Ring of Bright Water

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Graham has been trying for years to write a novel about the Marsh Arabs; however, after seeing the baby otters playing, he takes pen and paper and begins to write about Mij and what the otter has taught him about himself. Mij's inquisitive and adventurous nature leads him some distance from the cottage to a female otter with whom he spends the day. Ignorant of danger, he is caught in a net and nearly killed. The humans find him and help him recover. Graham spends a significant amount of time drawing Mij, but realises that to show the true agility of the otter he must draw it underwater. He builds a large tank out of old windows so that he can do this. Gavin Maxwell, ensconced in a house on the beautiful coast of Scotland, decides to keep an otter as a pet - at any cost. And costs there are - financial, emotional, and (for the otters) existential. the Sargassum Sea features in another of my blog posts. Perhaps the disappearance of vast abundance of eels there has also contributed to the ‘depraved’ abundance of seaweed that’s now threatening to deoxygenate the ecosystem. The subsequent two books break down the façade a little and I think it's a shame that most people just read the first and accept it at face value. It does get a little depressing and self pitying though. It's also only really in the final book that he starts accepting some personal responsibility for events. Up until that point almost everything that goes wrong is due to someone else.

Descriptions of the repeated capture of wild-population animals and their subsequent illness and death caused by Maxwell's negligence and unpreparedness ran abundant. And yet he still promoted getting animals because they were cute or pretty. Just get another dog, dude. But since then I’ve got a very different view of him. The fact that he was, by literally all accounts, an extremely unpleasant man, I think is neither here nor there. It’s more what I now feel about his writing about animals, and his treatment of animals. I feel that his legacy has really been quite toxic…” Into this bright, watery landscape Mij moved and took possession with a delight that communicated itself as clearly as any articulate speech could have done," he wrote. "The waterfall, the burn, the white beaches and the islands; his form became the familiar foreground to them all."' [6]

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a b Field, Marcus (13 July 2014). "Gavin Maxwell's Bitter legacy". The Independent. Archived from the original on 2 December 2014 . Retrieved 18 November 2014.

I was nervous to read this book because I'm very sensitive to animal welfare and completely against animals in captivity. I won't even keep a fish. When I started reading I wondered if I'd actually finish it because it's written in old English which is sometimes hard to follow. But once the otters were introduced I was hooked. What fabulous, intelligent and wonderful creatures. What pleasure our Creator must have taken in creating them. I am officially obsessed. Maxwell wrote so descriptively that it feels like you're there playing with them. I laughed (a lot!), cried and read with nervous anticipation as well as glee. What does stand out, though, much as it did in Maxwell’s memoir of childhood, The House of Elrig, is his attitude toward animals. What is clear now, but I don’t think was to the child me, is that Maxwell is focused on individuals. He loves Mijbil and Edal deeply and fully. But he’s not really concerned with animals more broadly – or, if he is, only in a somewhat selfish way. The very way he acquires the otters is fraught with risk – for them. Even he admits, in the end, that his very pursuit of exotic pets supports and instigates a cruel, brutal trade that causes many of them to die. It’s a fact that stands out to my adult view from the beginning. As a child, I was no wiser than he, and was simply mesmerized by the otters. Now, some of it is horrible. Kathleen Raine, manuscript poem, included in ‘The Written Word’: a speech delivered at the annual luncheon of the Poetry Society (1963). Are you still in touch with the Bright Water Visitor Centre? What do you think Maxwell would have made of its existence?The first time I read Ring of Bright Water must have been the 1980s. I can’t have been more than an early teenager, as evidenced by the faint impression of algebra indented in the book’s front cover, which I must have leant on during homework. It’s in tatters now, the glue of the binding falling away like dandruff from the spine. Island of Dreamsis about Boothby's time living there, and about the natural and human history that surrounded him; it's about the people he meets and the stories they tell, and about his engagement with this remote landscape, including the otters that inhabit it. Interspersed with Boothby's own story is a quest to better understand the mysterious Gavin Maxwell.