RadJoy member, ecoarcheologist and author Harriet Nwyfre Sams writes from from a remote beach in Scotland about waste, beauty… and dedication to a practice:

HARD:

We drive for five hours, and walk miles across the island to a beach. The inner Hebrides Islands’ beaches are deserted, white sanded, with immaculately clear waters reflecting a burning blue, even in February. Two white hooper swans glide in the shallows.

Our breaths catch. Squinting in the sun, we gaze and gaze at the simplicity of the beautiful view. Land, sea and sky, meeting a small freshwater rivulet as it meanders across the sands. Perfect in its remoteness. Not a human to be found.

Then I look down: fragments of plastic, half hidden in the sand and under washed up kelp, tell of ocean currents and human debris. I begin to feel my heart sink lower into the gut cavity. In that space where it once was I feel the old familiar sorrow begin to amass. Here is the grief. For a moment I feel angry that it always finds me, even here. I shouldn’t have started looking.

I begin to pick it up, like a Pavlovian dog, conditioned to act. Then, I realise I’m glad to do it. Even ten small bits of plastic binned today are ten fewer in this perfect place than will be there after the next high tide.

A ‘Daim’ bar wrapper, two gun cartridges, random bits of wire and rope, plastic tops… I find I’m half hoping for bits of Lego. Long ago a container ship spilled billions of bits of Lego in the North Atlantic and an archaeological study was made of where they’d been found washed up all along the Scottish coast. Much of it had been from a dinosaur set. I half hope for a blocky stegosaurus.

I collect them into a random shape for a photo, and then gather them, to put into a nearby dumpy bag the industrious locals have left for such beach cleaning purposes. As I walk, I see more. There are many, no doubt, lying on this beach. How many should I pick up? I keep doing it, until I tell myself enough.

It’s hard, to be so grateful for the beauty, then to have it so disturbed, then to know when to stop trying to pick up all the pieces.