And Of These Islands I Am Made

I gather driftwood, dry tinder from the thicker bushes in the ruined garden, gorse from an overhanging cliff, and quickly light a fire. The children stand around and gripe, or ask dumb questions whose answers seem obvious. Some help me gather wood.
We are all damp, wet feet like colourless prunes in our boots, waterproofs heavy and pungent, wood smoke and sweat. I find an old oak fencepost and wedge it against a rock by the fire, hang a ten pint half full of water from it. Then I wander out.
“Where are you going?” One of them asks, head tilted backwards so that he can see me out of his hood.
“I’ll be back in a minute” I say, resting my hand on his head for a second. He doesn’t react. There is a tiredness in everything we do. Five days ago these kids were soft and mollycoddled, now they communicate like cowboys: grunt, shrug, squint, or better still- not at all.
Down onto the soft sand I walk,
and glance behind me only once,
and see with grim satisfaction
that our fire’s smoke is quickly mixed
with the island’s mist
and hangs
and disappears.

I turn left and head anti-clockwise, keeping close to the rocks and overhanging bushes, soon I’m out of sight. ‘Better to move unseen until the tide turns’, I think, ‘until we’re cut off and safe.’
‘Safe from what? Am I so caught up in the game of trespassing and hiding that I actually believe it? Has it become true because they believe it so completely? It was certainly true last night and this morning, in the woods behind the dunes, where the farmer came patrolling with his shotgun. But it’s safe here, and I’m alone now. What does it matter if I’m seen?’
‘Perhaps I misinform myself, because this is my training too, my test. Hippy bootcamp. All the elements of army basic training minus the guns…’
I shrug and wander on.
‘Stop thinking now. Just enjoy the peace and space’.
I find a little cave beneath a clump of ivy, beside a rock pool, and dig a small hole in the muddy sand with my hands. Then I pull off layers of warm, wet clothes and squat over it, watching sand pipers and curlews on the far shore, a heron frozen on one leg, foot curled yellow and dripping, reflected in the water.
When I’m done I wash in the rock pool and refill the hole, drop a rock over the disturbed sand, brush my footprints away. Still in character, still hiding. Then I sit on a rock nearby and roll a small joint, take off my shoes before I light it, hold it in my lips as I tie the laces together, hang them around my neck, roll up waterproof trousers, soggy jeans. Then I light the joint and walk out onto the sand again.
The air is grey and moist, the sand ticks softly, bubbles, little streams fall from the rocks and roots of the island, seabirds call, a crab, a Twix wrapper, a smooth, black piece of wood, the pop of a seed as it burns, the slow calmness as the weed hits my mind.
Half way around the island, where the estuary cuts a deep channel, I climb back onto the rocks and sit a while . A mullet rises, then another. Bait fish flash in the brown water. In the distance the tide is creeping up the mud flats. My stomach grumbles, the ten pint must be boiling by now.
The mullet dart away as I stand and a blackbird cackles in the trees behind me. I walk with my arms outstretched, bare feet, wet rock, my boots bumping against my chest.
I round the last corner and see our footprints stretching across to the mainland, the mess where the kids played stuck in the mud, and follow them along the shore towards the ruined cottage. As I approach their voices rise up through the still air. I groan a little inside, these opportunities to be alone are few and far between, but I’m happy too, and as I turn inland and follow the weed-choked path up to the fire I see them caught in a ring of orange firelight, dirty, happy faces piling pasta onto their plates.
And suddenly I love them, or at least what they’re becoming. We use nature to strip them down, tiredness and exaggerated danger to open them up, and simple things- fire, food, songs, stories, a dry bed- to make them happy.
And in that way we show them that life is not a complex thing, it is survival, simple. It is getting the hard work done so you can play. It is going gently into the night without fear and,
rising in the morning light,
it is running over the soft sand
before the tide turns
and swallows us up again,
footprints,
fire and all.