Lessons from a Lark

Lessons from a Lark

Bright sunny days in Caithness are all the more precious for being rare. Some of the best advice given to me as a transplant to the Far North was drop everything and go out and enjoy these golden days. My husband and I were fortunate to be able to leave the farm behind to rediscover a hill that is neither well known nor easily accessible now, but my husband had climbed it as a youngster and he had been waiting for a day like this to share it with me.

The modern road passes within sight but out of reach of the hill; the old road, which ran companionably along the hill, is impassable now even in the sturdy, 4-wheel drive Volvo. The rest of the way had to be on foot. The slope, although gradual, was a bit of a climb for legs unfamiliar to uphill rambles. Each step, however, rewarded us with new discoveries as the terrain changed or one swath of flowers gave way to another.  Tiny, violet-like blue flowers swarmed in the first few steps up the hill; buttercup yellow blossoms supplanted them further on. Wet ground had rushes; drier ground had grasses and heathers, each bringing distinctive colours and textures to the tapestry before us.

The heathers were beginning to bloom. Within the tiny evergreen forest, the Lilliputian flowers might be lost if not for their outrageous colour. I dubbed one, lipstick heather for the scarlet red florets; others offered fevered pink or yellow tips like celebratory balloons on green streamers.  Among the heather were grey-green lichens and mosses, some sending upward their own red banners.

Above the heathers were heath spotted orchid and mountain orchids.  Unlike the showy orchids of corsages, their flowers resemble the foxglove and reminded me of regal sceptres in their miniaturized domain. I recognized Butterwort, a blue flower so named because it was once used to make butter, or so the Highland Ranger had told me on a recent walk. This dainty blossom belies its carnivorous talent of sticky leaves to trap insects.  In my brief tenure in this new country I have already scrambled over many hills eager to learn the names of things and to hear the stories that come only from intimate conversations with these hills.

Along the side of a burn running down the hill, a dozen birds took wing suddenly as we approached and hovered above what were probably their nests. My husband explained that they were larks. Their alarm call sounded like, "Please. Please."  The hill had room enough for larks and the two of us, so as we moved away from the nesting area.  For our courtesy, we were rewarded with a lark singing high above us.  I had never heard anything so sweet and lyrical. In an instant I understood why the song of the lark has inspired poets and composers. In those few notes I understood what Ralph Vaughan Williams and Shelley were trying to accomplish with their imitations of the lark. And I also understood much about the childhood of my husband, free to scramble over these hills and listen to larks on the wing.  If my childhood had been on this hill rather than in a windowless, air-conditioned classroom 5000 miles away, what else might I have learned?

Halfway up the hill, we rested and enjoyed the scene below--fields of different shades of green contrasted with grey dykes, white sheep, and dark blue water in a distant loch. On a clear day both Thurso and Wick, the two towns in the area, are visible.  I was grateful for the haze in the air, which obscured the towns and heightened my sense of being in a world apart from ordinary time and space.

As we reached the summit, we leaned on the ordinance survey monument, the sole remnant of human activity.  My husband looked for vestiges of buildings and then offered a hands-on lesson about electric fences.  I was not keen on experimenting, which I suspect made him even more determined. So, if you ever happen to be wandering through a field with an electric fence and you are bold (or foolish) enough to test whether it has current running through it, you can try this. Pick a green blade of grass. It must be green to ensure that it has moisture in it. Hold one end of the blade between your index finger and thumb and lay the other end gently atop the wire. If the wire is live, you will feel what my husband describes as "a pulse." Bear in mind that British English is often more understated than American, and the electricity in the fence is intended to discourage animals that weigh 5 to 10 times your weight. For the sake of both caution and the pleasure of the walk, I recommend avoiding short cuts over fences—tested or not.  Despite my reticence, I enjoyed the experiment as one more lesson in my classroom on the hill and another insight into a childhood far removed from my own.

In addition to flowers and heathers and broad vistas of farmland, the hill walk offered fox dung. Although this may not seem as beautiful as flowers or as dramatic as testing an electric fence, it is a part of the tapestry on the hill and a clue to those creatures just out of sight in this domain. Fox dung is grey-coloured, larger than sheep or rabbit dung and smaller than cow dung. For good measure, my recent study of manure has included otter dung. Otters leave their dung and urine in places they visit as little calling cards to other otters or other animals. If you find fresh dung, the Highland Ranger had recently told us on a guided walk around the back of Betty Hill, then you can be sure that an otter is nearby.

We sat for a moment and listened to the wind through the grasses in an otherwise quiet world. Not even the larks were singing for a few moments in the bleached bright summer sky.  We took a different path down the hill along a gentler slope and discovered patches of lichens and lipstick heathers punctuated by bog cotton dancing in the breeze above them.

As we left the hill, I wondered about the paradox that draws us to imitate the song of the lark even though we inevitably fall short of the cherished original. Along with that realization came a pang of regret for the hard working teacher in Indiana trying to describe the joy of that lark song through the words of a long dead poet.  As I left the hill I resolved to read Shelley’s “Ode to a Skylark” and send my teacher the response he asked for so long ago.  More importantly, I promised to come back to the hill to learn more from the lark himself.

By Sharon G Pottinger