nature: nàdar

I left home on a Sunday afternoon, bundled in scarf and hat against the mid-February wind. I wanted to walk further on the coastal John Muir Way, between Prestonpans and Cockenzie. I imagined – and longed for – a rugged and picturesque sandy bay. A place where tales of it’s history, of the former glass-works, pottery, colliery, and brick-works at Prestongrange, are fragments which hang in the air like mist. This would be somewhere quaint, inspiring, and full of stories; these industries had thrived from the 1800s until the 1970s when they were closed down.

lagooning: lagùnachadh

The weather was unkind to us, again. Damp, bitter February, and barely above zero. That was no reason not to venture outdoors. A neighbour had told us that she sometimes runs from our home in Portobello to Musselburgh, then onto the lagoons.

Blue and lush with a jewel-green bottom, and skirted by tropical forests, is what fictional lagoons conjure for me. Places of mystery: the splash of leaping, neon-scaled fish, the silent plummet of a stone. Adventure. Still, winter in Scotland could bring some natural beauty, at least; a retreat, a haven.

land under the waves: tir fo thuinn

The sandbank was safe when we first started out, the three of us. Our friend urged caution, so we tested it: firm, little water underfoot, an expanse of sand around us. The earth was solid beneath our feet. Hearing the cries of gulls and oystercatchers, and seeing glimmers of colour in the shingle, we stepped onwards to explore.

walking: coiseachd

I first began to walk in nature when I couldn’t. When I could only lie in brief snatches on my sofa and peer at the world outside through the window. Where the horse chestnut tree grew leaves and lost them, when it’s rose-pink blossom bloomed and fell. I would dream of the breeze on my skin, imagine the feel of the ground under my feet. Then, exhausted, I would to return to bed.

seal: ròn

I could still smell bonfires in my hair.

The night before was Hogmanay, and we had trudged along the pitch of the shore drawn to lighted fires. Following music and song, we huddled around a bonfire amongst locals dancing on the sand. “We are locals too now,” my partner said. It was my first New Year’s Eve in Scotland since the millennium. The bells chimed midnight, and the tankers boomed in the Forth, lit up and sounding their horns to see in the New Year. I was so happy that I cried.

home: dachaigh

We arrived under the half-closed eye of the moon. “Let’s go down to the sea!” I said.

We trundled our suitcases to the bottom of our street and to the edge of the shore. The midnight wind whipped our skin, and the waves crashed in the dark beyond our sight. We stood and breathed in the tang of sea air. We were home.