This summer, we launched our Words of the Wild nature writing competition, encouraging people to send us stories inspired by Scotland’s wildlife and wild places. We had a fantastic response, with over 500 entries submitted. Below, you can read the entry from our junior winner, 16-year old Alexandra Yates. 

Motherhood

by Alexandra Yates, aged 16

Deep inside the forest, the earliest signs of blackberries are beginning to emerge: small clusters of yellowed fruit, gradually turning pink. It will be months before they are at their fat, purplish best, and soon after that the bushes will grow heavy with flies, while lower down in the undergrowth, badgers and pine martens pluck the fruit from its brambles with daggered teeth. The village children will come here, too, clutching in their chubby fingers borrowed plastic pots and the promise to bring home enough for a crumble; their mouths and fingers will be stained crimson and their wrists will boast the thorny wrath of the bushes’ defensive pricks.

The thought of fruit has made me hungry and I pick a spot by the foot of a birch to eat my lunch; tin-foiled sandwiches and an apple. The harsh crinkle of unfolding foil is unnaturally loud and I endeavour to make little noise as I eat, hoping some of the wildlife will emerge to accompany me.

I don’t notice her straight away. It is only as I take the first bite of my apple that I spot the pair of sharp, inquisitive black eyes. She is deep in undergrowth and her body no more than a shadow; too big to be a squirrel, too small to be a deer. She hasn’t noticed me; her eyes dart from tree to tree with almost aggressive persistence, searching.

A nearby rustle scares her and she leaps forwards, somewhat inelegantly, into the sun. Sharp snout, large ears, honeyed crest; this is a pine marten, and a beautiful one at that. Without warning, she stands, front legs hanging before her. Everything from her keenly assured gaze to her mouth in a somehow constant snarl is carnivorous – I have read about her many times, her unique ability to catch squirrels, her fondness for lamb, her opportunistic resourcefulness. I have also read that she will rarely come out in daytime, and wonder if she has babies hidden nearby; yes, that’s right, she births in late spring.

She is no more than fifteen feet from me, but so concealed by dense thicket that she is still entirely unaware of my watching her. Her nose twitches, and bright eyes continue to dart. I am struck by her almost folkloric rarity, and am overcome by a strange sense of intrusion, like I am breaking some untold rule by watching her, such is her beauty. Yet there is also a familiarity in this most primitive form of motherhood; what is more natural, more common, more innocent than the desire to provide for one’s children? In her watchfulness I see my own paternal fears reflected; in her vigilance my own labour. Perhaps the only real difference between man and animal is a self-imposed one – the righteousness that forms our supposed intellectual superiority. For in the pine marten’s eyes is an awareness, a self-recognition, which I cannot match: she is acutely conscious of her role in this rugged Scottish wilderness, of her power as predator. She possesses an assurances envied by centuries of philosophers; here is an animal who knows her purpose, and how many people can say that?

Her tail now twitches, long and practically plumate, as she stands. There is something very meerkat-like about her alertness, the polarity of the serene quiet expressed by her body and the incessant motion of her gaze, simultaneously predatorial and protective.

She sees me at last; there is no pause of recognition as she instantly darts, disappearing into undergrowth as quickly as she emerged. As mother returns to her litter, I too stand, and as I walk, I hope for her sake that the blackberries are ripened early.

Read the entries from our other two junior finalists:

• Into the Wild… by Olivia Phillips
• Wild with Grief by Eileen Page