Stravaiging

Surfacing

Books. My little world would be much smaller without them and I know I am far from alone in that feeling.

So many authors, so many subjects, never enough time to fully indulge our reading desires.

I've just read 'Surfacing'.

Kathleen Jamie has a wondrous grasp of lilting language. Her words describe times past, the everyday, the detail, the immensity of space and the tiniest scratch of a bird’s beak.

Her collections of essays transport you into the natural world with such a lightness of touch; you are gathered in and effortlessly carried along by her prose.

 

Here is the last paragraph of the last tale where she is standing still, lost in a wood.

‘Green ferns in the groin of an oak. Green moss cloaking a stone. Voice of a crow. Voice of a chiding wren. A smirr of rain too soft to possess a voice. Voice of the shrew, the black slug. Voice of the forest. Did you hear something move out the corner of your eye? The same moth come back? Or another leaf falling?

You are not lost, just melodramatic. The path is at your feet, see?

Now carry on.’

In 2004 the position of Makar (National Poet for Scotland) was authorised by the Scottish Parliament.

Kathleen Jamie became our fourth Makar in August 2021.

Do explore her few precious books.