North

 

It is sometimes better to start at the end.

And to speak of north is to speak of endings.

The farthest you can go, the edge of the Earth.

At least that is what it can feel like. It’s where everything is moving towards, where everything is being pulled. 

It is a destination, a point to reach, a place to make your mark.

It can take a while to get to the edge of the Earth, as it can to get to the end of anything. 

But time has a habit of shifting here, of moving back and forth and of standing still.

Summer can feel like autumn, day can feel like night. It can be winter in the morning and spring in the afternoon. 

There has been snow on daffodils and thick grey fog instead of sun. 

There are the markers that stand out though, the ones that tell you where you are. They remind you that there are actually seasons, that there are things that only appear in certain places and at certain times: poppies that explode at the side of the road, heather that turns purple as it creeps up the hill, swathes of bog cotton that look like left-behind tails of rabbits and flutter in the summer breeze.

There is the skein of geese, pulled north too, heard before they are seen.

Are the honking sounds they make part of a conversation (“This has changed a bit since last time” / “I don’t remember that ever being there.”) 

Or are the noises just updates for each other, signals to let one another know I’m still here…?

The birds are calm but purposeful - they all know where they’re going but take turns to go to the front where it’s harder in the wind. They don’t look back at where they’ve been.

High above ground, they can tell where north is, they can see that the real end is not where most people think it is, but is just around the corner. It pulls away from the rest of the headland in a curve like the ear of a bear.

It is from above then that you can more easily see which way to go, work out the lay of the land.

In place of flying, a map will show how the roads you’ve never been along actually join together, how the burns you never knew about crawl over the landscape like veins.

It will show the harbours and castles that lie either unnoticed or in ruins, and show not just how many nicks and grooves there are but that they actually all have names.

 

A map won’t tell the stories of a place or the words that are used there.

It won’t show the view towards the hills, the wide open skies or the rolling clouds that stretch over the lochs and beaches and bog.

It can’t show the haar either, in which there is no north, south, east or west. 

Waking up to it, having put to bed a bright, clear night, is to wake up in a different world, time moving back and forth again.

When it comes in during the day you can actually watch the haar sweep across the sea as if it has been summoned, blurring every edge. 

If it came in at the same time as the boats did, years ago when boats used to fill the harbour and the sea, it was like raising the dead.

At least along the cliffs, beside the paths that hug the coast, the greyness, the flatness, can be punctuated by sea thrift - congregations of pink heads bobbing in the salty wind.

You begin to notice colour where you can then.

The soft purple of forget me not; the red of rowan; the rose gold of clouds at sunset. 

The yellow of gorse and the brighter yellow of it against a clear blue sky.

You notice the colour at this time of year too, in the months that can also feel like an ending. 

It has something to do with the light.

Knowing it is fading, your eye catches the way the sun falls through the trees in the forest, making fingers of shadow on the damp ground. The way it gilds the leaves that are themselves turning red and orange and rust. The way it makes the river look full of gold.

There’s that nip in the air now too - one that feels ancient, resurrected, like it comes from the glaciers that helped shape this part of the world.

And there is somehow the scent of smoke, of bonfire.

It is maybe just the smell of decay, of things going back into the ground.

Time changes again, as clocks go back and nights draw in.

Maybe you’re more aware of the hours of the day then, more attuned to when the sun sets and the moon rises. 

Maybe you’re alerted to aurora, waiting for levels of amber or red. 

To be north in the darker months is to look up, hoping to see those flashes of green. 

They appear in ribbons and look like lines of bright chalk smudged by a hand. 

You can see it in towns and cities, from your bedroom window if you’re lucky. 

 

But the aurora are best seen away from other lights, where it is darker: closer to the coast, closer to the edge, further north.

You’re reminded then that there is always further to go. 

You can go on to the water, into the waves.

There are islands nearby. They emerge from the cloud, pencilled onto the sky. 

They feel like part of something different though, something not quite connected.

There are places beyond what we see, that have their own stories, their own sense of north.

But the universe is expanding around us and the centre is different for everyone. 

The limits, the edges are always retreating, are always being pushed away.

North is not the end. It is perhaps just the beginning.