the gulls' guffaws

The herring gulls were raucous in the dawn. Their full open-throated guffaws had me out of bed. Get up ! The sun is risen ! Go west and follow its ascent into the day. Climb the upward arc.

West is Port Glasgow. As the train entered the station it was cotton-balled in mist. I couldn't see the sun never mind follow it. On the platform the gulls' guffaws came wheeling from on high. Three oystercatchers peep peep panic-flew, shadows in the mist.
Today was about the climb and there is no climb like Barr's Brae. 75 degree incline straight up. Hundreds of stairs cutting through the hill straight to the top.
I grew up halfway up another brae in the town. All my life there's been a climb. A climb home from Primary school. A climb to High school. Off we went like pack mules. Up and up and up. Always the steep upward incline. Even today I live at the top of a steep hill. The school I work at is over a century old and has 3 steep flights of stairs to where I teach. I think I was born to have to climb.
So I climb Barr's Brae. The sun begins to burn through the mist. I take off two layers of clothing. The town begins to lose its shroud. At the top I reach the sun in sparkling blue. Some mist remains but it is below, still a held breath on the surface of the river. I continue to climb Douglie Hill.

Then everything starts to lift. A distant fence post becomes a buzzard suddenly flashing its wings and taking to the sky. All around me skylarks are spring crazed. Their whirring beeps and lilting trills raise my eyes across the fields to the unfurling mist on the river, to the Argyll hills keeking through.
It is not long until the mist is going-gone and I have reached the summit of my climb just as the sun passes its apex. It is all down hill from here. So, I rest awhile then head onwards to the road.
On the main road I find some humping toads every so slowly crossing it. Cars come intermittently at speed and just miss them. I am in a fix as to what to do. I wonder if I should somehow lift them to the other side. Then another car flies around the bend and I stare at the pair of them waiting for a SPLAT! but the wheels just miss them by a midge's bawhair.
I don't know what to do and each time I watch their near death I feel my heart catch. I'm terrified to look yet compelled that I cannot turn away. I decide to leave them to their fate.
Skylarks are still trilling the landscape with the joy of life renewed. I try not to think about the toads. I pass a field of lambs and bleat away to them. One of them looks at me and answers. I bleat again. It starts to head towards me until mama ewe sees what it is doing and goes over and butts it back to where it was. She turns and bleats at me something too offensive to type here.
The rest of the walk was just sun kissed and happy being out among these fields behind the town. Streams were burbling away. Pheasants screeched their staccato call, a cough that couldn't be satisfied. Finches and tits peekabooed in and out of the hedgerows. Corbids were everywhere: in the fields, the air, the trees.
Finally coming down the hill I reached the house I grew up in and sat out back and had a beer and my tea al fresco. My face was flushed with sun and wind and the day's climb. Circling above the noise of goldfinches and blackbirds came a lone gull guffawing directly overhead. I listened, feet up, and smiled in recognition.