Feral

by George Monbiot

  From the North Sea come, once more, reports of gigantic fish hammering the mackerel shoals off the Yorkshire coast, and occasionally stripping all the line off an unsuspecting angler’s reel: though the bluefin tuna is critically endangered, some among the depleted population are again following their prey into these waters.87 A few years ago a much commoner tunny, the albacore or longfin, began harrying the herring off the coast of Ireland. In three consecutive years, fishermen had reported shoals of albacore, some leaping clear of the water, less than a mile from the coast on which I live. It was this latter intelligence which led me into the stupidest and most dangerous adventure upon which I had embarked for, oh, at least a month.

  14

  The Gifts of the Sea

  Many times have I stolen gems from the depths

  And presented them to my beloved shore,

  He takes in silence but still I give

  For he welcomes me ever.

  Khalil Gibran

  Song of the Wave

  Though I sought to persuade myself otherwise, in my heart I knew that I had no hope of finding or catching an albacore. I later discovered that a kayak cannot travel fast enough to pull a lure through the water at the necessary speed. I suspect and hope that, had I not been half-aware of the futility of my quest, I would not have embarked upon it. I had no desire to kill such a creature, or to inflict pain on an animal I did not intend to eat. Nor had I any idea of what I might do if by some extraordinary fluke I managed to hook one. But the thought of it–the dream of it–pulled me away from my desk, on a buoyant, glittering day in early October.

  The river, swollen by a summer of incessant rain, roared down to the sea. The water fountained into the air where it hit the first rocks. Below them it furrowed into foaming gullies and wild rides, swerved against the banks, whirled round in an exultation of flying spray then exploded once more on contact with the next set of rocks. It was, in a thirteen-foot sea kayak, an interesting passage.

  I hit the waves in the river’s mouth with a smack. A stiff westerly had stacked the breakers against the shore, twenty or thirty deep. I dug in and fought what seemed to be a losing battle to break through them. I began to suspect that I was not progressing at all, but only sliding forwards on the backwash then backwards on the incoming wave, again and again. But at last I burst through the back of the surf and out into the most exhilarating sea I have ever sat upon.

  It was a magnificent mess. The south-westerly swell mounted and tumbled against the west wind. No wave resembled its predecessor. Sometimes the peaks and troughs cancelled each other, and I found myself marooned on a raft of flat water. At other times they coalesced. The sea would suddenly give way beneath me and suck me into a square-sided hole, or two or three waves would join forces and lift me high into the air until my kayak teetered on the edge of a chalcedony cliff before free-falling into the gully behind it, landing with a great jolt and an explosion of spray. White horses reared up from nowhere and came down upon my shoulders with a clatter of hooves.

  The forecast had told me that the wind would drop towards evening, but now it was lively and thrilling. The sun capered across the waves, its sport threatened by nothing but a faint smoke of high cirrus and a few puffy cumulus low on the horizon. I paddled out far enough to ensure that I would not be blown back into the breakers while I rigged the tackle. As soon as I stopped moving, the boat swerved and tilted, threatening, as it swung broadside, to tip me into the water with every wave that passed beneath it. Gingerly, aware that if I let go for an instant I would lose irretrievably whatever I was holding, wobbling as I sought to keep my balance, I unpacked my stoutest fishing rod, and a new reel, loaded with hundreds of yards of line, that I had bought for this expedition. Trapping the paddle beneath my feet, I tied on a swivel and a rubbery artificial squid, masking a large hook. It looked ridiculous, like a toy children use to frighten each other. In my fishing bag, lashed with braided cord to a rear cleat, was my spare tackle, a water bottle, sandwiches and my waterproof camera: if the event I doubted, dreamed of and dreaded in equal measure were to occur, no one would otherwise believe me. I sunk the butt of the rod into the well behind my seat and, relieved still to be attached to the boat, set off.

  My plan was to travel away from land towards the north-west until I was two miles from the shore, then to swing south, trolling the lure first in an arc against the swell, then parallel to the coast for a few miles, before I paddled back to the river’s mouth. I had been told by more than one old salt that the fish were migrating and probably not feeding. I knew that my chances of attracting an albacore were minimal, and that, if such a miracle occurred, the question of who had caught whom would not be easily resolved. But the wild dream of it, goaded by stories that echoed in the catacombs of childhood memory and a yen for improbable glory, had dragged me, almost beyond will, into this furious sea.

  Had the sun not been shining, had the sky and waves been cut from slate, not crystal, the sea that now looked inviting to me would have appeared forbidding, perhaps terrifying. But we are simple creatures, and a sprinkling of stardust dazzles our senses.

  Had the quest not been so arousing, had the ride been any less thrilling, I might have challenged the grounds on which I continued to head out to sea. This is a roundabout way of telling you that I failed to notice that a journey which had begun foolishly was now progressing towards madness: the wind had both freshened and swung to the south-west. By the time I looked around to see what progress I had made, I had been blown two miles up the coast.

  I decided to start fishing, sooner than I had intended, while paddling back along the shore. I paid out the line from the heavy reel, and the ridiculous creature fluttered away out of sight into the green water. I leant forwards and hacked at the sea, fighting through the waves, loving the sensation of the water streaming past the bows. But when I turned to check the marks, I realized that I had gone nowhere. Only then did I see how much trouble I was in. I stowed away the tackle as quickly as I could, strapping the rod to the boat once more, stuffing the tackle back into the bag and buckling it down securely. Even so, by the time I had finished I had drifted a good distance further up the coast. The wind had stiffened again and now it was coming from the south–directly against my line of travel. The shingle beach closer to the rivermouth had given way to rocks. To the north–the direction in which the wind was trying to push me–were cliffs. The tide was up and the south-westerly swell hammered into them. The breakers sounded like a motorway.

  I put my head down and took on the wind. A kayak is a wonderful vessel; it can make way through remarkably high seas–as long as the wind is low. Against the wind it is a feeble instrument. There is a point–roughly eighteen knots, or a force five–beyond which it can make no headway: the resistance offered by the paddle and the body of the paddler matches his propulsive power. I managed, with a great expenditure of effort, to progress a quarter of a mile homeward, but then the wind rose once more. Now it whipped the crests off the waves, which came at me from all angles, barging me from one wall of water to another. The white horses ramped and whinnied, bucked when I vaulted onto their backs and lashed out with their hind legs as they passed. I rode these mustangs for another half-hour, during which time, to judge by the marks on the shore, I managed to cover fifty yards. Then I stopped. It felt as if someone had attached a tow rope to the back of the boat. However hard I paddled I could make no headway: in fact I seemed slowly to be travelling backwards.

  I reviewed my options. If I gave up and stopped paddling I would be driven onto the cliffs. If I abandoned ship and swam I would, being some three-quarters of a mile from the shore, certainly lose the boat, possibly run out of energy and perhaps be dashed on the rocks when I arrived, though at least I would then have a chance of slipping under the breaking waves, rather than perching more perilously on top of them if I sought to beach the kayak. But landing in any condition among those rocks did not appeal to me.

  Two hundred yards ahead of me I could see a sma
ll crescent of sand not yet covered by the rising tide; otherwise the beach gleamed with round boulders. The angle of attack was steep enough to negotiate, as I would be able to cut across the wind, but shallow enough to be dangerous when I reached the shore: I like to keep the waves directly behind me when I land, as that gives me a chance of controlling the boat. But I did not possess a surfeit of choice.

  If I misjudged the angle or if I were blown back too far, I would miss the sand and find myself on the rocks. But the judgement was hard to make as the waves were so jumbled. I slid down their faces, fishtailing, tumbling, lurching towards the shore at alarming speed. Within a few minutes I found myself approaching the near horn of the crescent of sand. I was coming in tight and was in danger of missing it. I grunted with effort, trying to drive the boat further along the shore, feeling every muscle cell strain and twang. Then I turned the boat inland to try to ride onto the utmost corner of sand and heard, as I did so, a shocking sound.

  I turned. The biggest wave I had seen that day, that year, was bearing down on me. It was a wall of brown water, dirty, riotous, fanged with spume and shingle. As it loomed over me it shut out the low sun. I had seen footage of waves like this, on whose faces tiny surfers, black and slim as water skaters, weave and bob, and I had marvelled at their courage or foolishness. And now–

  The breaker lifted me until I looked down upon the rocks of the beach as if addressing them from a balcony. The nose of the boat tipped down, my stomach seemed to fall away, and the water rushed me forward at astonishing speed. I leant back on the kayak, eyes wide with fear. There was nothing I could do. If I used the paddle I would be more likely to capsize the boat than steady it. Even in the thick of terror, it was magnificent. For a second, fear and thrill mixed in equal measure. Then I saw where the wave was taking me, and the thrill died, snuffed like a candle. The wave had swept me past the sand and was driving me onto the rocks. I was about to leap from the boat when it corked from under me.

  The breaking wave rolled me over, tipping me out on the landward side of the kayak. I squatted on the seabed, beneath the water, and shoved the boat up as it came down on top of me, threatening to crush my head. The next wave lifted it and smashed it with hideous force onto a boulder. The hollow boom it made resounded off the cliffs behind the beach.

  I emerged from under that wave and found the shore beneath my feet. When I stood I discovered that the water was only waist-deep. I caught the paddle and waded onto the sand. The boat was sucked out again momentarily, then crash-landed once more, wedging among the rocks. I turned it over then pulled it higher up the beach. My rods were still strapped to the gunwhale and, surprisingly, unharmed. But my tackle bag had gone. The collision with the boulder had snapped the cord. In that wild water, with the tide still rising, there was no hope of finding it. I resolved to return at low tide the next day, but I knew that in a sea like this, with longshore drift doubled by a following wind, my chances of finding it were probably lower than my chances of catching an albacore had been.

  I stared at the sea, cursing myself. I had thought I had grown out of this kind of idiocy. I could scarcely believe that I had lured myself into such danger. I thought of the duty I owed to my daughter and my partner. Though I had just emerged from cold water, I burnt with shame. I began to realize, too, that I was not yet out of it.

  The beach on which I had landed is one of the least visited places on the Welsh coast. It was, as it almost always is at that season, deserted. The nearest road was far away. It was bounded by a low but unscalable cliff of glacial till: the slippery clay and round boulders dumped by the ice sheets. Between the cliff and the sea lay just three or four yards of strand, and the tide, my watch told me, was still rising. The beach was a maze of rocks, grey and tan, that had been eroded out of the cliffs. I looked along the shore, hazy with the spray kicked up by the waves, as far as I could, and felt overwhelmed by loneliness.

  It was, I found, impossible to drag the boat over the exposed boulders, and on that lumpy beach I could not carry it more than a few yards. My only option was to pull it through the surf. I soon discovered how difficult this was. I could pull the kayak forward for a second or two on the incoming wave, but then it would tip over, sweep round and knock my legs from under me. On the outgoing wave it would advance a little, then suddenly become grounded and wedged between the boulders. Only as the backwash began could I make significant progress. So I waited, tried to hold it steady on the incoming wave, sprinted forward through a momentary patch of smooth water, then stopped dead as it thumped back down onto the beach.

  Already sapped when I landed on the beach, I was becoming even more exhausted. Whenever the boat turned over, more water seeped through the hatch. As it became heavier, it became more dangerous. But to empty it I had to drag it out of the waves and over the boulders, which was also tiring. I was beginning to wonder how I would get back without abandoning my most precious material possession when an extraordinary thing happened.

  I knew what it was the moment I saw it, but I refused to believe it. It was so improbable that I imagined for a moment, in my wretched state, that I was hallucinating. It simply could not be true. It was like seeing a zebra trying to hide among the dresses in a department store. But though I had never seen one before, and though, when I first spotted it, it was sixty or seventy yards away, I knew that there was nothing else it could be.

  It walked with odd jerky movements, extending and retracting its long neck. It had a sharp little head, no tail, long, pale pink legs. It looked like a pullet on stilts. I tried to persuade myself that it was a water rail or even a partridge. But it was not. It did not try to fly away. Instead it made little panicky darts between the boulders, slipping and scrambling, one moment trying to run away from me along the beach, the next trying to scurry up the cliff, but slipping down, wings flapping furiously. I drew level with it and stood in the surf while the bird tried to flutter up the boulder clay, perhaps seven or eight yards away. I could doubt it no longer. I saw the chestnut flash on the wings, the sharp chicken’s beak, the low slim head, the beautifully netted plumage on the back–black and buff–feathers ruffled by the wind as it turned and tried to slither away up the beach. It was a corncrake.

  Though common in other parts of Europe, it is exceedingly rare in Britain, and has not lived in Wales for many years. There is a farmer, now well into his eighties, living in the Desert a few miles inland from my home, who recalls hearing them in his youth, but they have not bred in these parts since that period. Their decline, throughout Britain and Ireland, was, from the 1970s until the 1990s, precipitous,1 though, with the help of conservation programmes, they are slowly beginning to recover.2 The nearest populations to that lonely stretch of coastline in mid-Wales are in western Scotland and (though fewer still in number) in northern Ireland.

  At first it just seemed wrong. That this delicate creature should pitch up on a grey, boulder-strewn beach, so far from home–it was as if nature had fused, short-circuited: ‘A falcon, tow’ring in her pride of place, / Was by a mousing owl hawk’d at and kill’d.’3 But then an explanation occurred to me. It must have been migrating south, following the coast, when it ran into the wind that had foiled me and was grounded, exhausted on the beach. Perhaps it had read the same misleading forecast as I had. As understanding dawned, so did the thrill of what I had witnessed. I felt, too, a sense of solidarity with this frail little bird, battling the same forces as me, trapped on the same diminishing strip of beach.

  In pursuit of one returning animal I had encountered another. And this encounter was just as gratifying, just as enchanting, as contact with an albacore would have been. I had set out to find an early result of a fractional rewilding and, despite everything, had found it. Had it not been for the near-disaster from which I had just emerged, I would not have done so.

  As the bird receded up the beach I felt my energy surging back. Buoyed, ecstatic, I fairly marched the next mile, crashing through the rocks and surf. Then the beach widened and I was a
ble to drag the boat along a strip of smooth pebbles above the tideline. Within an hour of seeing the corncrake I came to the bank of the river, now dammed by the risen tide. I plunged in, dragging the boat behind me, but soon found myself out of my depth, so I swam across, towing the kayak. I reached the pebble beach on the far side. Beyond it were the long low slacks across which I could carry the boat back to the car.

  I sat on the kayak, exhausted, watching the yellow sun arcing down towards the water. In the salt mist above the breakers gulls skated and jinked on the wind. The waves opened and closed their jaws, slick with sunlight. I felt a curious mixture of shame and triumph. I had confronted the casual power of nature and–no, not won, no one ever wins–survived.

  At lunchtime the next day I drove through the long glacial valleys of Snowdonia. The trees and bracken had suddenly turned: the dull greens of late summer had burst, almost overnight, into russet and umber, ochre and flame. I travelled to the point at which the road came closest, a mile and a half to the north of the beach where I had lost the bag.

  It was another bright day. The wind still blew strongly from the south (I thought of the poor corncrake) and the waves roared, now, at low tide, far from where I stood. I walked down the concrete steps from the campsite in which I had parked and stared at the beach. I was confronted by the impossibility of what I had set out to do.

  The bag could have been anywhere along that coast. It might have reached Porthmadog by now, or been swept out to sea, or buried in sand or weed. Even if it were somewhere on the mile and a half of strand between where I stood and where I had landed, only a search party of hundreds would have stood a good chance of finding it. The beach at low tide was a quarter of a mile wide. Below me was a long sweep of sand from which grey rocks emerged. Closer to the water were craggy boulders, rockpools and deep beds of wrack and furbelows.