Scottish tern signs

[Ed: No, the title is not misspelled.]

Math Man has spent the last three days chasing a small ball around the Scottish dunes, in the hopes of managing to put it in one of eighteen 4.25" diameter holes (or since we are, at least for the moment, in the EU, 108 mm holes). Meanwhile, I've walked many miles along the shorelines of the dunes. Yesterday, at Brora, the views and the walk were extraordinary. The day was spectacular, the beach perfect for walking, and the occasional bench perched on the dunes above the beach a perfect spot to sit and think, take in the view, or even write a bit.  All of which I did. It was a day I hope to return to in memory again and again. But what stands out almost as much as the day were the signs.

At the far end of the beach, there were signs on the dunes, warning of nesting arctic terns. Don't disturb the nests and keep your dogs under control.  I carefully avoided the fenced off dune areas. Not carefully enough, apparently, as a tern came swooping down, chirping wildly.  I moved quickly off the dunes and down to the water. Yeah, no. I am still too close. Now the tern is diving closer and closer, I can feel the air pushed down as she swoops across the back of my neck. I flash on Alfred Hitchcock's The Birds.  I pull my back pack over the back of my neck to protect it and head off the beach. I run into Math Man at the top of the dunes, and while telling him about the terns, get dive bombed again. He suggests — firmly — that I should depart and take the tetchy tern with me. I finally get far enough down the beach to reassure her that I'm not going to disturb her chicks. Promise.

There were signs on the road for: deer crossing, heavy plant crossing, elderly people crossing...and otters crossing. There is a robust population of river otters in Scotland and they occasionally cross the roads (for the same reason as the chicken — to get to the other side.) I note that the heavy plant sign is not warning of weighty plants stalking cars, but an industrial plant truck exit. I love how the language shifts make my brain turn sideways. I'm with the late Toni Morrison, perhaps the tower of Babel was not a loss, but a gain. A gain of perspective, a gain of narratives, a gain of joy.

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Read (or listen) to Toni Morrison's beautiful Nobel prize address. My favorite lines: "Language can never “pin down” slavery, genocide, war. Nor should it yearn for the arrogance to be able to do so. Its force, its felicity is in its reach toward the ineffable. Be it grand or slender, burrowing, blasting, or refusing to sanctify; whether it laughs out loud or is a cry without an alphabet, the choice word, the chosen silence, unmolested language surges toward knowledge, not its destruction."