The shore nearest to the island hermitage where I used to live was right
at the southern end of the island, less than a mile away.
The narrowing road becomes grassy and peters out at the shore, ending in an exultation of freedom and splendour. It is a wild and lonely place, where sea meets land, unspoilt, clean. The pale sand, wet from the outgoing tide, is fretted with the tiny footprints of a myriad birds, strewn with tiny shells.
And the sky is vast; always huge and never twice the same. Evanescent moods, changing, pulsing as the sea.. Living...Cloud scapes, dramatic, blue stretching out on rare smiling days of summer. Heavy, leaden, in gale-stormed winter......
Seals bask there in great numbers on the rocky, seaweed- covered skerries at low tide.
I had been told that if you whistled, the seals would come..They are, you see, very curious creatures, and still relatively unafraid. I cannot whistle, so I tried singing, good Christian songs of course...
But to no avail, so for many months, I had to content myself with these distant views.
They are, I quickly learnt, incredibly noisy creatures. When you see the music-laden TV programmes, you do not realise that there is a raucous symphony of grunts and barks playing... In the still, clear air in calm weather small sound carries.
On one pilgrimage to the shore, I walked gently along, joying in the air and the wide, wide sky, and the sheer freedom . And singing thanks and praise to Jesus, as is my solitary wont.
Suddenly I had that unmistakable awareness that I was being watched... Stopping, I looked around - there was no one to be seen, and there are no bushes here to conceal anyone... My puzzled gaze then turned to the sea -and close in to shore were a good number of huge-eyed, whiskered faces - the seals had come to listen to my thanksgiving "concert."
It made an already wondrous occasion totally enchanted.. I sat there on the sand and sang...And the heads came closer; tails appeared too as they settled and relaxed.. And when I finally tore myself away it was with a very full heart..
This was the beginning of a rich time for me...
In my homebound time, I had often dreamed, quite literally, of a path along the shore, and wondered if it was real.
And I knew a path ran along the shore.
So, one day, I decided to find out. I parked the car as near as I could, then walked along the rough and rutted path - to find I was being followed, in the water, by a seal.
At first I thought it was just coincidence.
But every time I stopped, so did the seal, and when I resumed my walk, he
began to swim along near the shore again...It was for all the world like
taking the dog for a walk...He looked paler than the other seals; they
were all basking in their usual place, further back.
A good way along, I went down on to the rocks to rest a while.
The seal came in only a matter of feet from me and stayed there for the half hour I was there.. He was indeed white, but adult.
At these times, you can understand all the ancient legends about the seal people who emerge form the water at night and shed their skins. I would not have been surprised if he had spoken...and leaped out on to the rocks.
I saw that particular seal many times since and he was often by himself.. Maybe simply his difference...
Frequently when I go down to the shore, there is not a seal in sight, especially at higher tides when the skerries where they bask are submerged. But I have only to call, or begin to sing, and all the heads pop up; they come in so close to me.
Often, on cold, windy days, they lie with just their whiskered snouts visible, pointing skywards. Warmer thus....
I now always wait for a while, before I call, s till hardly able to believe that they will really come at the sound of my voice.
One day I looked up to see a neighbour watching, astounded at all this. We share a deep respect for and love of these controversial creatures; the local fishermen claim they ruin their nets and steal THEIR fish... Seals are now protected by law, but this does not meet with uniform approval. A few years ago, several baby seals, defenceless and helpless, were clubbed to death on an island beach. A local seal rescue place, which does sterling work, has been threatened with violence, gunshots fired. There is, if well-managed, plenty for us all - and oh, the loss, if these wild, free creatures of God were destroyed.
A friend there; she recalls eating "selkie". Indeed in earlier times there was probably a real need for any meat that was available, especially in the winter. The diet then must have been so restricted.
But those times, thankfully, have passed, and we can now make more civilised choices. As I told her, they eat dogs in China.....
For me, the most exciting and magical time was then yet to be...Something I had never expected...
One day in early November, I went along the right side of the shore for a change, rock-stepping as I love. The huge rocks are bright and varied in their colours, smooth from aeons of tide-tossing...
Many are also very slippery, so I was proceeding very cautiously, and totally engrossed in my feet.
It was thus a considerable shock when the rock I was about to step onto snarled and moved.. and I found myself gazing into the huge, liquidly dark eyes of a baby seal... I could not believe it! This was an answer to unuttered prayer, to see one of these creatures so close.
And oh, he was even more beautiful than I could have imagined... Pure white fur, sleek and soft-looking And his mouth more full of vicious-looking teeth than I would have thought possible!
Retreating to the bank, I debated what to do; my initial feelings were protective; there is as I have said, a lot of hostility to the seals from the fishing fraternity up here. They are protected in law, but things can happen on an off-island and never be known...
My first thought was that this was where this baby should be; safe from predating fishermen. I had a thick blanket in the car, and I sat on the bank with this while I thought about it. I had not realised the size of these babies! Or their fierceness; those teeth are formidable. I decided I did not know enough to deal with this situation. So I returned to the hermitage to phone for advice. ... There was no answer from the Seal Rescue number, but the local radio station suggested the SSPCA.
>From whom I learned so much.
As I told them, there were two adult seals in the water nearby. So it was likely that there was no immediate problem. Apparently baby seals do not go into the water for the first two weeks, so this was probably a newborn. Certainly there was not a speck of black on that glorious white coat. That, too, changes after a couple of weeks. I was advised to keep an eye on it.
That evening, and very early the following morning I went down to the shore again; the seal had moved a couple of hundred yards along the rocks. The two seals were still there in the water just off the shore.
Their mobility is amazing. They look, with no feet, so ungainly. All they can do is rock..Their tails are almost prehensile, expressive, with digits, levering them along effectively enough, but slowly, on their reluctant land journeyings. And once in the water! Their speed and agility !
Watching them leap and dive with a reckless zest and freedom joys and tugs at the heart.
Later that day, I went down again, as the tide was coming in; at first I thought he was dead, and my heart misgave me.. then when I came near, he woke up suddenly... It was a mild, quiet day, so, intrigued, I hid behind some rocks, made myself comfortable and invisible, and kept very, very still. So still that a tiny, neat, dapper wren all but landed on my shoe.
The mother seal kept looking for him, coming out of the water at different places.. Finally she seemed to realise where he was, and simply kept vigil.
When the incoming tide touched the baby seal ,he set up a loud, distressed-sounding wailing, an eerie and soul-rending sound.
Immediately the mother surged out of the water - only to be knocked back by the bigger seal. This intrigued and puzzled.
When the water was high around the baby, the mother came out and began to suckle him.
All this was a very few feet from where I lay, in rapidly growing darkness. It was a sharing in something so intimate, almost holy.
And it was then I left, as the night made all invisible.
It was a wild, stormy night, and first light saw me anxiously driving back to the shore.
The tide was very high, and there were the seal and its mother; the baby
was trying to get out of the water, hard up against the rocks, and looked
in distress.
I came back to phone again for advice, and this time the seal sanctuary answered. And filled in the huge gaps in my knowledge...Listening to him talk was wondrous. His love and expertise shine out . Apparently the bigger of the two waterborne seals was the bull; after mating, the fertilised eggs lie dormant for three months. So the bull was trying to mate with the mother - as she was seeking to nurture her existing pup.
As I had known, seal milk is very rich in fat. I was able to assure
him that the baby was not injured, and was well- covered and vigorous.
He told me too, that, as I had surmised, some seal pups get rescued when, as with "mine", they are fine...I had, thankfully, done the right thing....
I only saw the pup once more, then it vanished back into the sea,
hopefully to grow strong and well.
The seals are a part of this place; it is, simply, theirs. Not ours. There is a children's song, haunting, poignant; "Think of a world without any flowers. " And I think thus about these huge, gentle and playful creatures, caught in time between sea and land. Without them, it would be a cold and barren
world indeed.
They give a timeless, eternal dimension to a world that is racing too fast draw us back to the slow and healing rhythms of God. Remind us of realities that are too easily ignored else.
And, even when the weather or illness prevent my going to that wild, free place, my heart and soul know it, and they, are there, living as God made them.
"Yonder is the great and wild sea with its living things too many to number, creatures both great and small....All of them look to you to give them their food in due season..You give it to them; they gather it; You open Your hand, and they are filled with good things." Psalm 104, verses26:28-29