Material memories
One: Glitter Sand
I have always been a gatherer of things, like so many of us when we wander out into the world. Shells on the beach. Conkers from the ground. Pebbles picked from paths. If you have a shelf or box somewhere with all the assorted finds from journeys past, you know what I mean.
My collector’s impulse came from my Mum, I think. When I was a kid, our house was stacked not only with books but specimen boxes for all manner of treasures. With delight, I remember holidays when we would open the kitchen cupboards above the work surface, carefully lift down the red plastic crates, and rifle through the small glass cases and carefully wrapped objects. There was a tiny starfish, faded but still beautiful, that we had found one day on the sand, its inquisitive arms frozen into a dry curl. A mermaid’s purse, empty now, but still carrying the faint suggestion that it might contain untold riches. A fossilised ammonite, curving in perfect spiral patterns to the epicentre. We grew up in Shropshire so often went on fossil hunting trips to Wenlock Edge, that limestone escarpment that was once a spectacular reef in subtropical seas.
Now I have an ever-increasing store of things gathered from walks all over the world, and these tiny treasures have been some of the few precious items I have managed to keep close as I have moved countless times. They are a little piece of memory, a fragment of journeys, a remnant of other worlds that provide comfort.
The magpie impulse took me often as I travelled to bothies and in a corner of the collection are now the rocks and bones, shells and stuff picked up on trips to these places of shelter.
Like a jar of glitter sand that I collected on a bothy outing with my friend Debbie. Below the birds who filled the air with song, we lazed on a tiny beach by the loch that gleamed in the afternoon sun. The flecks of mica illuminated the water and the sand with a million bursts of reflected light, sparkling crystallizations of mineral that was once layered between rocks. It covered our skin, stuck to our boots.
We collected a small bag of the stuff, and now a minute jar of glimnering grains sits on my desk. The fragments of that glorious summer afternoon in Wester Ross are contained in a little glass holder, still gently glowing when the sun catches them. A flash of recollection in material form.
If you want to find out which bothy I visited with Debbie and read more about the things I have collected, Bothy: In Search of Simple Shelter is out May 9 with William Collins. Preorder Bothy