Foot by foot Edal squirmed nearer to me, now wriggling upon her back, now ostentatiously polishing her chest and throat. Her fur had a sheen that I had not seen for years, and her eyes were bright, in place of the dull, existent look to which I had become long accustomed. Down the slope she pushed herself, for the most part upon her back, with arms and monkey fingers waving, until at last her nose was in contact with my thigh. I still did not know how much liberty I could take with her on land, but then and there the feeling of unity, of shared pleasure and joy, took absolute control. I treated her as I had when she was a cub, in the days when everything was taken for granted and antipathy was out of the question; I took her by the shoulders and pulled her to me and stroked her and blew into her fur and rolled her over and tickled her toes and whiskers, and she responded as Teko had done, with little snuffles of affection and squirming movements to make closer contact. When we started home Edal and Teko had between them given back to me the land in which I lived, the vision that I had lost.
Epilogue
Exactly one year, to a day, after the breakdown of our negotiations with the zoo in December 1966, I received a telephone call from Woburn to say that it had proved impossible to adapt the Chinese Dairy Lake for our requirements. The Comptroller offered alternative sites, and I travelled south in Arctic conditions to view the white and frozen ponds that were available. None was, to my mind, suitable; and furthermore our otter quarters had been constructed to stand under the cover of a colonnade.
The future was uncertain but the present contented; Teko was restored to the old puppy-like situation in which he would spend hours playing in the living room, chasing a torch beam with his tail and romping with his human playmates. Edal was once more a friend of whom we were unafraid, and I felt that we had truly reached our goal.
In the small hours of 20 January fire swept through Camusfearna, gutting the house and destroying everything that was within it. No human life was lost, and Teko was saved, but Edal died with the house, and she is buried at the foot of the rowan tree. On the rock above her are cut the words ‘Edal, the otter of Ring of Bright Water, 1958–1968. Whatever joy she gave to you, give back to nature.’
Tonight at the last sentence of a dream I stand in thought before the Camusfeàrna door. Someone someday perhaps may build again upon that site, but there is much that cannot ever be rebuilt.
Afterword by Virginia McKenna
I am at Camusfeàrna on n August, the afternoon of the eclipse. This morning, just before 11 a.m. the light greyed, and there was a stillness – apart from the heightened activity of the midges who appeared to think dusk had fallen, and it was time to begin their rounds of torment.
Now the midges have departed, the sun burns in a blue sky, huge white cloud-galleons slowly sail out to sea and the occasional cry of a gull pierces the silence.
In barely one month’s time it will be the 30th anniversary of Gavin Maxwell’s death, and almost forty years since his masterpiece Ring of Bright Water was published. A story of a man and his human and otter friends. What was it that made this book so special, so loved, so important to its thousands of readers and to English literature? There is no doubt that it touched our hearts, awoke in us a longing for that seemingly idyllic existence at Camusfeàrna, gave birth to a deep and lasting fascination for otters, gave us, as a casket of jewels, passages of descriptive writing about nature unequalled until now.
Yet Gavin Maxwell himself professed to be surprised at the book’s success, considering it to be something on the lines of a personal diary, no more. And perhaps this was the key. Ring of Bright Water and its two Ring sequels are very personal stories. He was not afraid to tell us of his heartaches, disappointments, his conflicts, to reveal to us many darker aspects of his nature. It is not a simplistic tale of a man romping with otters on the wild beautiful beach of Camusfeàrna; bathing in the pools of the waterfall near his house, whose tumbling cascades sparkled like so many brilliants in between the shadows of the trees. It is much more than that.
All dreams must end and the idyllic life he sought and found on the west coast of Scotland inevitably changed as his increasing fame compromised his solitary way of life, and visitors from far and wide stumbled down the track to the Bay of Alders and his home.
Re-reading the three books I have been struck quite forcibly by what seems to be his almost unconscious ability to attract disaster. Dramatic events, tragic incidents, injury, fire, loss – more challenges to overcome than most of us will ever face in our lifetime.
And yet – and this is the wonder of it – what do we, his readers, his audience, remember? It is the beauty of the writing, the relationship with the otters, the joy of their life and grief at their death; the warmth and clutter of the ‘pitch-pine panelled kitchen-living room’; the sunshine and storms that beat upon the shells and shingle of the sandy beach; the glistening sea; distant islands and mountains of Skye which met his gaze each day; the journeys (often disastrous) in his boat Polar Star; the greylag geese – his wild friends who returned each summer, their poignant cry signalling their approach.
In 1968 a film was made, based on Ring of Bright Water. My husband Bill Travers and I were in that production and the letter Bill had from Gavin Maxwell a year later when he saw the completed film was one of his most prized possessions. Gavin invited us to meet him but to our lasting regret this was not to be as he died that same year.
By a strange, extraordinary twist of fate, or whatever one likes to call it, three years ago in 1996 the Born Free Foundation (an animal welfare charity founded by Bill, myself and our eldest son Will) heard that Eilean Ban, the little 6-acre island between Kyle of Lochalsh and Kyleakin was to be sold by public auction.
Eilean Ban was Gavin Maxwell’s last home, the place he moved to when his house at Camusfeàrna was destroyed by fire. Following his death it had a series of owners and, finally, it was bought by the Scottish Office prior to the construction of the Skye Bridge, under whose soaring arc the Eilean Ban house and lighthouse now nestle.
My son and I swung into action. We instinctively knew that we must save this little piece of history – for the local communities, for the wildlife that frequented its shores and habitat, and for Gavin Maxwell himself, so that his work and memory should remain an undiminished part of the nation’s culture.
This ‘twist of fate’ or coincidence has been followed by others – the ultimate one being the timing of the publication of this trilogy and the opening of the Eilean Ban project – which includes the Brightwater Visitors Centre in Kyleakin. People will be able to come to Eilean Ban by boat, marvel at the breath-taking views, enter Gavin Maxwell’s house and the Stevenson lighthouse and imagine, for a moment, what it must have been like to live there.
The inscription on Edal’s grave at Camusfearna reads: ‘Edal, the otter of Ring of Bright Water, 1958–1968. Whatever joy she gave to you, give back to nature.’
That is what we hope to do with Eilean Ban, but with a deep sense of gratitude to Gavin Maxwell himself who has allowed us to enter his all-embracing ring.
As I sit here in the now late afternoon sun at Camusfeàrna and look across the gleaming sea down to the Highland cattle on the beach, across to Edal’s grave, to the memorial stone set on the site of Gavin Maxwell’s house and under which his ashes are buried, I feel suspended in a time warp. A great sense of peace and gratitude pervades. Yes, things change and some things end, but here the presence of Gavin Maxwell and his otters is alive and well, the waterfall’s beauty is as vibrant as ever, the gulls cry and the people who come to this glorious and wonderful place treasure its remoteness and simplicity as much as he did, when he first came down the track and ‘turned the key in Camusfearna door for the first time’.
May it remain so always.
11 August 1999
1 Life Histories of Northern Animals (Constable 1910).
* Robert Frost, ‘Fire and Ice’.
Table of Contents
Cover
About the A
uthor
Title Page
Copyright Page
Contents
List of Illustrations
Acknowledgements
Map
Foreword
Introduction
THE RING OF BRIGHT WATER TRILOGY
RING OF BRIGHT WATER
1
2
3
4
5
6
7
8
9
10
11
12
13
THE ROCKS REMAIN
1 Return to Camusfeàrna
2 Peace Dropping Slow
3 All the Wild Summer Through
4 The Wreck of the Polar Star
5 Teko Revisited
6 Accident, Fire and Flood
7 The Tides Return
RAVEN SEEK THY BROTHER
1 The Rowan Tree
2 A Little Late for Loving
3 The Third Fall
4 The Captive and the Free
5 Bitter Spring
6 Isle Ornsay Lighthouse
7 Kyleakin Lighthouse
8 Something Old and Something New
9 The Struggle
10 Hounds and Hares
11 So Far From Home
12 Return of Mossy and Monday
13 Many Maladies
14 Return to Camusfeàrna
15 Peace Before Nightfall
Epilogue
Afterword
Footnotes
Chapter 9
Page 107
Chapter 21
Page 268
Gavin Maxwell, The Ring of Bright Water Trilogy
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