It was Annie Dillard, the American writer, who said “no people, no significance” meaning, I think, that it is only we who can perceive significance. There is another way to look at it – that human presence in a landscape can add significance for us. I was reflecting on this whilst reading back over some notes I made on Bardsey Island this summer. I pulled out the following from a day in July:

Sitting in the sun against the wall of our cottage I tuned in to what I could hear: melodramatic wailing from seals, all ‘woe is me for I am a lost soul’; a smart male stonechat on the fence opposite has a ‘chack-chack’ call like beach pebbles colliding, interspersed with rusty squeaks – with his orange breast stuck out and feet apart he looks like an amiable grocer passing the time of day; piping oystercatchers – they sound so brainless; the textured throaty bleat of a ewe, just twice, is laden with context for me – Wales, hill-country, home; glassy twittering of meadow pipits along with the soft intimate calls between linnets is the common tongue here, the daily gossip; and behind everything is the surging hiss of the sea and felt-sound of grass shifting in the breeze.

 Nils (my grandson) found a little owl in Nant Valley. It yelled at us from a hole in a gorse bush, then advanced to a nearer fence post and then one nearer still – a ball of fluffed out indignation. Its lemon yellow bill and irises framed large black pupils, which stared relentlessly at us, furious at the intrusion. I presume it had a brood nearby as it continued to harass us until we were 100 m away.

 A runner from the bird observatory passed by with a panic message “Basking shark if you are quick”. I ran and arrived puffing heavily, just in time to get a glimpse through the telescope of two sharp black fins (dorsal and tail) cutting through the water. I thought of them as ‘ominous’ despite other-time images of gentle plankton gulping creatures.

 Ambling back along the track I admired the wayside flowers: cats-ear, bartsia, bell heather in magenta cushions, yarrow, knapweed, silverweed of the purest yellow. Gorse seeds were popping loudly in the heat.

 The moon was rising as we watched, lifting above the shoulder of the mountain. It was huge, a day off full, and silver – a priceless glittering coin. As we turned away we saw the ‘Bardsey bat’ – a lone pipistrelle that has taken up residence recently, probably in one of the buildings.

 In the early hours thee was the mother and father of all light shows in the western sky: sheet lightning bursting out every few seconds from all round the purple sky, sometimes underscored by the precision strikes of forked lightning. The strange thing was that it was largely silent, just the odd roll of thunder – the rain came later. The planet was flexing its muscles and the vastness of it made human concerns seem puny. At dawn the moon was poised low over the sea, butter yellow now with a golden trail stretching from horizon to shore across a flat-calm sea.

A sense of harmony, between humankind and nature is deeply satisfying to people sensitised to such things; even more satisfying for some than untouched nature. The latter often evokes awe whereas the former comes with a sense of well being. Stone walls, smoke from a chimney or grazing cattle can add something to a landscape. On Bardsey visitors often remark upon this sense of harmony for, although it is a nature reserve, it doesn’t feel quite like one because it is also a place where people live and work, farm, fish for a living and holiday, which means buildings, boats, livestock and so on. There are, of course, all sorts of constraints, frustrations, hard graft and tolerances that go in to making this work – which is a whole other story. Sitting in the sunshine on the terrace of the bird observatory next morning I jotted down some of the factors that help produce this harmony for visitors to the island:

 

You are hard pushed to spend any money here.

Children can be safely feral.

Nobody knows the time.

You must walk everywhere – there are no cars.  

No Internet, phone signal, TV or even electric light.

There is nothing to do, but everything to grab your attention.

 This place has a tousled unkempt look, which is a complement to all who care for it. The breeze ruffles the blonde grass and carries the sweet summer fragrance of lady’s bedstraw. The hiss of the sea is the islands tinnitus. Bardsey is much more than the sum of its parts – a mystery that is well worth attending too.

It seems to me that although these experiences are about bearing witness, ‘recording significance’ Annie Dillard might say, they have at their heart a good deal about people interacting with nature. If I try to imagine Bardsey without the farming, fishing, birdwatchers, holiday folk and the marks they have made over the centuries it seems empty, somehow less significant.