This month I thought I’d share a piece of non-fiction / memoir . . . enjoy!
Stolen
I think it all started one summers’ day between Oban and Tyndrum, when we stole stones from a highland burn for mum’s new rockery. Rolling up our jeans we paddled beneath low branches of birch and hazel, the air hazy with flies. Stones glowed beneath the amber water, some edged with crusted moss where their tops were exposed to the sun. I was maybe five then. I remember my ‘old man’ did his back in humphing the bigger boulders from the burn to the car boot, and on the way home the old Consul’s exhaust pipe sprayed showers of sparks as it scraped off the road on the tight bends with the sheer weight of them. Sadly, Mum was never allowed to forget it. But, from that day onwards, smaller keepsakes were gathered from every trip to the wild.
Fifty years on, that compulsion has not abated. I’m sure there are laws against it, since you can no longer pick wild flowers, or remove sea-treasures washed-up on a beach. I’m a woman now, not a girl, and still a closet criminal. I can’t help myself. The items are little bits of joy, and bringing the moment home is overwhelming.
In a corner of my garden between the bamboo pot and the peachy azalea, lies a cache of criminal artefacts that I’ve stolen over the years: a snail shell, chocolate-brown and perfectly formed found in a wood near Aviemore; a fistful of lichen-splashed stones from a dyke in Torridon; orange and saffron-yellow like the pelt of some exotic wild cat; giant pine cones from a dark forest in Portugal; indigo-blue mussel shells from the island of Gigha, so sea-polished they glisten in the rain; a slate skimming-stone shot with Fool’s Gold. The list goes on - each one precious; each one holding its own unique memory.
It took me a while to realise it, but my precious hoard started to disappear in the night, swallowed by the darkness. I was sure it was the black spaniel next door who I’ve caught stealing before. That boy thinks he’s fly when he limbos under the hedge to shit on my grass after his reconnoitre of the garden. Then today, birdsong roused me far too early. Washing ready to hang-out on the rope before 7:30am? - un-heard of. Before I reach the corner of the house I hear the chuckles, like two old-timers having a good gossip. It stops me in my tracks. Then I hear a click-clack-click, no mistaking the sound of shell against shell. Body flat to the wall I slowly peek my head around the corner past the bamboo.
This is no dog with feathers. It’s a pair of Bonnie & Clyde style bandits, a magpie and a jackdaw trawling through my precious things and doling out the spoils between them. Cheeky beggars!
I hug the wall, silent as a clothes-pole, as they take it in turns to lift, and scrutinise each object. The magpie picks up a pink-quartz pebble and rolls it across the smooth surface of the path. He seems satisfied that it’s sparkly enough and shoves it onto the edge of the lawn. They continue to peck their way through my treasures, as if at a jumble-sale, lifting, laying, and unceremoniously tossing away anything that doesn’t impress. Their vocal range varies; with high-pitched screeches and head-bobbing if it’s a winner, or a throaty croak inferring trash.
Finally the magpie seems satisfied that the quartz pebble will do, while the jackdaw considers the sliver of slate shot with Fool’s Gold. She cocks her head from side to side, close to the ground, as if listening to its story, blue morning sky reflecting in her quicksilver eye, an eye that has seen the secrets of the universe. She takes the piece of slate in her beak, and holds it there for a minute before swishing up into the air between the apple trees. Blossom swirls through the air as she skims over the wall to the graveyard next door. The magpie meanwhile re-tests the size of the quartz pebble, as if calculating his air-borne weight before take-off. He checks the snowy whiteness of his shirt and readjusts his black-tie, his tail feathers bouncing with anticipation.
I slink back towards the house and leave him to it. I’m thinking perhaps every garden should have a corvid playground that offers enrichment for our feathery friends, but then again, maybe it’s fitting that what we steal from nature, is taken from us and returned to nature.
That’s Bird Lesson No. 7 - a secret never to be told.