On the Machair

While the full bloom of the machair was past, the grass still held a mosaic of color: yellow asters and purple thistles, small violets. Here and there a poppy still clung to its petals. Unique to the Outer Hebrides, this grassland ecosystem relies on the sand dunes augmented by a multitude of shell fragments. The calcium enriched sand hosts a diverse array of endemic plants: the machair. 

A sandy track lead us out past the ancient remains of round houses, circular stone foundations excavated from a bowl in the dunes. And then on, out to the sea. We looked across the North Atlantic into the wind. The sloping white sand beach softened the surf. Oystercatchers, plovers and stilts probed the piles of kelp on the falling tide, looking for morsels.

We turned northward eschewing the blazed trail of the Machair Way for hard-packed beach and the ocean's company. 

The sweep of dunes, and inscribed tracings of blowing grass reminded me of Cape Cod, just there, south and west across the sea. I remembered walking on that Atlantic shore for hours, as the wind whipped through the insufficient protection of my clothing. But the sun here, was warm; the breeze refreshed rather than chilled.

 

A dead gannet caught my eye, feathers wet and sand-caked, set in a still life of kelp and drift wood. My aunt, a photographer, captured such scenes of found sculpture on film, and offered the viewer a chance to see through her eyes. I followed the wrack line searching for treasures. I toed a fishing float, bent for a feather, a limpet shell, a bone. 

I searched the wrack line for wishing stones, remembering my dear friend Jen who spent hours seeking out the palm-perfect rocks, traced clear around with a vein of some other mineral. It was these she offered as favors at her wedding. I stooped to pick one up, brushing off the sand and sliding it into my pocket to give her upon my return.

Walking mesmerizes. Objects spark memories and the mind wanders. And then something else, the ebbing tide, the glimmer of light on water catches the eye and draws this moment into focus. I watched the shift of clouds and light, the antics of wading birds and gulls. I breathed in the 4,000 miles of sea air, clean and cold and full of the tang of salt. Gazing out across the Atlantic, perched on this outer rim of earth, I was suffused with gratitude this sweet, simple life, for all the places my feet have walked, and for the company I have kept.