'Whale Song' by Rachel Horsburgh
In October 2018, Rachel Horsburgh joined a research expedition which inspired her to write ‘Whale Song’. ‘Whale Song’ has recently been showcased as part of The Nature Library exhibition of writings at the Ullapool Ferry Terminal last weekend, curated by Christina Riley, as part of the Climate Fringe Festival. The event was inspired by Rachel Carson’s ‘The Sea Around Us’ and the submissions where requested to be in that vein.
This sea journey traces back to the purchase of sea clothing. Purofort wellingtons with red neoprene lining (as preferred by fish-farmers), and shrimp-pink woollen gloves knitted by an elderly Shetland Islander in the ‘Shetland-Bus’ pattern. They sport a large star, copied I am told, from the clothing of Norwegian sea-men. Then frequent checking of the forecast, a deep depression is building, with isobars humped close. Storm Callum is heading our way..
Our expedition vessel ’Silurian’ is moored at Ullapool harbour. Tucked in against the wooden pontoon, she is egg white and egg-like in her self-containment. A blue dolphin leaps a curving wave on her bow. Built in Seattle, she is a 60 foot ‘Skookum’ or sail-fishing vessel. A geologist named her, after the earth’s geological epoch which saw the diversification of bony fish. She transported ‘Blue Planet’ to dive with sperm whales in the Azores and now journeys thousands of nautical miles each year through Hebridean waters, at a steady 6 knots, to monitor this area of global importance for cetaceans.
It’s 2 am, I am awake in my bunk, my heart is beating hard in my chest, with the wind howling all around us. Dream images replay in my mind’s eye. A liquid blue world, a kelp forest, fronds swaying and unfurling in the current, and a sixth sense of another’s consciousness. A sentience, out there, just beyond visibility. I tiptoe through to the wheel-house, and stare out at harbour flags held fast by a hurtling rain-soaked wind. I can hear sheets in constant worry at their fixings, it is the pawing of a horse’s hoof on stone. The boat is itching to get loose, to bolt out into the storm.
We will be citizen scientists, holiday volunteers at sea, doing visual observations, bird and boat counts and acoustic detections with a hydrophone towed along behind the boat. We are trained in cetacean ID, everything from rissos to humpbacks. We practice judging distances and taking a bearing. We go through the safety protocols. The procedure to muster the lifeboat is explained. There is a cord which must not be undone, the one which attaches the lifeboat to the mother-ship. Heading into the Minch we pass islands rooted fast to an ancient world. A swell begins to tilt and heave the boat, and the crew are working Silurian’s sails, a constant letting out and taking in, adjusting, testing, assisting her to find perfection with the wind.
‘Sighting!! Sighting!!’ I feel my face stretching around a wild smile. Two white beaked dolphins have surfaced to the north. Proud, like a pair of charioteers pulling the sea along behind them. I gasp, in-articulate. The sea surface is a veil, protecting their hidden world. If I could only follow in their wake, unrestricted by air or gravity, and witness their mastery below. We are picking up faint clicks and whistles as mist encircles us. The wind is building. The Hebrides have just disappeared. A wall of drizzle, a chainmail curtain descends, then just as suddenly elfin cliffs re-appear, and jagged rock with lush gullies all greenness and secretive.
It is 7 am when we head back east, out of Lewis harbour the following morning. We hear the coastguard’s Hebridean lilt, ‘Calling all shipping, calling all shipping, this is Stornoway Coastguard…’ At Tiumpan Head a large pod of short beaked common dolphin turn circus wheels, all muscle and movement, the water folding and foaming in their wake. Sometimes splashing from afar, an acrobat’s flip. Then coming in close, they eyeball us, resolute. A minke whale rises to the west, small fin trailing, her vocalisations pulsing through the womb-like brine. We are slipping with our backside down and into the swell, the sea has become silvery, a glossy, gelatinous, lazy back. We are rolling with Leviathan, slow and graceful.
When we smell the Highland mainland it is honey and heather, and the water rolling off the tender bow is whisky coloured. In a wind as warm as a hairdryer we anchor at Loch Bad nam Bàn. We eat Nigerian peanut butter stew, then sit out on deck replete. The stars are pulsing in the Milky Way, the northern lights flickering to the north, we lower a bucket on a string into the sea ink and tip it back and forth. The tiny glowing plankton wink a magician’s sparkle.
All the poems/writing and audio are now available to digest on The Nature Library website HERE.