One of the delights and I can think of no more suitable word of the bivvy (which an incredulous passerby once described with an air of some distaste is ‘sleeping outdoors in a plastic bag’) is the dawn. Mornings like the one in the photo here have me swearing never again to sleep in a house ( which is, as the poet Gary Snyder put it ‘ a box to cage the biped in’.) This is a very early morning view on Mull of a fairly typical view of an otter. It is the long object above the rocks and directly below the T in my watermark. Most otter sightings in Britain are like this if you are lucky. A long series of ripples in the water, the faint swell of the head of the river god, and an eel spine arch to the rudder flick of the tail, as it dives again to disappear. A god of water, a riverine imp sliding under the surface into mystery to elude us like the beast itself.