Walk 5 -Part 1: Heart Beat Seat to Creran Marine

“If you wish to know the divine, feel the wind on your face and the warm sun on your hand.”

Buddha

Sitting on the bench I notice all the lichens and fungi on a fallen tree and I can glimpse the loch through autumnal foliage. A deep breath breathes me.

Who are K and R? Has their love endured? Love, let’s speak of love, the love of place and what that can evoke in us.

I recently watched a documentary by Jeanie Finlay called All Rivers Spill Their Stories to the Sea. It is a deeply moving, enraging and frustrating reminder of the scale and level of harms being done to ecosystems in the name of profit and progress. Although not on the same scale, there are parallels with here – regulators inaction and corporations grasping for more, regardless of the environmental cost.

“If an activist is someone who wants to try and stop the ecosystem from getting killed, I’m an activist.”

Stan Rennie, Fisherman

Me too Stan.

I clamber down onto the shore and pass the old railway’s solid stone retaining walls and then a bridge. Optimistically my waterproofs are in my rucksack. Not for long! Shortly after I paddle the burn my seaweed explorations are interrupted. A hasty scrabble has me suitable clad as the worst of the rain shower hits me.

I look out and see the weirdest rainbow, a block of colours shooting along in the spindrift set up by the blustery shower tramping up the middle of the loch. I pull out my camera, too late. Mairi, these moments are not for capturing inside a machine, they are to be savoured as an internal imprint etched in heart and memory.

This is where I live – the land of rainbows. Another appears.

Looking back along this vibrant section of shoreline lit up by splashes of sunlight on the seaweed, I wonder how  humanity has come to this, to be so separated from nature we knowingly contribute to it’s demise?

Capitalism and the thirst for profit without limits of the capitalist system are destroying the planet … Climate change has placed all humankind before a great choice: to continue in the ways of capitalism and death, or to start down the path of harmony with nature and respect for life.

Evo Morales

Need I say more.

Apart from the odd piece of plastic the shore is clean along here. As I stop to admire some rocks pushing up through the gravel I feel pulled towards the tree line. There I spot a small structure. Excited I check it out, it might be an old well.

Nope not a well. What is it, does anyone know?

The woods here are magnificent. A huge beech tree greets me. “Hello” I say back, “so lovely to meet you.” A quiver passes through me as I realise I was beckoned there.

“We need to relearn the wisdom of listening to life, feeling its heartbeat, sensing its soul.”

Llewellyn Vaughan-Lee

I pass an old boat in the grass, then a rusty wheel hub containing two live pacific oysters, close by two bags of oysters. Do they belong to the builders of the large stone seating area at the top of the beach? I try it out for size and feel like the Winter Queen, Beira with my staff, aka walking pole, in hand.

After gingerly crossing the slippery stones of another burn I enter a land of gravel banks between two rivers. Dogs bark and race across the shore to meet me. They do not know how my heart thumps. I was bitten by a dog a few years ago and remain nervous.

The next river requires paddling. It’s bigger and faster, with a pool I could swim in. Then barefoot I cross boggy grass past a plastic sheet, rusty metal items and a battered old lobster pot to sit near another old boat complete with assorted plastic, under the shoreline gorse.

It seems Loch Creran shoreline is truly a place to dump the no longer  wanted.

The dogs return planting muddy paw prints across my notebook as I try to fend of all the licking from the soft fluffy collie farm dog. Their walker is the local farmer’s wife. We chat a while and I discover the beautiful cattle they have are actually French.

As I pack away my notebooks my thoughts turn to what comes next. I brace myself.

Gravel gives way to a steep pebbled shore as I round the next bend. Sun on the yachts at Creran Marine look amazing and I am back in the land of loch-side industry.

Initially I am pleasantly surprised, apart from a big black sheet of plastic there is nothing of note until I pass some old structure sticking out of the sea. Shortly after that I see a coil of rope and then evidence of broken tiles smashed on the shore.

According to a marine litter expert I spoke to, that sort of thing counts as fly tipping. It’s sad but we live in a ziegist of away, acting as if there is somewhere our modern trash can go without causing harm.

There isn’t.

Next a pipe with water running down to the sea. It doesn’t look great but is clear and has no obvious smell.  The thing that actually concerns me here is the anti-fouling. Sadly, as a yacht owner, I know a bit about this. We slap paint on the bottom of our boats to prevent sea life making its home there, it’s toxic.

International a boat paint supplier tell us that “Antifouling paints work by delivering a controlled, steady release of biocide (such as copper) from the paint surface into the microscopic layer of water next to the hull.”

Then, when boats are hauled out for the winter they are pressure washed down. Where oh where does that water end up I wonder?

While on the subject of anti-fouling, it’s not just the yachts.

Remember it was implicated in the mussel research mentioned in Walk 2. In that case it was coming off the actual fish farm whose nets have to be coated in the stuff. In addition, all the marine traffic in this loch will be anti-fouled which includes all the big quarry boats and big fish farm boats.  Ploughing up and down the loch they leave not only  antifouling in their wake but also toxic diesel exhausts emissions. Not good, all additional pressure on the waters of this loch and the wildlife who depend on it for life.

“The more clearly we can focus our attention on the wonders and realities of the universe about us, the less taste we shall have for destruction.”

Rachel Carson