Storm and Change
“I felt deep within me that the highest point a man can attain is not Knowledge, or Virtue, or Goodness, or Victory, but something even greater, more heroic and more despairing: Sacred Awe!”
Nikos Kazantzakis, Zorba the Greek
The world was twisting itself upon its tail back into autumn and winter again. The gnomon shadows of the mountain tops whirled lower and longer with every passing day, and as time spiralled down into its whirlpool it brought rains and early winter storms. The glories and vistas of huge colour were washed deeply and leached of their vibrancy. Delicate birch trees were stripped of every leaf, and branches were thrashed and broken.
Yet even so, it seemed that I looked on a world of such mystifyingly gorgeous colours it was as if I had never really seen colour before. Bracken dying a golden death among the last pink flowers of ling – triangles vanishing into triangles down every ferny frond. Larch trees passing through a shade of gold so deep you might as well call it rust. Even now I am a little breathless to remember it beneath the variegated rains of ocean deep blue and shining grey skies.
Everywhere I looked the hills and woods were fading shades of rustic colour; except for the Aspens. Autumn storms were breaking over the land. The water ran in waves on roads, and every river thundered in foaming spate, but still the delicate fluttering of the Aspen leaves was no more than a playful dance in the tearing winds. Colour died all around them, as the summer perished beneath the onslaught, but still they flared brighter than any colour I have ever seen before. Even the morning sun on frosted birch could not compare to the blazing medallions of aspen leaves – highlighter brilliant in their intensity. I felt as if I were peering into their souls as I looked past the glittering foliage to the white or black of trunks and stems. Like an iron tree enshrouded by fireflies, the leaves fluttered and trembled and danced like a wind blown cloak. My words may sound pretty, but next to the sight of it they are worthless. This was beauty so intensely shocking it bordered on violence.
To see such things. Truly, what else is there that compares to that? To be left not only without speech but also thought. To feel, without knowing. To have no answer, no response at all but to look and listen. To find something for which I am completely unprepared. Then the joy of knowing that you know nothing at all.
The last of the Aspen leaves finally succumbed to their fate as the weeks wore on, and it was not long before the winter brought another storm sweeping in from the west. A huge cyclonic mass of energy bore down upon the whole country, and I stood beside the shore of a pine ringed loch as the storm broke. Such a small loch, in the grand scheme of things, yet I looked out on a raging surface of crashing waves, wind whipped spray and dazzling sunshine. The trees around me hissed and roared with the wind, and shattered waves crashed onto the little strip of gravel beach. They scarcely even had time to break before the wind ripped their crests off. Plumes of vapour were being torn from the loch and driven 50 feet or more into the air, twisting in vortexes and driving into the forest. Even tiny puddles beside the tarmac road were riven from edge to edge with tiny white horses, as if they were windows in space, through which I looked down onto a distant and stormy sea.
I set out along the path beside the shore, where the waves were blasting on the rocks and earth bank. Spray and vapour were thrown into the air, catching the light, and beams of shadow cast by every branch flashed through the sprays as if it were mist. Even to walk straight was difficult, the wind catching me off guard with shoulder-barging gusts and elbow-catching reprieves, even while it scooped its hands in the loch and threw the water into the trees.
I thought to myself, as I sometimes do, just how astonishingly changeable nature is. I recalled how still and peaceful this same loch had been on the morning I paddled my canoe, and on many others besides. That morning was so still; just the slightest sound of the air and the sun flecks bouncing off the loch and dancing among the trees, the sweet calls of songbirds light on the calm air.
Today, by contrast, it seemed that the loch, the air and the forest were all violently intermingling here at the water’s edge. Churning together, combining in new ways. Shattering the old things apart to make way for new combinations. Behind the shelter of an ancient pine I leaned with my head on one shoulder, tilting the world to a new angle. I watched the constantly breaking foam, listened to the din. This old granny pine had no doubt seen many such days. Its stout timbers would not crack today, though I could feel the impact of waves upon the shore coming up through its roots into the dense heartwood. I took some reassurance in its firm solidity before such force, as the wind thundered through the woods, the water burst on its banks, and I stared in wonder at the real meaning of power.
Not every tree in the forest was a match for that storm. A day or two later, as the winds abated and the air began to clear, I walked along the shore of a different loch, where brown reeds swayed in the breeze and drowned stumps of birch pocked the shore. A little way along was an open bay, where a glorious old birch stood alone on a little promontory. It was one of those trees I always greeted as an old friend. It was not merely a landmark but one of the defining things about that place, a part of the structure and framework that meant here. It stood no longer.
The realisation of its absence was like the surprise of a missing tooth. Everything felt wrong without it. Of course, it was still there, lying horizontally on the grassy shore, but its shape was missing from the sky. Its elegance was ruined; its spreading branches compressed together and bent into wrong shapes. It was like a wet, broken feather, the vanes ripped apart, lying on the ground.
I walked around to it. It had fallen parallel to the shore, so I reached its upper branches first. The fine sprays of the branch tips still swayed slightly in the breeze, their buds swollen with the promise of spring that would never be fulfilled. Step by step I descended down its length, the branches thickening and joining like rivers. My fingers traced a way across bark they could never previously have touched, stroking across fissures and splits, grooves and peeling folios. As I came to the trunk itself I saw it had been completely snapped a few feet above the soil. Its roots were strong and held firm. The load of the wind upon the branches had broken it like a match. I came to the stump itself and took in the different colours of the sapwood and heartwood; the orange of the former, the whiteness of the latter. Fibres and splinters protruding. I gripped one in my fist and tried to break it, but it would not even bend.
With bittersweet sorrow, I looked upon my old friend lying there in the grass. Parts of the tree would cling to life for a while yet. It might even put out a few leaves again come spring, but not for long. Soon it would begin to rot, and be colonised by bracket fungi and wood-eating insects. Eventually it would become soil again – a beginning for new life. And from this moment, people who came to this place for the first time would always know this tree as a dead one. They’d have no memory of its sweet silhouette against a rosy sky. But I don’t know if I will ever get used to the empty space beside the shore. Maybe they’ll look at my old photos in the way you look at photos of your grandparents when they were young. With interest, but distance.
I realised then that every photo I had ever taken of that tree would now have to be considered as an ‘old’ photo. A place as it used to be, not as it is. A day long passed. I thought back to that day years ago, sitting on Cairngorm, watching the setting sun, wondering how long it takes for a place to become a new place. Aeons, perhaps. Or maybe just one stormy day. Change sneaks along like an earthworm, nibbling here and there, unseen; and then it suddenly strikes without warning, smashing a tree. There’s nothing you or I or the leaves on the branches can do about it. But take heart, for such things will come again.