Climbing a sea stack

Text 1: Above the Birds, by Kieran Moss

An original contemporary blog.

To reach the stack you have to swim. There is no other way. It stands forty metres off the headland, a tower of red sandstone a hundred metres high, its feet in the Atlantic and its head in a permanent cloud of seabirds, and between it and the mainland is a channel of green water that sucks and heaves even on a calm day. We swam it in wetsuits, towing our ropes in a dry bag behind us, and hauled ourselves out onto a ledge slimy with weed, gasping, laughing, already exhausted.

The rock was not what I had hoped. From the cliff it had looked solid; close up, it was soft and crumbling, layered like a stale cake, and every handhold had to be tested twice before I trusted it. Some came away in my fingers. Little showers of grit pattered down onto Sam, belaying below, who swore at me steadily and creatively for the next twenty metres.

Halfway up, we entered the birds. I had not understood how many there would be. Fulmars sat on every ledge, and as I came level with each one it opened its beak and spat a stream of foul orange oil at me, with perfect accuracy, from a metre away. Kittiwakes screamed. Guillemots stood packed shoulder to shoulder like commuters on a platform, staring. The smell of guano was so thick it felt like a substance you could lean on.

The last ten metres were the worst. The rock overhung slightly, and the wind, which had been a breeze at sea level, now came round the top of the stack in fists. I remember my right leg trembling uncontrollably, the way a sewing machine needle jumps, and the sudden, ridiculous memory of my mother telling me to be careful on the stairs.

And then my hand found the top, and it was grass. Soft, ordinary grass, with a few pink flowers in it, a hundred metres above the sea. I lay on my back and laughed until Sam arrived, and then we both lay there, stinking of fish oil, watching the birds wheel beneath us.

Explore how Kieran Moss uses language and structure to describe climbing the sea stack.

Support your ideas by using relevant subject terminology.