The end of a difficult year

Last night neither Kate nor I slept well, our minds forever running over the events of the day before. The process of ‘letting go’ was proving to be much more difficult than we had foreseen. Yesterday Kate and I took our leave from a very treasured friend, the boat that has kept us safe at sea for the past thirteen years, the floating home we have always felt comfortable in, no matter where we were, no matter what the weather was doing outside.

When we first made the decision to sell Cirrus Cat around the middle of last year it had seemed such an obvious thing to do, brought on as it was by the changing circumstances in our lives recounted here, We always knew that a buyer was unlikely to be found quickly, given what we are told is the shaky state of the world economy, so we sat back and waited, thinking that time would allow us to adjust to the concept of her not being ours any more, of not having a sailing boat, not having this particular sailing boat. So when the day finally came when a man called Niclas crossed over from Sweden to take a look over (and under) our pride and joy we took this in our stride, telling ourselves how lucky we are that Cirrus would be going to a good home where she will be looked after and cherished. Until, that is, the moment came when the deal was done. Everything on board had been explained – how this works, how that fits together, what this rope is for, what that piece is for – and it was time for us to leave, time for us to wave farewell not just to our boat but also to this chunk of our lives. Time to walk away. Then it began to hurt.

It had been a tiring day. We had arranged with the harbourmaster in Tarbert to use the facilities of his port to dry out in the morning so that a year’s accumulation of barnacles could be scraped or blasted from Cirrus’ hull. She would not be going far with that lot on board. Goose barnacles up to 30mm in length had made the bottoms of the keels their home and they must have been very disappointed, even aggrieved, when the pressurised jet of fresh water stripped them from their anchorage. Ordinarily I would make a point of apologising to them for my behaviour but after an hour or so crawling about beneath the boat, in the rain, soaked with spray from the pressure-washer, I had little apology left in me. While we waited with Niclas, his brother Matz and son Simon for the tide to return and float us off we chatted (thankfully in English) about their plans for their new acquisition whilst showing them around the boat, letting them explore every nook and cranny and every piece of equipment they could find. When Cirrus began to float we fired up the engine and motored to out to sea for a short test sail, which proved to be a longer one, so that Niclas could see that everything worked as intended and happily Cirrus did not let us down once, despite the winter of relative neglect, proving once again why we have kept and loved this boat for so long.

Back on our marina berth, all that remained was to pass over the Bill of Sale and shake hands with the new owner. Suddenly we found ourselves without a reason to be on board, we were on someone else’s boat! Full realisation did not come until much later, in the early hours of the following day, when it began to occur to me that I had left our boat in the hands of someone with only a novice’s knowledge of her handling. Manoeuvring a catamaran, particularly at slow speeds and in a tight space, is a black art which I have, sometimes painfully, learnt over the years we have owned her. I can say, with no disrespect to Niclas, that nobody else has that knowledge. And yet he is about to embark on a passage back to Sweden which will start with a traverse of the Crinan Canal, a narrow yet busy waterway, with hazards to negotiate on either side. The wind will try to take charge, requiring rapid actions and precise solutions. What have I done, I thought, leaving our beloved Cirrus in the hands of someone so inexperienced in her moods?

By the time morning came our tired brains had more or less sorted themselves out, and we feel happier now about what we have done. We have begun the process of letting go, of moving on, looking forward to exploring the Highlands from the land instead of from the sea. In a few months time our son Mike will have had his last chemotherapy treatment session and a difficult year will, we hope, be at an end. It will be time to start reclaiming our lives for ourselves.

The farewell to Cirrus comes soon after saying farewell to my mother, whose funeral took place earlier this month. Fashion dictates sober dress on an occasion such as this, something that does not come easily to either my brother Graham nor myself. I feel my mother would have appreciated the effort we made and would have seen humour in that together we could easily have been mistaken for a pair of Mafiosi.

The Lochan

The track to Deer Hill begins just behind our house and starts with a wash of gorse-scent and a blaze of yellow flowers as it rises beside a shallow glen within which, many years ago, was created a lochan, a small loch, by the simple process of constructing a dam across the burn which flowed through it.

This would have been done so that silt could settle out of the water thus making it fit to drink in the village below, and always providing you didn’t mind the peaty colouring that went with it, this probably was the sole source of water to the scattering of houses that once existed here.
Cross the lochan dam, which is still largely intact, and you are on the slopes of Torr Mor, a small rounded hillock whose flanks drop into the sea just to the north of the village. The day is warm and the sun powerful for we are approaching the solstice. The vegetation here is dry and crisp underfoot, the springy stems of old heather smelling dusty summer-dry as I brush past up the slope towards the tree line.

A single holly tree has rooted and survived to send its green stem up above the heather but the bracken whose leaves in a month’s time will cover everything is still in the business of curling out of the ground.
I follow a track, so faint that even the deer rarely use it, to where it leads into the deep shadows of  storm-succumbed trees, fallen after many years growing. Soil lies thin over the bedrock providing a poor toehold for roots which a tree will wrench out as it crashes to the ground. The after effect is a surreal landscape of both vertical and horizontal trunks and stranded roots grasping at the sky but with soil still clinging on. Walking through this is next to impossible without crawling under or climbing over the obstacles and I soon lose whatever slight trail I have been following. The sun penetrates through the holes made in the canopy making deep shadows but with bright patches where new grass is making a go of it, fodder for the passing grazers who come through here perhaps.

I backtrack and traverse to find a new way up the slope to try to reach the rounded Torr Mor summit, forcing my way in through a barrier of branches so that I am once more surrounded by trees. This is not natural woodland; timber is grown as a crop here. The conifers were sown close together and their lower branches, now starved of light, are just dead sticks which sprout horizontally in all directions like spears ready to catch the unwary. An uprooted thinner trunk leans drunkenly in its death against a stronger neighbour leaving a scar, a bleeding wound which still weeps shiny sap. As I pause to stare in horror at the extent of the injury I realise it is quiet here, the forest deadening all, but there is a tiny sound, like a squeak from a small animal, which prompts me to gaze upwards in the hope of spotting a squirrel perhaps.

I listen and it comes again. I realise it is the two trunks crying in pain as they rub together, the breeze gently swaying the leafy top of the tallest of them. It cannot escape its fate and must bear the hurt until the dead trunk finally breaks its way to the ground in years to come.
Clear of trees the summit of Torr Mor would once have provided a good viewpoint over Kilbrannan Sound, or maybe it was a romantic place suitable for courting couples, safe from observation. Since the trees have grown tall this view has disappeared behind impenetrable forest, inaccessible to all but the most determined and I could not get through it without causing myself serious harm. The only view is in the other direction, looking down over the brown waters of the lochan, which today lies almost still, reflecting the landscape.

Torr Mor overlooks the lochan, which itself stands above the house where my mother spent the last year of her life.

Had she had more years and better health at her disposal she might have been able to get about more to delight in the simplicity of this place, the beauty and stillness, but she has slipped away now and rests, in peace at last. In the end her failing heart let her down and yesterday her spirit finally let go its strong hold on life. I feel numb with sadness but happy that in the end I could be there for her, to let her go out as she wanted, peacefully in her own home.

Joan Eileen Rosa Matthews
1922 to 2013