Three Beautiful Things - South Uist

1. Low mountains at dusk, stacked on top of each other in shades of purple-grey into the distance. The sea like worn blue glass below. The sky the colour of salmon above.
2. The smell of peat smoke overlaid with the seashore and the seductive malt.
3. The song of the short-earred owl eager for a mate.

Spilled ink against white sand.

Out of the shimmering white strand, with the glass-blue glass-green Hebridean sea behind, a tiny black dot shimmers into an orb and then a lobed globe. The lobes pulse, rocking from side to side. A shimmering pink tongue resolves itself and flapping ears startling oystercatchers into flight, all blood red needled bills. The rocking, bounding, staring shape of the pup emerges from the glow of the sand. Not such a pup now: small but muscled, manic but intent, returning from some unauthorised mission far away on the empty beach. The sound of thundering paws comes, and strained breath. He hurtles into our space, snatching at the toy in my hand, missing, skidding to a halt in a panting spray of white sand. His eyes, tongue and tail are all in motion, only his standing ears are still, listening to the two of us who have no need to speak. I nudge. She nudges back. 

I throw his toy into the sea and he is in motion again, spilled ink against the white sand.

Three Beautiful Things, driving to work

1. The road runs parallel to the river, and the sun breaks the horizon directly over the length of water, so that the orange ball is stretched down the still water.
2. A barn owl hovering beside the road, its wings set alight by the dawn.
3. A naked willow, perfectly shattering the rising sun.

Welcome, Orion

Taking the pup out every hour into the new garden I came to notice that Orion stood over his pen, night after night, intense in the icy black sky. I'd often wondered why the ancients didn't call it the butterfly, because that is exactly how Orion looks, but standing in the lost space of the night, with the wind growling and the damp, black fens around us, I realised how inappropriate that would be. I looked down at the tiny hunter by my feet, nine weeks old but happy as a wolf in the frost and felt an entirely unexpected connection to the earth and the night.

Welcome, little hunter.

Three Beautiful Things

I'm a long-time follower of Three Beautiful Things, an idea which captures the essence of everything good about the internet. Here is my contribution, hopefully the first of many.

1. 6.00am, minus ten and counting, with ice crystals like snowflakes an inch long on every leaf and inch of fence, lit by torches, wilting even as I walked past.
2. The sun breaking through onto the garden with every branch frosted.
3. A chinese water deer breaking cover in the fen, almost invisible in the frost.