Witness Notes 7

Cercal, Portugal, June 2020

(After you have read these introductory paragraphs once, you can skip to the new/old content below. If you are listening, then the time stamp is around the two minute 45 second mark.)

Introduction

The word settled, to me, carries connotations I am keen to avoid. I have never felt settled or, perhaps, I cannot recall a time I felt settled. I do not feel settled now, writing this, and I’ve lived in the same house for three and a half years.

Without even discussing the obvious issues of colonisation, I just don’t feel like I could, or should, settle; better to keep my constituent parts shook up, agitated perhaps, rather than separating and stagnant.

Instead, I feel as though I have been travelling for years, maybe because I have not lived in my ‘home’¹ nation of Scotland for eight and a half years, perhaps because I know I won’t stay here forever, or maybe because I carry that concept of home in a way which differs from many?

More precisely, I still think of myself as a slow traveller, globally feral.

Recently, I have been revisiting places through the photographs and words I recorded when my feet crossed their soil. This is a way of reminding myself of where I have been, not just in space and time, but in mind, too. It is a wonderful thing, to come out of a low and rediscover myself through words I crafted, through the lens of a camera, when memory has wandered in the fog for too long. Thank you, past me.

When I first started sharing letters with the world in this fashion, six or more years ago, I usually began them with a vignette of where I was, a sort-of travel diary, mixed with nature observation, locking in the setting for the reader, before I spoke of other things—and, by so doing, ensuring that place fed into the whole. It was a useful device, for reader and myself both but, as these letters were sent to so few readers, and now languish archived behind a paywall, I thought it a shame not to share these snippets again.

As such, I am going to share a short series of these sketches, accompanied by a photograph from that time, sent to you in date order.

I shall include the above paragraphs in each of the letters in this series, but I shall also include a link at the very start, so you can skip ahead once you are familiar with the above words. If you are listening and similarly want to skip, then the timestamp you want to navigate to will be in the same place.

Taken without these paragraphs, each is a short read, and I hope you enjoy them.

Cercal, Portugal, June 2020

This morning, as I draft this, it is raining, for the first time in weeks. Everything is cool and crisp, the air fresh and clear. It is a joy to feel rain like this, and something I do not ever take for granted, despite a damp Scottish upbringing. I know that in the weeks and months ahead, here in Alentejo, the rain will be rare and welcomed even more than today.

When we lived in Thailand, each rainfall—from late October onward—began to take on special significance; would this downpour be the last before the long months of the dry season? Or would there be one tomorrow, or in a week? I feel a similarity here, today, but I also know that this location, so close to damp Atlantic winds, will not be the same as northern Thailand, the air will stay fresh, any pollution blown away. The air here in this corner of Portugal is exceptionally clean and clear, and a big reason why we chose this as our home after Chiang Mai. Whether there will be months of drought, without any rain, remains to be seen. After the extensive wildfires in 2018, just south of here, I hope not.

I, like so many others, have done the vast amount of my recent nature observation from the windows of our home. Here, in the west of Alentejo, even on the fourth floor, sometimes nature also tries to bring itself closer to us. Butterflies lay their eggs on our salads and nasturtiums, Moorish geckos hide behind the plant-pots, tiny spiky dragons, who would not surprise me if they hiccuped smoke. Birds have been known to fly in and then out again, sometimes pausing on the open bedroom window and depositing tiny calling-cards on the floor. In the corner of the kitchen sits a fat, elegant spider, high up and patient. She is well fed, for this corner, above the door to the balcony, is where the insects rise and where, subsequently, a constant rain of desiccated corpses falls to the floor. This is not a bad thing, even spiders need love and feeding and, to be honest, I prefer them to mosquitoes who, in turn, love me.

We have managed to install a magnetic bug screen in the bedroom, which is rather wonderful, as it means we can leave the window open and let the cool evening air replace the heat of the day. As a welcome bonus, it also enables me to stand in the dark, looking out at the view at night, inhaling the scent and hearing the voices of the night-shift.

I have previously mentioned the joy of watching a pair of barn owls dance together and, ever since, I have tried to see them again.² This new arrangement, where the shutter and window is only closed when the night is cool enough and we are about to sleep, means I can watch and wait, with no fear of that high-pitched whine, signalling a night of misery. The screen went up on Monday, I saw my first owl on Wednesday.

Below us is an orange grove, leading to a hill with trees, more oranges, flowers and grasses in abundance. During the day, small birds flit and call beneath, in, and above these: warblers, sparrows, treecreepers, tits, finches and more. I know there are nests; I have watched birds disappearing into the emerald shade, beaks carrying caterpillars or flies. Yet I never really thought about what became of the birds at night, how they slept, or the dangers they faced.

The owl, a white, silent ghost sailed in from the east, sweeping around the grove widdershins, circling in a tighter and tighter spiral, until it was turning around a single tree, perhaps trying to scare a small bird into making a mistake, to flee into sharp talons and the eager beaks of owlets. I missed what happened next, as I myself turned away to ensure Aurélie did not miss the show and, when I turned, the owl was disappearing back to the east, towards the church. Moments later, a white cat leapt onto the wall beside the oranges, from beneath the same tree. Were these two working together, flushing out prey? Is there an ancient treaty here in Alentejo, where white cats and white owls share the spoils, a union of hunters? Or perhaps there is further magic at work, one owl of the pair cursed to spend the summer in the body of a feline?

Just before we gave up watching, the owl reappeared, passing up the hill, silent and beautiful. Did it see us, standing there in the dark? I imagine it did and, later, told the cat. The next morning, as we prepared for the weekly grocery shop, I heard a yell from the living room. The same white cat had jumped in through the open window. On the fourth floor.

Finally

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1. And ‘home’ is another of those words. A subject I have been writing around for decades now, one I keep threatening to try and pin down in a long essay, but an essay which has now escaped the confines of a compact base and rambled out into something wilder, more feral. One day I’ll share that with you.

2. The following long, bonus excerpt, talking of the birds I was observing at that time, was from another letter I sent to subscribers:

The swifts came back to Portugal much earlier than I am used to in the UK. Which is not really a surprise, given how much warmer it is, and how close to Africa. What is a surprise, is how swiftly (sorry) they got to work repairing their nests and getting on with the process of creating another generation. I suspect they may also leave earlier than I am used to.

I am also surprised that our resident pair of storks aren’t sitting yet. I keep thinking they will be, any day now, but then off they both fly for an hour or two. They are certainly mating, increasingly, with considerable clattering afterwards, the male’s wings outstretched and folded like origami, swaying from side to side. I will keep you informed.

As with all forms of nature study, if I put in more time, I get better results. I am trying to ensure I look outside more, for a period of minutes, rather than a brief glimpse. This affords wonderful results, with the smaller birds, which dart and hide so quickly, often appearing when I look—there are more here than I know, and I am often consulting my guide (it’s in French, so I then have to search online for the English name—this serves to lock new species into my brain, in a remarkably useful manner).

As an example, I looked outside after this paragraph, for two minutes. I saw swifts, barn swallows, red-rumped swallows, house martins, a great tit, a white stork, a blackbird, a short-toed treecreeper, house sparrows stealing water from a dog’s bowl, and a black redstart flitting to its nest. In two minutes, from a window on the fourth floor, without binoculars. I am well aware how lucky I am.

Finally, for this section, I have to mention owls. Specifically, barn owls. For some time now, I’ve been hearing them both screech and hiss as I read in bed and I suspect they may be nesting in the church tower. As we got ready to head to bed the other night, Aurélie called me into the spare bedroom/gym although, seeing as she was looking out the skylight window whilst brushing her teeth, it was difficult to work out what she was saying.

It turned out a barn owl had flown just above the window—we suspect it may have been sitting on our roof, which explains the hissing and nearby screeching. I looked out the window with her and, despite her pointing and urgent words, it took me a while to see the owl—or owls. There were two and they seemed to be dancing together, ghosts at night, above the sleeping village, their white feathers catching the light from below, appearing and disappearing as they twisted and turned. As I have said before, sometimes, when you witness a moment of nature, you just know it will stay with you—and this was one of those moments, pure pleasure and an unforgettable treat.