Spring in the Great Glen

We moved to the Great Glen exactly 4 years ago, in the first week of the first Lockdown.  And Spring at that time felt disjointed, odd.  There was the joy of watching a landscape and wilderness around us wake up, in a place which was new and unfamiliar, set against the fear of the world waking up to what might lie in store in the aftermath of the Covid pandemic.

Fast forward 4 years and Spring takes on a very different hue.   Our 4th Spring here brings with it the excitement of what comes next, not fear, an excitement born of getting to know and love this landscape over the time we’ve been here.

When you live in a big, open landscape, like we do in the Great Glen, its impossible not to be almost super sensitive to the change of seasons.  When everything around you is on the move, it sets you into action too, physically and emotionally.

We sleep with the blinds pulled high in a bedroom which faces South East. In winter it makes no difference, the nights are bitumen black, but for me the first signs of spring is the joy of being woken by sunlight pouring itself over the hill opposite above Aldourie Castle and bouncing back up off the loch.  I will never grow tired of that Spring sun bursting into the sky and my consciousness each morning.  So much better than the sound of the alarm.   I understand the desire, need, for seedlings to start to unfurl so they can bask in that light and warmth, it makes me want to unfurl each day too.

The idea of waking from sleep to greet Spring is of course as old as, well, Spring.  Poet Mary Oliver describes it as a black bear “her tongue like a red fire, touching the grass, the cold water. There is only one question. How to love this world”.

Here in the Glen, the flowers show their love in little bursts of yellow.   The acid sharp egg yolk of the gorse washes the croft in competition with daffodils and crocuses nodding in the orchard although I never remember when or where I planted them.

Next to the early flowers and buds the birds of course are the most obvious heralders of spring, busy loving the world with all that business of building nests in a riot of song each morning.  There’s a riot too in the pond with all the returning frogs and their croaking has become the soundscape to each dusk.  

For our bees Spring just now takes the form of the occasional sleepy forage from the hive, whenever the sun burns warm enough, but for them it’s a waiting game in spite of all the coconut scented gorse beckoning them to come play.  And that's the bit of Spring that really hooks me, that idea that the landscape is opening up its arms and inviting you to come on and love it, to come and play! 

But while I do love those bold, obvious, shouts of Spring, its the more subtle lifts and shifts which move me most, although they're all rooted in that gift of a second or two more sunlight each day.  I’ve always been someone to pack every day til it brims over, I struggle a bit with winter, not because the dark depresses me but because it seems to bookend and shorten all that possibility, but with spring, like the leaves, I uncurl and open to what might come.

I planted tomato and chilli seeds back in mid February and now each day I visit them on their window sill, amazed at how much they’ve grown already, loving the sense of potential which lies in those tiny first leaves.  Come August these seedlings will have created a jungle, filling the polytunnel with red and yellow fruits.  And its that idea of potential being released that I think truly moves me about Spring.

We sew our own seeds, in the heart of winter at the turn of the year, when we take stock, reflect then look ahead.  And now, like the tomato plants, my own seedlings are pushing through the surface, nudging me to decide what I want to bear fruit this year, how do I want to fill my own internal polytunnel?

Dreams of a writing course, of a trial ride on the tandem we've been painstakingly restoring during the darker months, of getting to spend long hours in the garden growing food and hanging out with the bees persuading them to offer up a jar or two of honey.  For me all of this locked away energy and ambition for what the year might hold is finally being released. 

As the days lengthen and stretch and the plants reach for the light, we do too. And each morning, when that sun wakes me, instead of burying myself back in the duvet, I’m itching to get up and at it, quite literally with a Spring in each step.

Pennie Stuart April ‘24