Windswept

Annie Worsley

William Collins, £16.99

 

Review by Rosemary Goring

In the autumn of 2013, Annie Worsley and her husband uprooted from north-west England, to a croft in South Erradale in the North West Highlands overlooking the Minch and the Torridon mountains. Fired up by the idea of turning the land into an environmental haven – they called it Red River Croft for the river that runs through it - Worsley gave up her job as Professor of Environmental Change at Edge Hill University, and her pharmacist husband Rob took a part-time job in nearby Gairloch to give them a regular income.

Windswept is Worsley’s emotional, spiritual and knowledgeable account of the decade that followed. During those years she revelled in the challenge of living in such a wild, elemental place, despite falling seriously ill with a virus that left her walking with two sticks.

Written in the form of a monthly journal illuminating the seasonal nature of life in such an exposed and demanding setting, Windswept is organised not by the calendar as we usually know it, but by the Celtic solar division of time and the points where the sun rises and sets. Thus, the first of its four parts is called ‘Autumn Equinox to Winter Solstice’ and the opening chapter sets the pattern for those that follow: ‘Sunrise northeast of Creag an Fhithich on Baosbheinn, sunset beyond Ben Volovaig on north Trotternish, Isle of Skye, Celtic month of Ivy (September to October), Harvest Moon.’

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Many other moons follow – Ice, Mistletoe, Mother’s, Herb, Oak  – in a work that draws from the start on ancient notions of time and place. The result is a compelling, abundantly descriptive portrait of a captivating place, in which Worsley’s academic understanding of landscape and the impact upon it of human activity anchors her personal perspective. Her roots as a geographer are often to the fore, as when she writes of the skies beneath which they live, “The dizzying displays of light and colour and motion of air and vapours are the visible, tangible expressions of an exchange of energy between atmosphere, water and earth, and the ever-present connections between peat, rock and running water.”

None of the elements is more powerful in South Erradale than the wind, which she describes as “my companion and healer”. It infuses her with energy and joy, but can also be alarming, as during the terrible December of 2013. That month, its gusting speed rarely dropped below 80 mph. The roof of the youth hostel went sailing away, and the community was left “rock-concert deaf” from the incessant noise.

When the storm first approached, Worsley and  her husband went to their usual vantage point near the edge of a cliff, but soon realised it was far too dangerous. Over the years it was from this location, especially after she fell ill, that she would survey the crashing seas below. The tumultuous passage of clouds, snow, rain and sunshine were captured on her camera, her constant companion.

It is Worsley’s particularly intense response to weather that makes Windswept distinctive:  “Standing at the cliff-top I do not simply watch a storm, I am interacting. I do not merely feel its power: there is an energy exchange, an almost recognisable communication between the storm and me. We are made of the same stuff. … the winds know my name; I hear their calls and listen to their stories….”

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It sounds fanciful, especially for the city-bound, who rarely feel the unbridled strength of nature, or have to find a philosophy and a place for themselves in such encounters. Worsley’s visceral connection with landscape and weather can at times feel excessive, and in her eagerness to convey the beauty of her surroundings almost every colour in the artist’s palette is deployed. This, for example, is the summer solstice: “for just a few hours everything is drained of colour. The living and non-living become enfolded in metallic magic – mercury, lithium, platinum, pewter, steel, tin and chromium.”  Yet the image is undeniably vivid.

Running beneath her lyrical portraits is a grittier account of getting the croft onto its feet, and gradually seeing its biodiversity multiply as she and Rob plant trees, improve soil, sow crops, and nurture bogland and meadows. Explaining the Crofting Commission’s regulations, and outlining how they worked the land, allowing a procession of sheep, cows and horses to graze, the story of Red River Croft unfolds in tandem with Worsley’s deepening connection to the place.

At the heart of this is the misery of her illness, which kept her from climbing the mountains and forced her to discover the less exalted but equally absorbing pleasures of her world at ground level. Foremost of these are the creatures she meets: otters on the beach, deer and stags, whose rutting roars in the dead of night are hauntingly primeval; even the unexpected return of salmon in the river, which she believes she lured back by placing glittering quartz in the riverbed.

And then there’s the sea eagle she looks in the eye late one winter (Celtic month of Rowan, January-February, Wolf Moon), a meeting so affecting that for once she forgets to take a photo: “the great bird had brought the light with him, and the promise of change. He had evidently been holding it through the deepest days and darkest nights of winter in his wondrous eyes, ready for spring.”

There is little domestic detail about the workaday routine of croft life, which would have been interesting, but Worsley works on a  more mystical plane. The significance of every brush with wildlife and the outdoors is magnified into a profoundly meaningful event, reaching deep into her own past, as well as that of the land around her. Despite occasional passages that are overwritten or repetitive, this book stamps its personality on a part of the country few of us will ever know. Evoking it with unwavering focus, Worsley recreates this exceptionally fragile yet resilient corner for her readers with almost painterly skill.