My Spirit Animal is the Wind

It’s late. The black bird sings from the branches of the wild cherry tree. I’ve got only five more nights in this place and then I’ll move onward and upward, north and eastward toward the coast. I’ve felt moody today, on the light verge of tears even while there’s nothing really wrong. Is it this pressure of desire that I have to finish my novel in the next five days (a bit unrealistic, fifteen to twenty days is more likely) while still doing all the other things I need to do? Is it the upcoming transition or is it only a (self-inflicted) lack of sleep from the previous night that makes me want to burrow in and hide away?

My eyes are heavy so I’ll say it was the staying up too late working which is to blame.

Yet. Still.

Moving is a disruption. Even five days out, I’ve already made a list with items like: charge all devices, pack your bags, take out the trash, don’t forget your snacks, take out the recycling, put away borrowed books, remember soap in shower, clean, remember everything.  

Not written out on my list are the things like: leave behind the little rituals, your daily routines, the known, the familiar, head off again into the unknown.

But that’s also the joy.

Here, I’ve gotten so much work done on this novel work-in-progress—and that was the goal—and all this time, these two months, as I’ve been writing out these plot tangles and as the characters have been acting in and out of character I’ve been thinking that I’m so lucky to be doing this in the Scottish countryside. That I’m so lucky to be me, to be stepping into the shadows of such greats as Sir Walter Scott and Robert Burns who were inspired by Scotland, who inspired Scotland.

Virginia Woolf also wrote of Scotland, of Edinburgh, the countryside, the Isle of Skye. And I’ve been reading Virginia Woolf in the stolen moments when I’m not working and when I’m not out walking the countryside. I’ve read so much of Woolf, absorbing the richness of her words, the depth of emotion in a description, the ironic humor, that I feel as if I should be able to describe the joy of moving the way she does a room, the waves on the beach, a mark on the wall, the feeling of being out of place at a party, the happiness of being a solo individual in a world full of beautiful little, observed moments.

I am very lucky. I am that happy solo individual.

Listen to the black bird singing.

Here, my host L and I have become afternoon walking buddies, talking through life, art, purpose, work, people, behavior, writing, books, ideas, this thing called life as we add up the miles and exercise her dog Eddie. We’ve become friends. The walks are often my working day halfway point, a much-needed stretching break, the chance to clear my head from the muddle I’ve gotten it into so that I can come back fresh and ready to work again well into the night (Go to bed! Go to bed!). I look forward to these walks. Waiting for, half-listening, anticipating that moment when Eddie bursts through my door, tail wagging to let me know it’s time to go. Thank goodness, it’s time to go.

L says she enjoys the company too, “What will we do when she’s gone, Eddie?” she asks one day when Eddie has plopped down on top of my feet so that I can scratch her belly, and she keeps taking us further and further afield to explore. We went that one day to Dryburgh Abbey. We’ve explored the river and watched spring add more fully to its costume with each passing day. First the daffodils, then the forget-me-nots, then the Scottish Bluebells, then the ones whose names L tells me and I forget (take out the recycling. remember everything), the ever taller growing grass, the hidden nettles, the white buds on the trees we walk through before we get back to the car, all those trees dressed in fragrant white like two rows of brides.

Now on to a new place.    

For on Saturday, L drives us over to Abbotsford for a walk around Sir Walter Scott’s estate which at one point (and maybe even still) was 1000 acres large. It’s a lovely day, warm and sunny. We take the three-mile loop that will let us walk alongside the River Tweed, pass us under the Redbridge Viaduct (I love a good viaduct), wander us through a bit of forest, and then direct us back again to the place from where we started. As we trek along, we see oystercatchers, a heron, sea gulls, and some cows (the cows are in a field, not in the river) with coat patterns of black and white that make them look like Oreo Cookies.

“I’ve never seen cows like you,” I tell them from the far side of the fence. Coming from Texas as I have, I thought I had seen some cows. Having herded cows on a ranch in Wyoming, I thought I knew cows. But never ones like these before.

When we’ve walked our walk, L and I each get an ice cream from the Scott’s giftshop and then sit at a picnic table to enjoy it before wandering around to where I can get a glimpse of the Abbotsford house.

The path down is through a comforting stand of trees, many of which Sir Walter Scott planted himself. For if writing was his work then tree-planting was his passion.  

“I wish he could somehow see how they look now,” I tell L. I want to thank him for these trees which he planted two hundred years ago. These beautiful trees.

So, we come down the hill through the trees.

There to the right is the river. There to the left is the house. It’s some house. More like a castle, in fact, with turrets and towers, buttresses and a flag. I take pictures and wonder what it would have been like to have lived there, to have written there, to have come down out of the house and walked along the river where I now stand, to have hitched up my horses and ridden cross country to that view which is now called Scott’s View. To have had to have written books to fund the extensions, the continual buying up of property, and all those trees to plant.

“I wouldn’t need a house that big,” I tell L. I’d just need a room with a window and the freedom to move on when the time was right.

The time is nearly right.  

For my spirit animal is the wind, my soul is the wind. I have to keep on. Even when on the light verge of tears (whether from working too late into the night or from something else) I know that I must go on. Even when I know that transitions can make me moody. They often do. I know the patterns, I recognize the signs. I’ve written about it before. For there is still that very applicable Samuel Beckett quote that I love: “I can’t go on, I’ll go on.”

I know that I love to go on.

 

When I do go on five days from now, I’ll leave my two-month old rituals behind, my lovely daily routines, the incomprehensible habits of the typewriter cows (I thought I knew cows, but these cows! I watch them with fascination through my windows every day. There they go. Here they come back again. Ah, now they’re running one by one down the hill. Do you never stand still and graze, you cows? Now they sit in the grass. Now they’re still. No, there they go again.), I’ll leave the Eildon Hills, St. Cuthbert’s Way, the forests, the blackbirds, I’ll leave L and her dog Eddie behind too.

I’ll go on. It’s the nature of the beast, one might say. The nature of my beast.

And ahead of me will be new rituals, new habits, new wonders and joys. Ahead of me is adventure.

Don’t forget the soap in the shower.

Remember everything.