All I could do was look

but long, slow looking can come as a gift

I couldn’t chat to my friends, not with a snorkel clamped in my mouth. I couldn’t take pictures. The thick neoprene gloves made my fingers fat and clumsy and I don’t have a waterproof camera anyway. My borrowed drysuit suit made me so buoyant I could do little but bob around on the surface, propelling myself inefficiently with an occasional clumsy flap of the long blue flippers strapped to my feet. The water was just deep enough that I coudn’t reach out and touch anything.

This weekend I joined a ‘Seagrass Snorkel Safari’ organised by the Stromness Museum and a local dive school, Kraken Diving, and all I could do was look.

And so my looking took on the quality of a particularly intense dream that has stayed with me ever since, appearing again whenever I close my eyes.

“Green Wave”, drawing, acrylic and gesso on paper, 58cm x 93cm

It was the calm that was most striking. Everything moved quietly in the dim greenish light that filtered through the water column. My own breathing was the loudest commotion as I sucked and drooled on my snorkel. Peeking above the water surface I could see the familiar road into Kirkwall. The bus stop. The burger van in the car park. My car where I’d left it.

But when I flipped over and looked down I entered an entirely different world, one I had not seen before although I must have been in this place a thousand times. I’d never paid much attention to this bay. I’ve always been passing by in the car, hurrying on my way somewhere more important. Up there, on the shore, motorbikes buzzed along the road. Coaches ferrying cruise liner passengers to the tourist sites rumbled by. Down here, in the still water of the bay, all was calm.

“Fathom” drawing, gouache and acrylic on Arches paper, 27cm x 40cm

Beneath me a lush green meadow swayed gently as if in a soft breeze, just a few feet out of reach: sea grass. Carbon sink, nursery to marine life, depleted and damaged around our UK shores but in Orkney still healthy and extensive in the shallow waters of sheltered bays. Orkney’s seagrass meadows have been in the news a lot lately, as marine conservationists have discovered they are genetically the same as those that once flourished all down the east coast of Scotland. Now the seeds are being carefully harvested here, and used to regenerate those that have been almost entirely destroyed elsewhere. It spread out beneath me like a field of uncut hay.

Further out into the bay towers of gauzy lime green weed draped softly in the water column, buoyed up by sparkling galaxies of tiny oxygen bubbles. They looked like the towering gas nebulae pictured by the Hubble Space Telescope. Otherwordly trees of bladderwrack glowed chartreuse and amber in the shafts of sunlight. Long strands of mermaid’s tresses reached up from the sandy bottom, here and there bearing clusters of tiny orange sea squirts like berries. A tiny crab raised his claws and waved them at me pugnaciously as if challenging me to a punch-up. Small shoals of fry darted away from my shadow.

I felt like a slow, clumsy bird. Or a barrage balloon perhaps. A large black dirigible drifting and bumping through a forest canopy. All I could do was look and look and look, as if trying to grasp it all with my eyes.

“Gazing Out” Acrylic on cradled board, 41cm x 51cm

Finally the chill of the water got the better of me and I reluctantly clambered ashore, heavy and ungainly as a seal, and thankful for a helping hand from Rob who unstrapped my flippers and hauled me to me feet. It felt odd to be vertical again at first. My balance had gone and I was glad to sit with a hot cup of tea and talk quietly with my friend for a few minutes of recalibration. I was shocked to realise I’d been in the water for nearly two hours. I’d lost all sense of time passing.

But that long, slow looking comes like a gift. When we can’t respond right away, we have to absorb it all, percolate, let things seep and soak. What I saw will make its way slowly into my drawings. Water has been my subject for a long time now, but it always has something new to reveal. I can’t say yet what new responses my venture beneath the water will bring about, but I’ll be sharing some recent work soon at Northlight Gallery in Stromness very soon. ‘CONFLUENCE’, my solo exhibition of drawings, will be open from September 9th to 20th and I’ll tell you more about it next week. If you’re in Orkney do drop by and say hello! And if you’re not, you can say hello here by leaving a comment.

And welcome to my new look newsletter!

Thank you so much to all of you who responded so generously to my request for feedback on my newsletter last week. It has given me the confidence to make the move over from Mailchimp and you’ve really confirmed for me that I can just keep following and sharing my interests, instincts and enthusiasms!

I have chosen the name THE LIFE BOAT for my Substack because, as any islander knows, a boat is a lifeline, a means of connection, a way to navigate storms. A boat shows us that water is not how we are divided but how we are connected.

I’ll continue to write about Orkney, about water, about books and art and drawing and writing, and about how these things can keep us afloat together in these strange and troubling times. And if you think someone you know might want to join us, please do share the Life Boat.

warm wishes from Orkney!

Sam