yer coats at the door

As they say meaning oot ye gang. Wanna come walk with me - this walking enjoyed in the vast fields and wild places of the imagination. Coat on, hat and scarf? Then let us go.

Dawn is a thin line of pale blue light across the eastern sea. The night unpeels. The first glimmers of light say day is on the way. Outside now and the small bird of prey that was busy in the tufts of grass flies up, disturbed by us. Despite last night's million stars ther is no frost this morning. We are not breaking glass in puddles as we walk. We are following the dirt track that leads round to the beach and stepping out the circulation moves through the body, breath too is filling us with sea and wind and morning. We climb the small track that leads upwards/ We can hear the sea before we see it then we are up tothe rim and there she lies = spread out flat and crinkled and enormous before us. Tide is far out. waves break white onto the stony and sandy beach. Cormorants dive rubbery necks under the crest of a wave. We are breathing fuller now and for your sake a seal breaks the surface of the sea and stares at you. For a second your eyes meet then she is gone but she is playful and curious. She'll follow us along the shore. I look up the hillside where the brae bends like a knuckle and there on the dawn pale horizon stand three young deer. I watch them. They watch us but you are busy watching the seal. Look behind you, I say without making sudden movements, wanting them to stay long enough for their silhouettes to etch themselves on your memory so they will stay with you as the seal will stay with you as the sea and the air and the bright orange sun now rising from the sea will stay with you. The heron is at his perch on the stone in the hillside. For a while we pose no threat. He is still as the rock he stands on, patient as the earth, alert as the day, then he lifts off, suddenly now a thing of movement and air - his slow heavy wings take him away. And a huddle of oyster catchers rise orange beaked and white bellied over the sea, crying their high pitched song. And through a hole in the rock at the side of the cave we spy the sun. May each walk unveil some mystery.