The post A Little New Year’s Baraka first appeared on OliverTheWorld.
]]>Ever since we boarded the ferry from Algeciras, Spain to Tangier, Morocco back in November, Ryan and I have been batting around the notion of posting some form of seasonal salutation. The earliest manifestation was, of course, a Christmas card, but that got lost in the shuffle and soon morphed into a New Year’s greeting. Well, we are now nigh on mid-January, the New Year is in full effect, and we are fashionably late yet again (does being waylaid on a Moroccan Atlas mountain ‘road’ after dark with two screaming kids count as an excuse??).
In our defense, it is easy to see how it happened. Over the past two months, we have fallen in love with this country; the people and her culture, the call to prayer, the donkey carts and carpet salesmen, the quiet mountains, villages, desert sunsets and star-filled night skies that loomed large over riad terraces. It seems Morocco has lulled us into a somnolent anti-blogging stupor what with its labyrinthine medinas and endless breaks for mint tea. Without really realizing it, the last year slid gracefully out as 2014 took us up in a flurry of drum circles and Berber ballads.
Recently, someone we love dearly gave us a tough time for not posting enough pictures (of the kids, mind you; no one cares for our old, ugly mugs), so we thought we would raise them one and post an ENTIRE PHOTOGRAPHIC YEAR IN REVIEW, just so everyone can witness the trajectory of Ollie and Kendley’s evolution from little monsters into slightly larger little monsters. This is the best way we can share our wonderful memories and experiences with you. We hope you enjoy them as much we did.
Just like life, traveling is not easy and it is not always fun. That said, we would not trade our life and time spent exploring the world together as a family for anything. Not. One. Thing. Since we began traveling in 2009, everything about us has changed. The way we view the world and our perspectives on life, happiness, success, money and relationships have been shaped by the people we meet as we trudge the path towards our happy destiny. Sure, we don’t draw a paycheck nowadays, nor do we accumulate many worldly things, other than those that we can stuff/strap/balance on top of our little car. No one sends us an email at the end of the day to remind us of a job well done.
Instead, we get to spend 24 hours a day with our two children and each other. Mind you, this nomadic life does not come with a handbook or Cliff Notes (need to change a poopy diaper while astride a camel? Good luck with that!). Many days we have no idea of where we will sleep that night. Some days we navigate an entire city just to find the cheap eats, and then we have to attempt to use our limited vocabulary in the language just to assure our children that they are not in fact eating dromedary. There are SO many variables when it comes to our lifestyle, but one thing stays the same. We always have each other. As Ryan always says, ‘Our home is not one place, some box set high on a hill with a two-car garage. Not any more. It’s wherever the four of us are together.’
In 2013, we made less money than we have in the past 10 years, yet we were the happiest. We have learned that our happiness in no way directly correlates to financial or material gains. In fact, for us, the opposite is usually true. We do not measure success the way we used to. We have learned to enjoy the moments, the seconds, the scenery, and the people that we meet along our journey. We have made the choice to live this life because we are free. That knowledge fills us with joy and for us, that makes us richer than we have ever been before.
Last year we visited 12 countries, hundreds of cities and drove close to 9,000 miles (without a speeding ticket as of yet). 2013 was marked by many ups and downs, some of which are highlighted below:
With a fresh new year in front of us and Africa at our doorstep, Bismillah! We are immensely blessed. So of course it’s only fitting to end our New Year’s post with a solid Moroccan blessing to those we love all over the world. Hands over our hearts, we wish you Barakalaufik!!!! May God bless you and your family in 2014.
Here’s what we were up to in 2013:
January: Vienna, Austria; Prague, Czech Republic; Nuremburg, Frankfurt, Heidelburg, Black Forest, Germany; Annecy, Burgundy, France
February: Paris, France; Scotland
March: Scotland
April: Ireland & Northern Ireland
May: Normandy, Bordeaux, France; Northwestern Spain
June: Galicia, Spain, Northern Portugal
July: Portugal
August: Southern Portugal, Central Spain, Barcelona
September: Catalonia, Spanish Pyrenees, Andorra
October: Pyrenees, Valencia, Andalucía, Spain
November: Andalucía, Spain
December: Morocco
For all the polyglots out there, here is”Happy New Years” in the 10 different languages that made 2013 the fantastic year that it was.
German: Ein glückliches neues Jahr!
Czech: šťastný Nový rok!
French: Bonnes années!
Scots Gaelic: Bliadhna mhath ùr!
Irish Gaelic: Athbhliain faoi mhaise dhuit!
Galician: Feliz ano!
Portuguese Feliz Ano Novo!
Catalan: Feliç any nou!
Spanish: Feliz año nuevo!
Moroccan Arabic (Darija): Sana saâid!
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]]>The post The Sands of Harris first appeared on OliverTheWorld.
]]>“You’ll get off the boat in Lewis and you’ll say to yourself…wow, now that’s really something”. Clustered around their dinner table, our friend Davy’s eyes grew wide and round as he illustrated his point. Nodding her agreement, his wife Cheryl chimed in.
“Then you’ll get to the Isle of Harris and….”
Ryan and I leaned in a little closer, caught our breaths. Davy’s eyes closed momentarily and then suddenly flew open as he threw his hands up over his head, jumped up from the table and shouted.
“WOWWOWWWWWWWW!” Their cat, Inga, who had been patrolling the area for a handout, jumped nearly three feet straight in the air. Ryan and I lurched back in our seats.
It is precisely in this manner and environment in which we always seem to unearth the greatest destinations that we are so fortunate to come across in the course of our travels. It happens always in the company of good friends who incidentally, are locals. With eyes flashing, they whisper (or bellow) the names of these places as if they were sacred words. A prolonged silence nearly always follows.
“It’s that incredible, is it?” Ryan was calculating the driving mileage in his head, but I was ready to make the decision of where we would be off to next right there on the spot.
This was how we found ourselves, one week later, arriving at the village of Uig on the western corner of the Trotternish Peninsula, Isle of Skye, waiting to board the CalMac ferry that would cross the Hebridean Minch to the Isle of Harris in the Outer Hebrides. That was the plan; only it didn’t exactly play out that way.
The afternoon of our departure was a blustery one on Skye. Our little cottage on the Waternish had rattled all night in the wind, but we just assumed business as usual for a ferry service plying these far northern waters. We were shocked then to learn that our ferry had been postponed till very early the following morning, and, as a concession, we were granted IOUs for an evening meal. On the matter of procuring emergency accommodation so late in the day, we were left to fend for ourselves. I was practically blinded by the Calvinist fire in the ferry terminal attendant’s eyes as she matter-of-factly deadpanned, “tis an act of God, my dear” while I glared at her from across her desk.
We somehow managed with the help of a sympathetic local inn-keeper, who, when he heard our story, marveled at our gumption, but quickly pointed out that long-term travel with two children under the age of 6 years wouldn’t exactly be considered his cup of tea. At that particular moment, with the prospect of taking two kids down for a supper of reheated scraps at the little longshoreman’s pub on the wharf, followed by five hours of sleep prior to boarding a ferry in the frozen pre-dawn darkness, I was finding it difficult to disagree with him.
The following morning, semi-conscious and quivering under the weight of of four cups of coffee apiece, we finally steered into Tarbert, the port town situated on the isthmus connecting Lewis and Harris, which are the two disparate parts of essentially one island. Early morning sunlight of the like we had not seen in weeks back on mainland Scotland streamed into our van as we climbed up the road leading up over Harris’ escarpment to the western side of the island. Innumerous navy-blue lochans, many no larger than a swimming pool, were scattered throughout a lunar landscape of Lewisian gneiss, some of the oldest exposed rock in the world. This strange countryside had served as the backdrop for the scene that took place on the surface of Jupiter in Stanley Kubrick’s 2001: A Space Odyssey, and it was easy to see why. But then, amid all that rock, there they were, swirling westward and melting into a dozen shades of blue. The beaches.
By design, neither Ryan nor I consider ourselves top-drawer folks. Certainly when it comes to matters such as where we choose to lay our heads at night or the way in which we arrive at our intended destinations, we are happy to entertain any and all comers. But in the matters of a beach, we hold fast to a certain standard. In Western Australia, we once ventured 1,000 miles across a wasteland of abandoned iron mines to reach a nirvana of white sand at Cape LeGrande. In Thailand, it took us two weeks to discover the palm-fringed sliver of solitude at Koh Kradan. My favorite beach in the Caribbean happens to be one on the island of Vieques that only very recently opened to the public when the American military base packed up and moved on, leaving behind a sanctuary accessed solely via a 45 year-old jeep track through a jungle. For the right beach, we will always go the distance.
And here we were. The white arcs around Nisabost, Seilabost, Borve, Horgabost, Scarista and Luskentyre were studded with bleached limpet and little neck shells; the same that would eventually succumb to the forces of the sea and time to become the fine white grains that blinded us that early morning of our arrival. For seven days we strode up and down dunes that wild Atlantic winds and currents had pushed high above the strand; had carved great sand valleys and drawn long spits out into the sea. The dunes had been colonized by plants seen nowhere else in Scotland, were great sand pastures that, one day, with the coming of spring, would leap alive with the brightness of wild flowers. Every second of those precious days was spent gazing out from the machair, those grassed-over dunes, where we watched the tide pull in across the sands and release.
It was in the machair that we came upon Tony and Isla, the Highland and Eriskay ponies that belonged to the beautiful daughter of the couple from whom we hired our cottage on Luskentyre. I learned that Toby, fourteen hands, barrel-chested and whiter than the driven snow, was descended from the Queen’s own private stock and possessed the perfect temperament for long hacks on the beach, which our gracious hosts so kindly obliged me. Isla, barely more than a foal at her two years and yet unbroken, was content to chase us through the dunes, a dapple-gray shadow to our longer stride that whinnied after her companion as the sun dipped behind the offshore island of Taransay. In the evenings after a ride, both Oliver and Kendley clambered up from the freshwater burn where Ryan had watched them attempt to snare minnows with little nets, and shared in the task of grooming Toby’s flowing mane, tail and feathery fetlocks. Before the day was over, we were all flocked in the long, white hairs that the horse was gradually giving up for the season.
Some days we walked to what we perceived were the ends of the earth, and indeed the word Hebrides traces back to the ancient Norse “Havbrodoy”; ‘islands at the edge of the sea’.
At the Rubh An Teampull site on the tiny Toe Head Peninsula, we found evidence of prehistoric settlements in the toppled stones of a mesolithic (4,100 BC) midden that was built over by a 15th century chapel. With just two gables remaining to frame the sea, the only callers on that particular day were a handful of black-faced sheep and our inquisitive children. The farm track on the return led us past scores of charmingly disheveled Highland cows and their new spring calves.
Another foray brought us to the modest home and workshop of Donald John Mackay, who, with his champion good looks and endlessly clacking Hattersley loom, wove masterpieces of Harris Tweed. We learned that it was the handful of folk like Donald John who clung to the old traditions that made life on Harris so uniquely resilient amid a modernizing world. But while Harris’ remoteness made for its charm, it was also its greatest curse. Families had been abandoning the Hebrides for more than a century to find work on the mainland or on foreign shores, and thus Harris’ young people had become its single-most precious resource.
In many ways we spent our short time on Harris exploring and learning, nearly always in the sunlight of the gradually lengthening days and sometimes under the cover of a light, chilly, horizontal rain. We committed every inch of its shoreline to our collective memory, we caught and held each angle of the light as it fell away to the west and intensified the turquoise and mineral greens that flowed beyond the tidal flats. We absorbed as much history of its people as we could and carefully observed their rituals and their ways.
It was some of the happiest days our travels had afforded us in the seven months since we had left California, and indeed, we pondered and even inquired about stopping right then and there to make a home beside the sea. For now, such a notion is committed to our dreams, or perhaps to a future spent in a quiet place. So much is wonderful and new in the course of an adventure such as ours, and even when it isn’t; when the journey is long and gritty and the sleep less than plentiful; the thread of a memory of a place like Harris endures.
The post The Sands of Harris first appeared on OliverTheWorld.
]]>The post Over the Sea to Skye first appeared on OliverTheWorld.
]]>We approached the Isle of Skye cautiously on a morning when it was shrouded in a winter’s mist, carefully crossing the Kyle of Lochalsh via the long, cantilevered bridge that linked Scotland’s largest island to a dramatic corner of the mainland. Earlier, our drive had taken us from Ben Nevis and Fort William along the Great Glen until the road turned sharply west. As we descended the highlands towards the coast, the Five Sisters of Kintail flanked the darkly beautiful Glen Shiel all the way to the sea-loch of Duich. It was here that the Bonnie Prince Charlie first raised his standard for the House of Stuart, launching the ill-fated Jacobite Rising that would end with his defeat at Culloden. And it was into those very mists that he fled for his life, “over the sea to Skye”.
Just before we reached the bridge, we paused for tea where Eilean Donan castle hunkered over its sliver of an islet. Despite it being a 19th century reproduction of a 13th century stronghold originally conceived to ward off Viking intruders, it still packed its weight in iconic Highland muscle, and more than once Oliver was certain that he spied a dragon slurking around its curtain walls. From here, Skye was just beyond the bend in the road.
Once over the bridge, we knew to keep the ‘hills to our left’ until we passed around Portree, Skye’s modest commercial hub, and continue on to Dunvegan where an unmarked, single-track road would indicate our next right turn. We would know we had found the turn-off when came across the ‘Fairy Bridge’, named for the legendary doomed union between a fairy princess and a MacLeod clan chief that was said to have ended there. From there our only landmarks would be a series of abandoned sheep fanks (folds), and an overgrown windbreak that doubled as a bus stop.
The Waternish, Skye’s most lonesome peninsula, is where we happily made our home during the week we were in residence. Our little croft was nestled into the crook of land that bent sharply into a sea-loch and looked out to the to the uninhabited Ascrib islands. Every morning, a golden eagle wheeled around the cliffs outside our window and on the distant rocks by the shoreline below, shags arched their long necks over the clear waters of the bay. Pauline, a kindly neighbor, brought us fresh eggs and homemade marmalade from a croft down the road.
Most days, we scratched out our own self-guided tour of Skye. Mainly we walked and walked. Down sheep tracks that wound around Iron Age brochs (circular fortresses) and over rutted paths through the high moors to the Cuillan, an alpine range in miniature. Small hamlets and working crofts shared gorse-flecked hillsides with bed and breakfasts and artist studios that had been mostly shuttered for the winter. Black-faced sheep with spray-painted backsides regarded us with quizzical expressions while shreds of canvas that had once protected their hay bales from rain fluttered like banners where they had been caught against woven wire fences. The days in Skye’s northern latitudes were slowly growing longer, and here and there pockets of late afternoon light filtered through the skeins of mist to find us at the edges of a stony shorelines or silhouetted against black hills .
Skye is a large island with approximately 350 miles of convoluted coast. Its Gaelic name, An t-Eilean Sgitheanach, translates to The Winged Isle, after its two most prominent peninsulas: the Waternish and Trotternish. With only seven days to explore it thoroughly, we managed to visit many of its more famous landmarks and witness its incredibly varied topography, all of which I have endeavored to map out below. If you click on any of the icons, a short description will tell you what you’re looking at.
[mapsmarker layer=”2″]
Neist Point Pronounced “Neest”, Skye’s most westerly frontier features a crumbling lighthouse (built by none other than Robert Louis Stevenson’s grandfather) teetering on the edge of a striking headland called An t-Aigeach, or “the Stallion’s Head”. Neist is reputed to be the best place on Skye to spot dolphins, whales and (to our resident shark-hunter’s delight), basking shark.
Jann’s Cakes Ever tried banoffee pie? A made-in-heaven combination of creamy pudding, shortbread, banana and toffee. We shared a slice at Jann’s, a Dunvegan institution that showcases one woman’s remarkable baking talents, and were never the same again.
The Old Man of Storr To many who travel to Skye, “The Storr” is as emblematic an image as the very mist that enshrouds the isle. The 50-meter high pinnacle of freestanding igneous rock juts out of the rocky eastern slope of the Trotternish peninsula like some poor, weather-beaten hitchhiker’s thumb.
Kilt Rock & Mealt Falls Proceeding north along the Storr-Staffin road (A855), an enormous cliff comprised of columnar basalt is evidence of Skye’s more ‘recent’ geological history. 67 million years ago, super-heated magma squeezed through sedimentary layers of sandstone and slowly cooled, forming the vertical pattern of rock that resembled the pleats of a kilt. We were no strangers to this kind of formation as we witnessed it in several places throughout Iceland (along with obscure Roman ruins, seeking out columnar basalt has become one of my favorite diversions). Just before Kilt Rock, the Mealt Falls plunge 90 meters over the cliff directly into the Sound of Raasay.
Staffin Bay The gorgeous scallop of sandy shoreline near the eastern tip of the Trotternish Peninsula sports a long beach break that siphons its waves straight from the Hebridean Minch. Past the bay, some of Skye’s oldest history is recorded in a set of 165 million year old Hadrosaur footprints preserved on some flat rocks near the slipway. Although I dared Ollie to investigate, alas, the tide was up too high!
The Quiraing The backbone of the Trotternish peninsula is comprised of a volcanic escarpment that has been gutted and carved by glaciers, rivers and streams into a mysterious landscape of gullies, plateaus, and pinnacles. Standing at the pass near the top, the Quiraing is an eerie place of shadows and shapes that seems to be sliding away under the weight of the heavy mists that forever bear down upon Skye.
Waternish Peninsula Skye’s most lonesome peninsula is where we happily made our home during the week we were in residence. Our little croft was nestled into the crook of land that bent around Aros Bay.
The Cuillin Hills While the peninsulas of Skye resemble fingers that grasp at the sea, the Cuillins are the island’s ragged teeth. The Black Cuillins boast no less than twelve Munros (peaks over 3,000 feet) and are mainly composed of good, grippy gabbro (a coarse igneous rock), hence their attraction to mountaineers from all parts of the world. The Red Cuillins, so named for their granite composition that holds the light in just such a way, are slightly gentler in nature. However, given our recent wrong turn in Glen Coe and the rash of fatalities throughout the Highlands that winter, we left the snow-covered peaks to the seasoned mountaineers and instead took some nice photos of the fairy pools near Sligachan. We DO have two small kids in tow, after all.
Coral Beach At the end of the road that leads through Dunvegan onward to the tiny township of Claigan, a short, but boggy footpath through fields leads one to the Coral Beach, a pristine arc of white sand and shallow azure sea. Despite its beauty, the “coral” in Coral Beach is a misnomer. Rather, the sand is actually composed of tiny, sun-bleached and calcified fragments of a kind of algae called maerl. There is a very, very nice view from atop the little hill, Cnoc Mor a’Grhobain that abuts the beach, and even little feet can manage the climb!
Talisker Distillery It is certainly some form of mystical alchemy that facilitates the transformation of malted barley and fresh water from the spring at Carbost into one of the finest single malts in the world. As is the custom of several of the distilleries on Scotland’s islands, the Talisker malt captures the essence of peat smoke early in its process, and a dram or two is certainly enough to transport one to a faraway hearth near some wind-lashed shoreline.
Seafood from Isle of Skye Oysters Those who know me well know that I will go to great lengths to procure freshly hauled oysters that have been shucked on the spot. This little croft just up the hill from the distillery is just such a place. Paul is the resident oyster farmer on Skye and he does a swift trade with the Miyagi or Pacific variety that he raises in his own beds in Loch Harport on the western side of the isle. No frills here; just a bare counter, some lemon juice and a man with a knife. And a little bit of Tabasco. Heaven.
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]]>The post Take A Hike Series: The Hill Walkers first appeared on OliverTheWorld.
]]>“Climb the mountains and get their good tidings. Nature’s peace will flow into you as sunshine flows into trees. The winds will blow their own freshness into you, and the storms their energy, while cares will drop away from you like the leaves of Autumn.” So wrote John Muir, the Scotsman who will forever remain dearest to my heart. Despite his renown as the patron saint to our Sierra Nevadas and western forests back at home in California, this man cut his teeth and nursed his wild spirit on the hills and headlands of his native country for a short while before emigrating to the United States. So it goes without saying that we embraced the Western Highlands with gusto the moment Loch Leven and its attending peaks came into view. It was time to see just how much torque our hiking boots could manage.
Highlands Hike #1: Glencoe – Stob Coire nan Lochan
This walk began auspiciously with a visit to the helpful folk at the Ballachulish visitor’s center. Considering the two young children we were planning to pack in with us, it was recommended that we stick to more moderate hikes, and thus, the trail to the Lost Valley was suggested. It was here that the MacDonalds of Glen Coe hid their rustled cattle prior to their untimely demise at the hands of the Campbell mercenaries in 1692. From the little car park halfway up the glen, we anticipated a five-mile return walk that would cut us right between two of the Three Sisters, Beinn Fhada and Gear Aonach. It was a clear day and the heads of the mountains were all visible, Oliver was topped up and ready to scramble the path and Kendley was already soundly sleeping in the carrier on Ryan’s back. We crossed the footbridge over the river Coe and immediately made a wrong turn.
The path we followed up the south side of the glen seemed to be of sound construction with its improved boulders that had been fashioned into rough steps by centuries of hill-walkers. From the beginning, we were ascending and before long, the path arched up a steep scree-covered slope that dropped precipitously into a gorge below. I held Oliver tightly by the wrist and kept him to the slope-side of the path as we crossed a gravelly waterfall/mountain stream that appeared to have grown more voluminous with the warm day’s thaw. An hour of upward assault became two, and Oliver’s pauses for breathers became more and more frequent. I had neither a map nor a compass, and neither of us was carrying enough water for the demands of this hike; all unforgivable sins in the Highlands. Despite the crisp winter sunshine, these mountains were infamous for erratic shifts in weather, especially given that it was still only March. I turned to the north and looked down the way we had come up from the valley floor. The road back to Loch Leven had grown dark, having slid behind the rising shadow the Three Sisters cast on the north side of the glen. Above it, the serrated ridge of Aonach Eagach smoldered in the winter light.
“We have to be close to 2,500 feet, I’d imagine. Remember Poon Hill? We’ve been climbing twice as long as we did that morning from Ghorepani.” That hike, during our circuit of Nepal’s Annapurna Sanctuary, had evolved into a benchmark of sorts, and the 1,350 feet we had ascended in the 90 minutes before sunrise back in 2009 was my best attempt at an altitude gauge. Despite his prowess as hill walker, having Oliver on foot made for our significantly slower progress.
“Where the heck is this valley?” Ryan was tired; all thirty-five pounds of still-sleeping Kendley and her pack were clearly taking their toll. Just then, a threesome of mountaineers met us in their return down to the trailhead.
“Why, it’s hidden, of course!” one of them chirruped, overhearing our conversation. Another chimed in, more helpfully.
“Ah, see, I’m afraid you’re making your way along the wrong path.” His Highland brogue was charming, only not right at that particular moment. “You’re on the route up to Stob Coire nan Lochan; it’s how climbers get to that massive peak you see up there, Bidean nam Bian. If you were trying to get to the Lost Valley, you picked the wrong two of the Three Sisters to go between.”
Sure enough, we were standing in the seam running between Sisters One and Two: Gearr Aonach and Aonach Dubh, to where they converged at a jagged and snow-covered ridge on the far side of the corrie. At the top, a transverse ridgeline led further up to one of the region’s Munros (mountains > 3,000 feet). At 3,658 feet, the summit was far more than we had bargained for on a sunny afternoon that was quickly trending toward the pale hues of evening.
I looked at both mountaineer’s feet, clad in stiff alpine boots. A pair of ice axes was lashed firmly to both of their packs alongside their helmets. “Where exactly did you guys take off your crampons?” I asked, moving my gaze up the steep hollow that a glacier had bitten out of the face of the mountainside long ago.
“About fifteen minutes further up the path turns to ice. You can’t miss it.” One of the mountaineers gave Oliver a consternating stare, paying particular attention to the welly boots he had pulled on that morning without giving a thought the day’s mountaineering aspirations. I thought of the four people who had been killed in an avalanche on the ridge above us about a month earlier. Experienced climbers, all of them; they were struck suddenly by the terrible misfortune of an unsteady slab of ice at the Church Door Buttress. It was time to turn back; technical hikes were not for us…yet.
As Ryan ambled back down ahead of me, his long legs carrying him faster than the careful pace I maintained with Oliver, one of the mountaineers clapped Ollie on the shoulder and smiled. “Good to start him young, right mum?” I noticed as he spoke that his faced was creased all over by his passion for the hills. “Show him how it all works and he’ll love this land forever.”
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]]>The post When the Sun Shines In Scotland first appeared on OliverTheWorld.
]]>On a late February day in the northwest of Scotland, we had been given a gift. It came in the form of a radiantly beautiful day, one in which a low-slung winter sun glazed the pastures and seacoast of the Inner Hebrides with a warm, topaz light. For the first time in months, we striped down to our thermal layers without a thought for the down coats that, of late, had become as much a part of our outward physical appearances as our fingers or toenails. After days of Scotland’s horizontal rain and a biting chill, it was time for us to venture outside.
We had taken up a temporary residence in a small crofter’s cottage bang on the only road that lead through the township of Toberonochy (pop. 17) on the wee Isle of Luing. Sixteen miles south of Oban, remote Luing (6 miles long and 1.5 miles across) was connected to the rest of the world only by a ferry that departed from another island that was, in turn, connected to the mainland by a bridge. Once a thriving slate-quarrying and cattle-rearing community, the island’s population had steadily receded since the First World War. From the ferry at Cuan Point clear down to the southern tip of the island, we took turns spotting the former farmsteads that had long been reduced into crumbling sheaves of slate and mortar.
Our first fine day on the island followed an evening in which we learned the nuances of lighting and maintaining a peat fire. In the morning my eyes were still bleary and blackened around the eyelashes, but the sun was out and already the children had set themselves off to explore our surroundings. Armed with an ordnance map, we made a southwestern course toward the old byre at Kilchattan, just south of a 600 year-old cemetery that overlooked both the strait and flanking island of Shuna. Here, several head of stocky and hale-looking cattle rose to meet us and warily kept an eye to Oliver’s erratic galloping and stumbling stride. Twenty-one months old on that very morning, Kendley lowed softly at them and appeared proud of the fact that she had finally learned “what the cow says”. They had short, thick necks and hides of the deepest auburn, and appeared to subsist even in these cold months on the roughage and sparse grasses that sprang up all along the roadside. I later learned that the “the Luing”, established on this very island from a cross between Shorthorn and a Highland breeds, was an officially recognized pedigree that was exported worldwide and renowned for its hardiness.
Several times we breached cattle grates and farm stiles and, using a skill he had cultivated several years ago while in New Zealand, Oliver employed his best behavior when traversing a working farm. Each time we passed through a gate or over a fold, he conscientiously returned them to their closed and tethered positions. We soon ascended a ridge that was topped with a wind turbine and flanked by a stand of scrubby Scotch pine that served as a rookery for the resident gray herons. Beyond the miniature forest and all around us was the sea, still and opalescent. The afternoon sun had diffused throughout the haze that settled around the surrounding isles and skerries.
I surveyed the narrow strip of marsh that separated us from the raised shoreline. “Wouldn’t we just cut straight through?” Ryan gestured at the telltale band of clustered mat grass that grew over the bog. “You won’t find a solid footing on that,” I replied. “Follow the sheep track through it and it will drop you straight down to that beach”. We picked our way gingerly through the marsh, mindful of the lime-green sphagnum that veiled the most treacherous of surfaces.
The coast was solemn fringe of dark slate, polished smooth as boot blacking by the powerful tides that swept around the island. Two oystercatchers, startled by my arrival, fluttered across the strait, their kleep kleep a standard for so many of the isolated shorelines I had visited in the past. Above the strandline, map lichen so ancient that it pointed the way back to the last Ice Age, bloomed across the rocks. A merganser wailed and plunged beneath the surface and the tide licked past clusters of barnacles and limpets. Across the channel, what might have been a farmhouse that had fallen into disuse, slouched toward the sea that was as quiet and even as my breath in the bright air. I found a bit of softer ground near a fairy knoll and watched as Oliver cast an improvised fishing line with a washed up stalk of oar weed.
It occurred to me that, for the moment, we were living here, and participating in the life of this island. Of course we weren’t bailing hay or keeping the inventory at the little general store up the road, but, for the moment, this island was all that our lives entailed. I rather liked it. A long walk up through the heath in the morning, counting the rock pools that dotted the coastal fringe, a bit of surveying here, noting the changes in the landscape there. Before long, Oliver came galloping; he was clutching the skull of a roe deer that he had found lying in the heather. We discussed his discovery at length, imagining the former animal and pondering over what might have brought it to its untimely end. When we looked up, the sun had settled back further in the southwest and was cradled among the cliffs of the nearby island of Scarba.
I was in the midst of explaining to Oliver that Corryvreckan, the third-largest natural whirlpool in the world, lay just a few kilometres to the south of us, when I heard Ryan shout. I looked up to see him in the middle of the marsh we had crossed to reach the shoreline. He was still carrying Kendley in the carrier on his back, only now he was horribly cantilevered over his left leg, flailing his arms and visibly standing nearly a foot shorter than he ought to.
“Oh God. He’s gotten himself stuck in the bog”.
Sure enough, Ryan had tried to take a short cut back to the sheep track through the mat grass, but had put a foot down in the wrong place, only to sink up to his knee in the mire. Not only that, the weight of the baby and carrier on his back was driving him over, face first. But before Oliver and I could get to him, he had somehow managed to free himself and, quite miraculously, both his shoe and his poor knee were still in proper working condition. Kendley, in tears, was visibly shaken. The wind shifted and brought along with it a chill from the northeastern highlands. It was time to make our way back to the cottage where a fire and a pot of Scotch stew that had cooled all afternoon on the back hob of the little stove in our kitchen was waiting for us.
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