interlude - welcome to my island

Before I proceed down further my usual road of angst and darkness, interspersed with glimpses of other nicer things, let me tell you about the place I was at during the end of May. I spent a precious couple of days on a small island which, usually, nobody may enter.

The island lies off the coast of northeastern Germany. It is little more than a windswept sand dune with some vegetation cover and miniature patches of freshwater bodies, which is changing slowly with the storms and breezes that shift its shape for it. Since the beginning of the 20th century, it is a protected site, and it got turned into a wildlife conservation area a few decades later. Nowadays, it rings with the cries of almost three thousand breeding pairs of Common Gulls. There are three species of terns nesting there. And red shanks, oystercatchers, perhaps even a pair of avocets, and sand pipers. We count the latter ones among a group of birds called waders, after the way they forage.

You get there by becoming a kind of wader, also. My friend, who regularly works as a volunteer bird warden at the island, took me there. It was after 48 hours of a training and workshop weekend, and when I stood at the sea shore getting ready to take off my pants and step out into the shallow, cool water and cross the brackish channel which curves around the island, for a few moments I was not sure if my sore legs would carry me. I felt silt beneath my toes, slippery, slimy sea grass, bladderwrack and plant debris at the shore line – little to no trash, to my great surprise. This gave way to stones, a few mussel shells. Then, only the fine give of the sand shifted under my feet, and the water lapped up my tired calves. The sun was going down, and my body was so calm from being, finally, worn out enough to quieten my brain.

I have been chasing after moments of serenity so much recently, after reprieve, after just a breath of stillness. I felt heavy and light at the same time, walking in slow motion through the brackish water until the ground rose a little and we climbed up onto the sandbank which borders the island. I first thought that someone had let their dogs run free, but the impressive turds which lay shamelessly next to my feet turned out to be – cormorant shit. You cannot really call those piles guano. They look eerily mammalian. The island’s back rose before us, with its saltings full of sea wormwood and swathes of bushgrass, interspersed with arid patches of thrift (sea pink), a few small shrubs and a medium sized hut, a tiny house with a thatched roof, and a tower made of a ladder, a platform and some scaffolding. One of my friend’s acquaintances greeted us. He had fired up the Kachelofen (which I just learned is a legit word in English, what a delight) in the house for us and checked the electric fences, which protect the clutches from predation, while my friend had been away. I smelled the heavy and homely scent of burned coal. The wind was very quiet that evening, and the sun went down behind us in a flock of fiery clouds and a dull, leaden sea. Someone has planted beach roses, Rosa rugosa, around the house years and years ago. My friend says it happened during the time when Germany was parted down its middle, and people from a nearby watchtower used to deliberately shine their searchlights through the windows. Presumably to see what the nerdy Eastern German ornithologists got up to. (Must have been mesmerising, we can be a dull bunch to anyone outside our nerd bubbly while having a perfectly wonderful time amongst ourselves, discussing plumage, the weather, moulting patterns and band sizes.) I like that they planted roses for privacy. Their delicious, invigorating fragrance sneaks up on you when you step out the front door, and when the wind whispers across the island you can smell them even down on the northern or western shore.

The gulls hardly ever cease their calling. Even by night, you can hear them frequently, but by day the noise is at a constant, quite vigorous level. Strangely, it never disturbs or discomfits the way motor noise, wheel noise and sirens do. It is there, and loud, but it is never annoying or stressful. The first chicks hatched while I was there too, and wobbled on black oversized feet from out under the low thatched roof, under their parents’ frantic protection.

I fell asleep the first night, and every night there, an utterly exhausted, thoughtless, content animal wrapped up in the warmth of my sleeping bag with the comfort of the awareness of the presence of another human being across the room, who let me share their lair, the oven exuding its soft gentle heat like a large, kind organism. The gulls cried outside, and I was there, and safe.

I was safe when I stood on the bird warden watchtower built of scaffolding next to the house in the cold, cold wind that made my eyes water and counted gulls and terns and ducks and waders and herons.

I even felt safe running toward the little house during a thunderstorm being myself one of the structures of relative height on the exposed back of the island.

I felt safe when I watched the gulls steal eggs from each other. I felt safe watching the marsh harriers predate the colony. I felt safe watching the bones and feathers left behind. This, I understand. Rain and wind. The red gull eyes that stare at me and my breakfast. The clamouring of the oystercatcher and the cry of the curlew. And the taste of roses and wormwood on the back of my tongue when I inhale. Like this.