Heaven at the top of the world

This is where I spent a few days of heaven.  North Ronaldsay, the northernmost island of Orkney was shrouded in mist when I arrived. We'd been held up for over four hours at Kirkwall Airport, waiting for the fog to lift there. The little six-seater plane uses those old things called eyes and compasses to navigate, and on North Ron, landing can present a problem if the pilot can't find the airport! As it is it seems to barely skim the road and dry-stone walls that thread everywhere throughout the Scottish countryside, a testament to a gruelling life on the land.

The Bird Observatory guesthouse sits atop a cliff but following an easy path to the beach I saw the world stretching out before me into the vast nothingness of the ocean. I stood for ages gulping in the salt-saturated air, drinking in the muted wash of sand-ocean-sky -  seemingly  indistinguishable but actually showing water-colour clarity to eyes attuned to subtlety -  after weeks in a land of such delicacy of shades  your whole view of nature softens and melts.

I walked for miles and miles along the beach, surprising red-legged water birds that feasted on the bounty of sea creatures in the sand and seaweed, and seals bobbing curiously along a safe distance from the strange two legged animal on their territory. 

The mist increased at one stage to make the way even more obscure and the colours even more mute, and at times there was no break between sky and sea, between heaven and earth.  The two were one, and I was there!

There is some place in my inner landscape that responds to such solitude, such oneness of land, sea and sky. It's to do with seeing edges dissolve, categories melt, and with seeing myself so clearly as a part of everything. Not the major, integral, important part that my ego tells me I am, more the place where I know my ego can disappear and I can enter into the all-ness of the moment.