ABSTRACT

Introduction In the summer of 2013, I was lucky enough to be part of a research trip that involved sailing around the Western Isles of Scotland. It was a transformatory experience in many ways, not least because, a few days into the voyage, I developed extreme longsightedness and could no longer see to read or sew. So many were the seascapes, wildlife sightings, changing colours of a waxing and waning moon, glimpses of magical light creeping around the edges of the sky, that my optical lenses fixed in long-view mode. Close work in books, with needle and thread, on a computer – the things that dominate so many hours of so many of my days – were shuffled unceremoniously by my body’s optics into a back room. And the door closed firmly behind them. With it, my life was shown up for its relentless myopic bias, for the dominance within it of things close to eye – things I could now no longer see to do. Life then became different for me. I took the eyes’ cue (what else could I do?) and started to look long and look far, to look to the ‘offing’ – the physical place that is the distant part of the sea.