'On one of these outings we came across a whooper swan which had died en route to its summer grounds in the Arctic. Visible from some distance away, a white rag on the bright green turf, it was lying with its neck extended and its yellow beak pointing north like a way sign. On some impulse we opened its wing, its right wing, and held it outstretched. It was astonishing: a full metre of gleaming quartz-white, a white cascade. You could understand at once how these creatures make the journeys they do; its wing had been formed under the wind's tutelage, formed by and for the wind.
But we are not creatures of the wind; we are frayed and weather-worn. In every outing, every conversation, every plan, the wind has to be admitted and negotiated with, or discussed behind its back, like a teenager who'd gone off the rails.'
240.
