Seasons on Harris

by David Yeadon

  And despite the fact that we were only e-mail colleagues, we greeted each other like long-lost friends. Angus laughed as he started to load the supplies onto the boat. And then laughed even louder at the sight of Harry, Adam’s longtime photographer-friend, lugging his enormous, antique-looking square box camera and tripod toward us. Harry’s relatively modest height made it appear he was being attacked by his massive contraption. But he seemed happy enough and reminded me immediately of Kenneth Branagh in his Henry V role, with his wild red hair, a face full of mischief and mirth, and a voice with that distinct Branagh burr.

  “So you’re not into digital, then, Harry?” was, I think, my first comment.

  Harry gave a rich, throaty laugh. “Oh no, this creature does just fine f’me—I like ’em big an’ a real handful!”

  “Don’t we all!” muttered Adam suggestively.

  “Okay, gentlemen,” shouted Angus. “Boarding time!”

  Within minutes Interceptor 42 gave its familiar throaty roar and Tarbert vanished in a frothy rainbowed spume.

  “Angus doesn’t mess around, does he?” grinned Harry, his Irish-red hair flailing. Definitely Henry V.

  We were soon out of the narrow channel between Harris and Scalpay and roaring across the open Minch. Watch out, Blue Men, I thought, you’ll not catch us today in this boat. And there, ten or so miles to our east, lay the bulky, whale-backed profiles of the Shiants bathed in warm morning sunshine. I’d hoped for fine weather but this was way beyond expectations. Not a single cloud broke the purity of the great blue dome above us.

  “Great stuff!” shouted Adam as spray rolled down his long nose. “Angus, could you do a circuit of the islands, I want David and Harry to see the cliffs on the east side.”

  “Already planned on that,” Angus shouted back from the wheel. “It’s been a long while since I’ve seen ’em too.”

  And what a sight they were. We made the crossing in less than half an hour. I’d never seen The Minch as calm and benevolent as this before. And as we slowed to edge our way along a dragon’s-back series of sharp-profile islets, the Galtachan, a bizarre prelude to the Shiants (Adam describes them as “the knobbled spine of a half-submerged creature”), the soaring basalt cliffs of the first of the two main islands, Garbh Eilean, came into view. Almost a match for the Giant’s Causeway in Northern Ireland or Fingal’s Cave on Staffa, thousands of hexagonal basalt columns rose together like organ pipes more than five hundred feet into the crystal-clear air. Adam refers to this half-mile-long “curtain of columns” as “the heroic heart of the Shiants,” and it is virtually continuous along the northern shore except for the enticing natural arch punched through by the ceaseless pounding of the waves at the northeastern corner of the island.

  Despite the appearance of great age and endurance, this almost perfect example of intrusive magma forcing its way to the surface from deep in the Earth’s core is less than 60 million years old. Compared to the staggering age of Harris’s 3.5-billion-year-old bedrock, this event occurred a few nanoseconds ago in geological time. But it was nevertheless an event of cataclysmic proportions—a vast upwelling of 1,200ºC magma along a tectonic plate rift that stretched from Greenland through Iceland, the Faeroes, and the Scottish isles to the tortured black granite of Lundy Island in England’s Bristol Channel, encompassing in its explosive outpourings Staffa and Antrim’s Giant’s Causeway.

  And, just as on St. Kilda, a panoply of seabirds here of a dozen or more different species whirled and dived and spun slowly on the thermals and perched on ledges like little platoons of black-and-white-clad soldiers on parade. And once again there seemed to be no panic, no protest over our presence in their self-contained world of flight—just a kind of blithe acceptance with maybe a touch of curiosity, particularly on the part of the shags and puffins.

  I had the impression that this may have been a first-time experience for Harry as he stood at the rail, mesmerized. Adam smiled and eased up beside us.

  “Fantastic, isn’t it,” he murmured.

  “Utterly unbelievable,” said Harry.

  “I had no idea…,” I said, mouth open in awe.

  “Ah, but I should bring you here in the height of summer when the flocks are at their fullest. You can barely see the sky for wings…”

  Harry nodded and smiled, more than content with today’s aerial wonderworld. But as he was such an avid photographer, I was surprised he wasn’t using a smaller camera to capture the scene. There was obviously no chance, with the wallowing of Angus’s boat, of dragging out his mammoth box. However, he seemed happy just to stand, watch, and grin his endearing grin at whatever this season offered to show him.

  I always remember Adam’s emotive—but perceptive—description of his seasonal experiences here. It was one of those passages that first drew me to his book:

  Spring here is always beautiful…for its hesitations and incongruities laid alongside each other without comment or contest…The new lambs all have the same little bony body, the same strange combination of fragility and resilience, the same jumpy immediacy…It is the season of discontinuity. The other three have a sort of wholeness to them…Think of the summer and what drifts into your mind—or mine anyway—is languor, the breath of the grass banks on Eilean Mhuire where the thick summer growth stretches unbroken from cliff to cliff, the length of the days, the sheer extent of summer; autumn hangs on like an old tapestry, brown and mottled, a slow, long slide into winter, unhurried in its seamless descent into death; and winter itself, of course, has persistence at its heart, a long, dogged grimness which gives nothing and allows nothing…one long, wet, dark, hard day after another.

  We eased on southward down the cliffs of Garbh Eilean, then passed the narrow, boulder-strewn spit of land across to the second island of Eilean an Tighe with its own magnificent contingent of soaring basalt column cliff and bird colonies. We got a brief glimpse of Adam’s cottage, nestled above the beach and the landing spot on the west side. To the east rose the bold profile of a third island—Eilean Mhuire—which Adam described to us as “a vast guillemot colony in the summer and amazingly rich in remnants of settlements, but we’re not sure of their age because they were built mainly of turf. There’s not much available stone over there. And it must have been a hard place to live—there’s no real protection against the Minch winter gales. Definitely brass monkey territory out there!”

  Puffin

  Despite his age and sophistication, Adam seemed to possess an endearingly boyish nature—rich in giggles and guffaws and always ready to spot Monty Pythonesque situations zinging with zany ironic humor.

  We rounded the southern tip of the Eilean an Tighe—appropriately named House Island—and headed north toward the cottage. But suddenly, as we stood by the rail, looking for an anchoring spot to launch the dinghy for the transfer to our new home, Adam’s face lost its youthful appearance.

  “Something’s wrong,” he gasped. “Very wrong.”

  Harry and I looked at him and then at the shore. Everything appeared fine to us. The little whitewashed cottage sat prim and perky above the rock-strewn beach, its bright scarlet roof gleaming in the noon sun. The two chimneys were intact and the grasses around the cottage had been cropped to a velvety fuzz by the ever-avaricious sheep.

  “It’s incredible!” Adam half-shouted. “The land’s been ripped away…at least forty feet in front of the house has gone. And what the heck are those bloody great boulders doing around the door…and what’s the door doing open?!”

  Angus came out from the galley and stared along with him.

  “Ah, right—looks like y’got the storm, Adam…terrible four days…near hurricane conditions a while back. Huge tidal surges—almost tsunamis! Made a real mess of things…the trees at Lews Castle were decimated…power was out for ages, roofs ripped open…even some people killed down in the Uists.”

  Adam didn’t—couldn’t—respond. He just kept staring at the unfamiliar landscape of the new beach with swathes of strata and rocks freshly expos
ed to the elements. He remained silent as we loaded the supplies on the dinghy and motored across to the shore. Then he scampered ahead and rushed into the cottage. We could hear his cry of outrage: “Good God—what a bloody mess!”

  And it was indeed a bloody mess. We could now clearly see the tide-wrack line marking the high point of the surge. It had reached at least halfway up the cottage walls, smashing in the door, churning bunk beds, tables, chairs, lamps, pots, pans, and anything else moveable and leaving them in chaotic piles against the far walls of the two tiny rooms.

  “No problem…,” said the gallant Harry, with a half-convincing smile. “We’ll have it all back together in no time.”

  Adam nodded, but his eyes were blank as if in a stupor. However, Harry was right. After Angus had helped us unload the supplies and set off back to Harris, we got to work, sweeping, cleaning, replacing the furniture, and lighting a roaring fire to try to dispel the damp, musty, rotten-seaweed smell that permeated the place.

  “Cup a tea?” asked the ever-cheerful Harry.

  “The heck with tea. Get the Scotch out,” said Adam.

  We compromised and enjoyed both. And in less than an hour we had not only transformed the place into a reasonably comfortable living space but also rebuilt the wrecked iron-railing sheep fank at the side of the cottage.

  “What about these boulders?” I asked Adam, pointing to four enormous basalt monoliths that the tsunami-like tidal surge had dumped haphazardly around the front of the cottage.

  “Leave ’em. They’re our souvenirs…can you imagine the strength of that storm to move things as big as this so easily—and so far!”

  “They deserve a photograph.” Harry laughed as he set about preparing his monstrous contraption.

  “Doesn’t it come with one of those shelves for a magnesium flash?” I asked facetiously.

  Harry ignored me, as indeed he should have.

  Adam laughed. “And surely you’re going to vanish under a black shroud or something…”

  Harry ignored him too and labored on, trying to ensure his tripod, almost as large as himself, was suitably level.

  The tea, the Scotch, the revived humor, and the warm sun eventually restored our collective mood. We’d done a good job of making the place habitable, although Adam decided he’d erect his own pup tent well away from the battered cottage.

  “It’s best I do…for all our sakes,” he explained. “I’m the world’s loudest snorer.”

  “Ah—a true flubberblaster!” I said as he began to unravel the blue nylon. “That looks brand-new.”

  “It is brand-new!” he grunted. “Can you believe it…they lost all my luggage somewhere on the flight up from London via Glasgow to Stornoway! I had to buy everything new in town…”

  “Do I sense more jinxes on this little adventure: your lost luggage, my lousy ankle, a drowned cottage, a decimated beach…and Harry…you had any jinxes so far?!”

  Harry chuckled. “Not yet, but I’m sure I’ll think of something, especially if you ask me to cook.”

  Actually, Harry was a fine cook, as we found out much later that day. But first there was some serious exploring to be done.

  “Dave, y’sure you’ll be okay with that ankle?” asked Adam.

  “I didn’t come all this way just to houseclean,” I said, and hoped my wonky appendage would survive cliff clambering and the like. Shades of Yeats floating about: “Things fall apart: the center does not hold…”

  But, all in all, things went pretty well. Adam was a remarkable guide to his own island and its boundless layered complexities of botany, history, ornithology, etymology, and archaeology all wrapped eloquently in his own very personal insights and interpretations.

  I was hoping, initially at least, for a pleasant stroll up what Adam called the “Central Valley” of the island, teeming with lumpy remnants of ancient occupancies—possibly encompassing Neolithic, Bronze Age, and Iron Age people; the Vikings; the Clan crofters; and nowadays only the occasional visiting shepherd—a span of almost five thousand years from 3000 BC to the mid-eighteenth century. “There are,” he told us, “armies of ghosts here.”

  But my newfound friend had other plans and set off instead up the near-vertical rock face behind the cottage. “You get more of a general view of things up here,” he said, back to his cheerfully energetic self. “Oh—and be careful of loose rocks and whatnot. A young boy was killed just about here a few years back when he dislodged a huge boulder near the top. He was crushed in the fall. Horrible…”

  Great! I thought. What’s he trying to do? Tempt even more jinxes upon us?

  But we clambered up anyway, without dislodging anything, onto the breezy top and edged our way across the thick grasses to the precipitous fringe of sea cliffs, more than four hundred feet high and teeming with birds. Chaplinesque puffins were the star comedic attractions at first, flapping their odd little stunted wings frantically but somehow maintaining an ordered formation of flight over the frisky wave tops.

  “The Lewismen used to sail over and catch puffins here by the score,” said Adam. “They were a popular delicacy, boiled up into a lovely rich stew. Or roasted. That’s the way I like them best…”

  “You’ve eaten puffin here?!” Harry gasped.

  “Of course. From time to time. Boiled, roasted, smoked, salted, and stuffed!”

  “And are you planning to add these to our menu tonight?” he asked anxiously.

  “No, no—worry not, Harry. It’s illegal now.”

  “I’m glad to hear that. I think our frozen supermarket lamb will do just fine.”

  “Chicken,” grunted Adam.

  “No, lamb,” said Harry.

  “I was referring to your mental attitude!”

  “Well—puffins to you too!”

  Strolling slowly southward along the cliff edge, we spotted just about all of the primary species of seabirds on the Shiants—razorbills and guillemots (close cousins of the puffin), skinny, black shags (small versions of cormorants), fulmars (we watched them nervously, all too aware of their notorious habit of spitting out vile, reeking vomit at unwanted intruders), gannets, kittiwakes, and various other species of gulls. We’d heard from Angus that sea eagles, with their condorlike, eight-foot wingspans, had also been seen here recently, but we were never lucky enough to spot one.

  “My favorites are still the geese,” said Adam. “The only occupants really during the colder months. The barnacles, sort of a more delicate version of the Canada goose—and the graylags. I call them my winter spirits. Very sociable in nature. They seem to hate being separate from each other and the flock. Sometimes there are hundreds all collected together in one place—white chests and heads, black neck and back, and beautifully subtle tones of gray and white in the wing feathers. And they’re always eating, tugging at the grass, and leaving extremely generous deposits behind them. ‘Loose as a goose’ is a very appropriate expression! And a little ungainly too—wobbly—on the ground. But when they take off en masse—now, that’s a truly wondrous sight—so effortlessly, so easily forming into those V shapes, as cohesive as…as a single wing…There’s a real emptiness here when they leave and before the other birds start to float in…a spooky silence…otherworldly—which ironically is one of the various translations of the word ‘shiant.’”

  Adam’s deep knowledge of and love for these islands allowed him to free-associate gleefully in his commentaries. A brief summation of Viking history here in the ninth century and the observation that these islands possess a microcosm of the whole flow and horror of Highland history would lead to a discussion of the Neolithic world, and a description of the discovery here of a golden Bronze Age necklace, or torc, possibly dating from around 1200 BC. Then would follow a digression about a week spent in the cottage as a schoolboy with his father, Nigel, a few tongue-very-much-in-cheek warnings about island ghosts and sithean, and an outspoken diatribe against the “lordism” and “lairdic antics” of some of the “new money” landowners who had recently purchased cla
n estates on Harris and Lewis.

  He seemed particularly intrigued with Compton Mackenzie’s occupation of the islands after 1925, and it was indeed fascinating to realize we were staying in the house he had drastically renovated himself and which was featured, stylistically at least, in his two-volume novel The North Wind of Love.

  “Not one of his best works by a long way,” said Adam. “But his affection for what he calls the ‘Shiel Islands’ comes through so strongly through his main character—a playwright—modeled on himself, of course! As with the primary theme of the book—the creation of an independent Scotland—which was behind much of Mackenzie’s political activities.”

  “Wasn’t he also very involved in protecting the fishing grounds for Scottish trawlers?” I asked.

  “Definitely. Very aggressively. He seemed to thrive on the allure of islands and their spirit of strong independence. And he lived on so many—Barra, Skye, Herm, and Jethou in the Channel Islands, Capri, and others. But D. H. Lawrence, for some reason, took offense at all this—what he calls ‘I-island’ self-importance. In fact he even wrote a parody of Mackenzie, The Man Who Loved Islands, showing how the neurotic need to ‘make a world of his own’ ultimately ends up with ‘a beautiful private landscape dead and sterile under drifts of egotistical snow’!”

  “So—no love lost between those two famous writers.”

  “No—Mackenzie never forgave him…although ironically, he did a similar thing to Alasdair Alpin MacGregor.”

  “Yeah, I remember that story. A cruel obliteration of that master of the purple prose! But maybe living on islands can do that to you. You get back to basics—no hyperbole, no pseudo anything…you see things more clearly…all the pretenses and all our petty self-glorifying arrogances…”

  “Interesting idea,” mumbled Adam. “Maybe that’s why I was so nervous writing Sea Room…everyone seemed to feel they knew the place better than me—despite the fact I’ve been coming here for decades and my Viking family ancestors possibly once owned the whole region…I’m still seen as an outsider by many…and maybe I am…”